My Experiences so far

[sihost]

Hi All,
I wanted to post my experiences as certain parts of it may help others transferring out or into Eukhost in the future.

Before I transferred I found the support excellent, and just before the transfer Cristiano was superb. However, he wasn't available on the night of my transfer. Weds night and I'm still having problems.

1. I originally signed up with web hosting uk but then switched to eukhost as they offer more disk space, double ram and only 6 people per dedicated 8 processor server.

2. On the night of the transfer I downloaded all backups from my previous shared hosting servers, moved them all to the public_html area and changed permissions to 755

3. These were then downloaded from the server by the support team. Two hours went by and I heard nothing until chasing up. I was then told, all done, and changed the private nameserver ip's after testing the sites.

4. I then spotted I'd for some strange reason been moved to another vps, with only 4 processors, 45GB less diskspace and much less ram. When I asked why I was just told, the server isn't slow. I had to get angry to get transferred back to the one I was paying for and signed up for! But, thanks to them they did it and I believed all was sorted.

5. There was then several things missing such as Fantastico etc but all that was sorted.

6. 12 hours later and still problems. I started to question missing dns records, wrong dns settings etc. Some were corrected and I was told the rest of the problems were dns propagation related.

7. I raised the issue of dns again and some sones were changed. Clients were screaming at me but I reminded them this isn't an instant process and managed to get at least some sleep last night.

8. This morning a client from abroad, screaming down the phone, still no email no email, threatening as they were losing revenue. I again reminded them of propagation. So after lunchtime they really lost their patience. Most of the sites were not working, many emails were down on mail.domain too. However some sites worked without the www. so I started investigating.

9. I raised the issue of dns again. Some of the zones had picked up the old mailserver ip's from somewhere, so these were corrected, thanks to the support team.

10. Still no email, screaming clients and no access on many domains. I was told, wait, it takes time. I loked on the web, it said it could take 36 hours. This was now over 36 hours. I was extremely worried. My business is not just hosting, many hosting clients were other clients too and this was not looking good.

11. I find out that many of the failing domains either have no dns zone or no www or mail entry in their dns zone. This may be a good hint for anyone having similar problems. The support team hadn't spotted this. I added these zones myself to the domains and clients started ringing and emailing, "Its working"
So it wasn't propagation...

12. As I type this, 8 domains are not working because of missing dns zones, I'm waiting for the support team to come back to me because when I try to add a zone in WHM it says "already exists"..

And just now, RONAN on the case, he's really quick!. They've added the missing zones, all domains working.
So hours after I raised the issue, and my business (which I've worked really hard to build up) looking bad with screaming clients, and 2 days of lost revenue myself...I'm up and running!

What an experience. I'm still waiting for answers from management about why I was moved to a lower spec server and worry what had happened if I wasn't so 'on the ball' and noticed.

I'll stay with eukhost for now as the support is fast, but I'm only just hanging on.
Hopefully this will just go down as a bad experience and all I need to do now is calm the clients down and rescue my business. I hope this helps others notice things which are missed and saved your skin if you are in a similar position.

[eUKShane]

Hi,

1) First of all, you have provided few of the backups of your accounts which were on the shared hosting before, so we have restored it as it is. Not sure if the backups were properly done in the first place. We have just restored it.

2) According to your ticket CFV-97729-342 (regarding DNS) gives a complete idea of your issue.

The private nameservers you are using were not pointing to the server’s IP addresses; you had to register the nameservers and point them to your server IPs. The propagation part is not in our control, at least when the domain is not even registered with us. Normal propagation period is 12-24 hours.

3) About Fantastico, we provide it for free and we install it only when any customer requests for it. It takes few minutes to install.

4) The mails will not work from your server unless and until the nameservers pointing to your server IPs. After nameserver propagation we changed the MX records which sorted out the email problem..

5) Well, when we create a new cpanel account it automatically creates a DNS Zone file for the domain, this is normal cpanel behaviour. As the backups you provided were not properly created on the old host, they had problems with the DNS zones. It got restored in the same way [improperly]. We tried our best to provide you with the highest possible support in this situation & to get your account/domains working ASAP.

Regarding Server configuration issue, we were migrating your accounts on high configuration server but that day we were facing a network problem with the server, which was causing huge delays in downloading your backup files. As you were in a hurry for the migration we proceeded with it to another new server which was completely free at that time. Later on when you requested us to migrate your entire account to a high configuration server and we migrated all your accounts on it..

[sihost]

Many thanks for replying to my post, much appreciated and good to hear your side.

Could I ask that you remove my first name, just incase any clients find this post and relate to me, as they do tend to get listed in Google!

1) Thanks, I know you just restored them but the backups were done exactly as I was asked, logged into cpanel at old host, did complete account backup, moved it into public_html by ftp and changed permissions to 755. Don't know why its not done correctly but thats out of our control.

2) The nameservers were pointed to my server ips straight after you did the restores and began showing on dns traces a few hours afterwards. I know propgation does take a while but yeh the nameservers were changed properly.

3) Didn't realise Fantastico was an optional install so thanks for doing that.

4) I spotted the MX records as being incorrect, I raised the issue of DNS quite a few times but was told just to wait so thats what I did. However I later spotted that the mx records had old ip's in from the old server. From what I understand these picked themselves up from the old server. The support team didn't spot this and while I respect that they can't notice everything it would have been nice for someone to point it out. However, it got resolved so that was sorted.

5) I had clients shouting at me so it was hard to deal with this and keep telling them it was propagation 30 odd hours after the transfer. I spotted the dns errors. I understand now that these were caused by problems in the backup files so hopefully this post will prompt everyone to check this when accounts have problems in the future. As a new customer it would have been great to have been advised abit more rather than "its propagation". Many of the accounts down today were because of incorrect dns set up. Noones fault as you say, it must have been the backups, but I had to find the problem myself. I was just surprised the support guys didn't spot the errors yesterday when I kept mentioning dns, I kept saying that some domains had no dns.
The support speed is second to none, answers in a few minute most of the time.

I understand now why you put me on another server. It would have been nice for the support guy or someone to tell me why so knew what was going on.
I'm back on the one I'm supposed to be on now so thats the main thing.

Overall all up and running now and hopefully you don't get many of those network delays
I look forward to receiving the great support I heard that you normally offer. I give credit to you that you can answer this on an open forum.

[Rock]

Hi,

Your name has been removed for from the above post for privacy. Thank you very much for your understanding throughout this sticky situation & we do apologise for any inconvenience caused at this initial stage. We're glad that all the problems have come to an end hereby. We'll make sure that in case such similar [hardware shortage, migrations, etc] incidences do arise in the near future; clients would be first off informed about any such temporary solutions that are to be delivered. We aspire to provide you & all others with the best technical support & web hosting services. Have a nice weekend

[sihost]

Thanks for reply Rock

Right now my email is down

My server has errors

and the support team are telling me they need to restore from a 4 day old backup and move to ANOTHER vps. Thats more downtime, more dns. more hassle.

Clients are calling going mad after last weeks problems.

I am not happy.

[eUK-Alan]

Hi

I have replied your ticket with necessary information. Please update the ticket if you need further assistance.

-----------------
Best regards,
AlanV
UK Web Hosting, Website Hosting, Web Hosting UK, Web Hosting

[eUKhost.com]

Hi,

I hope everything is sorted now. We have configured free remote backup for your server and you will receive email notification every week once your backup is successfully completed. If you don't want such notifications then please let us know.

[sihost]

Hi, Yep everythings abit smoother today!
Thanks again for the free backups!

p.s. PLease remove my full name from your post as all my clients know me and your forum is very high in google! Just in case...

[eUKShane]

Hello,

Glad to know everything is working fine now
I have removed your name from the above post for privacy.

Please feel free to initiate a live chat session for further assistance. We would be glad to assist you.