VPS almost daily downtime

[psynnott]

Date: 13/06/2011
Time: 21:13
URL: ithinkimlost.com
IP: 213.175.214.18
Cross Referencing Ticket: QXM-260-97167


VPS is unresponsive yet again. This is the third time that *I* have noticed and I check the server maybe once every 3 days. I absolutely dread to think what my regular users are experiencing.

First major downtime was a hardware failure in the host node. I wasn't too bothered with this as eukhost was working on it, and I know hardware fails, so not a big problem.

I was moved to a new hardware node and since then, it appears every night I go to look at my site, it is unreponsive.

I phoned EUKHost the 2nd time I noticed it down and was told "the apache service died and you need to restart it.". Uhm, before, when a service died, it was automatically restarted which is the norm. Why must I, the customer, phone you and say your server is not responding only to be told that I must log on and restart apache? I don't think this is reasonable.

Look, enough moaning. Here is where I'm at. I'm paying a premium sum of money for a service that I and my users are not receiving. Reliability is key to the success of any site, and mine is no exception.

Guys, can you fix this? If not, just tell me straight up and I'll take a copy of my files and go to a company that takes reliability seriously as EUKHost obviously isn't.

I'll be checking my site every hour from now on and every single time I notice it down, I will phone you and stay on the phone until it is up and working. This will cost you money. So, it is in your best interest as well to ensure my VPS is reliable.

Regards.

Edit: Let it also be noted that there is still no network outage notification in the status forum here - even after it has been acknowledged by the support team it's a known problem.

[eUK-Alan]

Date: 13/06/2011
Time: 21:13
URL: ithinkimlost.com
IP: 213.175.214.18
Cross Referencing Ticket: QXM-260-97167


VPS is unresponsive yet again. This is the third time that *I* have noticed and I check the server maybe once every 3 days. I absolutely dread to think what my regular users are experiencing.

First major downtime was a hardware failure in the host node. I wasn't too bothered with this as eukhost was working on it, and I know hardware fails, so not a big problem.

I was moved to a new hardware node and since then, it appears every night I go to look at my site, it is unreponsive.

I phoned EUKHost the 2nd time I noticed it down and was told "the apache service died and you need to restart it.". Uhm, before, when a service died, it was automatically restarted which is the norm. Why must I, the customer, phone you and say your server is not responding only to be told that I must log on and restart apache? I don't think this is reasonable.

Look, enough moaning. Here is where I'm at. I'm paying a premium sum of money for a service that I and my users are not receiving. Reliability is key to the success of any site, and mine is no exception.

Guys, can you fix this? If not, just tell me straight up and I'll take a copy of my files and go to a company that takes reliability seriously as EUKHost obviously isn't.

I'll be checking my site every hour from now on and every single time I notice it down, I will phone you and stay on the phone until it is up and working. This will cost you money. So, it is in your best interest as well to ensure my VPS is reliable.

Regards.

Edit: Let it also be noted that there is still no network outage notification in the status forum here - even after it has been acknowledged by the support team it's a known problem.

Hello

It was emergency maintenance due to which server on which your vps is hosted, was rebooted. Few virtuozzo updates were needed to be installed on server to enhance it's security and that's the reason it was rebooted.

In order to keep track of server downtime we have developed a website on which updates in regards to reboots, service/server, network updates will be posted. You can also see updates regarding same at

euk-status.com -

Please feel free to update the ticket if you need further assistance.

[psynnott]

Alan,

It is down again.

I'll be backing up my files and cancelling as this is a bloody joke.

[eUK-Alan]

Hello,

Sad to know but we are ascertain about this downtime. We are checking root cause behind server downtime meanwhile if you wish we can migrate you on another node.
Please let us know asap so that we can proceed with the migration.

[psynnott]

Hello Alan,

How long would the migration take? Can you do this while the original node is down?

[eUK-Alan]

Hello

Migration will take around 2 hours if everything goes correct. The node is up and all vpses are being started one by one.

Please let us know your suitable time so that we can proceed with the migration.

[eUK-Alan]

Hello

Migration will take around 2 hours if everything goes correct. The node is up and all vpses are being started one by one.

Please let us know your suitable time so that we can proceed with the migration.

FYI, I have updated ticket QXM-260-97167.
Looking forward to hear from you. Please update ticket QXM-260-97167 asap.

[psynnott]

Alan,

if the vps is being restarted, that's fine, I'll wait. As I said, I'm sorry but I really have had enough. I'll grab a copy of my files and email feedback@eukhost.com to request a cancellation / refund once I have done so.

Thanks for your help.

[eUK-Gareth]

Alan,

if the vps is being restarted, that's fine, I'll wait. As I said, I'm sorry but I really have had enough. I'll grab a copy of my files and email feedback@eukhost.com to request a cancellation / refund once I have done so.

Thanks for your help.

Hello ,

We really apologize for the downtime you have faced.
it is really bad to know that you want to cancel your server, unfortunately we were facing some kernal issue on the main hardware node where your VPS is hosted. We have properly fixed the issue and we are monitoring the server.

All VPSs are in starting process and once your VPS is online then you should not face such issue again.



Regards,
Gareth M.
Asst.System Administrator
eUkhost.com

[eUKhost.com]

Alan,

if the vps is being restarted, that's fine, I'll wait. As I said, I'm sorry but I really have had enough. I'll grab a copy of my files and email feedback@eukhost.com to request a cancellation / refund once I have done so.

Thanks for your help.

Hi Paul,

I request you to give us one last chance to give you desired service with 99.95%+ uptime. We would like to offer you free upgrade to the VMWare cloud platform. I request you to consider my offer and let the 3 years old relationship continue for many more years to come.

Your problem has been due to Virtuozzo and not because of eUKhost. We never get such feedback from our customers hosted on all other virtualization platforms. We are trying to find out a way to migrate all Virtuozzo nodes to VMWare / Hyper-V platform, but the process will take some time, as we've got more than 3000 customers hosted on Virtuozzo.

[psynnott]

Thanks for the reply and your offer. To be quite honest, I'm not sure what to do. I'll need to sleep on it and get back to you.

My initial thoughts are I've given EUKHost amble opportunity to put things right and now is time for me to do something myself. On the other hand, I have been with you for years and it's only got so bad recently.

I'll get back to you.

[eUKhost.com]

Thanks for the reply and your offer. To be quite honest, I'm not sure what to do. I'll need to sleep on it and get back to you.

My initial thoughts are I've given EUKHost amble opportunity to put things right and now is time for me to do something myself. On the other hand, I have been with you for years and it's only got so bad recently.

I'll get back to you.

Hi Paul,

I hope you have had good sleep last night. We've supported you on so many occassions, so we also expect some support from you now. I hope you will consider my offer and allow us to move you to our VMWare cloud. We will make sure there should not be any downtime during the migration process. We can do the switchover on weekend to eliminate any financial losses due to downtime(if the DNS changes don't happen instantly)

[psynnott]

Hi,

Again, thanks for the offer of migration.

You are right, your support team and I are frequently talking to each other... unfortunately I see that as a bad thing because the best service / best support is one where I never have to contact them. Don't you agree? Support teams should be proactive in fixing problems, not waiting for the customer to report them (and then only to be told how to fix it themselves).

Thankfully, there is no worry regarding financial losses as the site is non-profit and purely a support group for teachers. I pay the hosting out of my own pocket as I enjoy running the forum and seeing the users benefit from the site and information on it. Reliability and performance is what I'm looking for, and unfortunately EUKHost has not delivered these in the last year. I have been in contact with your MD with more detail over the performance issues I refer to (I don't want to take this thread off track).

I will make a final decision over the weekend as to what I'm ultimately going to do. It's looking like I'll be moving away, but this entirely depends on whether the company I am in contact with can provide the reliability I am looking for.

As I said to your MD, I'd like to keep the cloud offer on the table until I make a final decision over the weekend. I'll be in touch.

Thanks.

[eUKhost.com]

No problem Paul

I am sure you will take right decision. I've been involved in hosting business from last 10 years and I have worked for all big names so far. I have never seen any hosting provider without downtime.

I think you should first move to the VMWare cloud. I will personally help you to migrate your account to your other preferred hosting provider, if you experience any downtime on our VMWare Cloud.

[psynnott]

The site is down again.

[Rock]

The site is down again.

Hi Paul,

I think & would recommend you to consider the solution offered by Mark to move over to a cloud server which will lead to an end to all the ongoing problems you're facing with the existing hosting platform. We'll perform this entire migration & except the IPs, nothing else will be changed.

Please let know if you want to get this done.. I look forward to hearing from you.

[psynnott]

Rock,

Appreciated, the cloud solution would be more stable. However, I'm afraid I have lost all confidence in EUKHost. As a result, I will be cancelling my account later today once I have retrieved a copy of my data.
I find it absolutely shocking the way this server has been going down every few days (or every day in some cases).

Best of luck in continuing to provide your services. You were once a great company but words cannot describe how I feel about EUKHost right now. Even your lack of communication via email / telephone to all customers affected shows how little you actually respect your customers. Do you try to keep downtime a secret and hope the customer didn't notice? It sure looks that way because I have to keep contacting -you-.

Well, that's my bit said. Over and out. My final contact with EUKhost will be an email to feedback@eukhost.com later today.

[James]

Hi Paul,

I understand its very frustrating if the same issue occurs again and again. But as mentioned earlier by the Admin that the problem is due to the Virtuozzo platform which has pushed you in this situation. Having said that switching to VMware platform would eradicate this problem completely. We do value our customers, and since you have been with us from quite a long time, you have been familiar with the level of service we are known for. We would appreciate if you could still consider our offer to move to VMware platform and help us prove that we are still the same company which values each and every customer and their feedback.

I look forward to hearing from you.

[Stella]

Hello Paul,

Though we don't know each other, still would only like to suggest you to hang-on with Eukhost. Believe me, out of my personal experience where I was very annoyed by the services that other hosting providers had offered and had to keep switching them after certain intervals of time. Finally landed up with trying the services offered by Eukhost. TBH. was not at all expecting anything better from them too initially, and was assuming that I'll have to switch-over to someone better. But as me and my colleagues kept working with them, our trust in them kept on growing, and now its been really long since we are with them. Now, I don't want to utter the qualities that they posses as you seem to be hosting your sites with them for a time which is longer than us.

On their behalf, I would like to strongly suggest you to hang-on for sometime and take their suggestions seriously by opting for Cloud Hosting services and give them an opportunity to prove themselves. They've been saying that it isn't their fault, its the Virtuozzo what jacked up, still they are taking the ownership of all the issues caused and are offering a solution, accept it and see what happens.

P.S.: I am sorry to barge in between the discussion which isn't anywhere related to me.

[psynnott]

Stella,

Thanks for your input. Yes, I have been with EUKhost for years, but I've decided it's time for me and my sites to move on.

I hear your and EUKHost's point of it being Virtuozzo, however as the customer this really doesn't matter to me. All I see is my server unresponsive on multiple occassions and have users complaining to me.

If EUKHost believe that it is Virtuozzo causing the problems, they should be decisive and move all accounts off that server onto another physical machine with different software. I assume there is are conversion programs available to convert the VPS data files to whatever other platform they say is more stable.

Another option is to email all affected users with the information they have (ie. it's the software causing the problem) and offer to migrate users immediately onto a more stable platform.

Waiting until a user complains like this on their public forum, via telephone, via IM and also via email is completely unprofessional in my opinion. I'll not labour the point any more, as I've said what I think.

I've said to EUKHost how I think they should have handled this situation. One word: communication. I'm afraid that I will not return to EUKHost until there is a change in policy to ensure customers are told immediately of any downtime, with an explanation of what happened. Time after time when I contact EUKHost, I would get a "server is now up" or "fixed" without even the slightest explanation of what happened (or even an apology). Again, I find this unacceptable.

I'm still in the process of moving my sites off the server (the server died again last night as I was downloading the backup files)...