Web Site Pulled with No Warning or Explanation!

[Justintime]

At 10.45am this morning our entire ecommerce website was pulled.

No warning from EUKhost. No e-mails.

First thing we did was call EUKhost and they told us we had used too much server space and we needed to go to live chat. We logged onto live chat and spoke to a helper called Nancy who told us that to get our site back up we had to email EUK to activate the site by assuring them that the script which was overloading the server will be optimized.

At 10.52am I tried calling the EUKhost line again repeatedly on 0808 262 0455. Each time I called the phone would ring about 20 times and then just cut me off with the unobtainable tone. I had to google to find another contact number for EUKhost. I spoke to a lady called Julie who told me she was level 1 and only level 2 could help on livechat. There was no-one who could speak to me on the phone about this problem.

As we had no idea what script was overloading the site (or why) all we could do was ask where the problem was. The helper then sent us a copy of the path which was our index.php page! No explanation as to what exactly this page was doing that could have used up 97% of CPU. We aren't web designers or web experts. We just host with EUK!

We sent an e-mail to get our site back up and this was done quickly. But as of 11.45am we have no idea how long until the site goes back down. We have two major issues here:-

1) Even though we kept asking why the index page could be causing issues, we didn't get an answer. Unless we get some clearer information then in all likelihood our site could go down again. No-one at EUK is offering us any more information except to keep saying that our index page is consuming 97% of cpu.

2) Why aren't EUK taking careful steps to ensure they contact a company before pulling their site. The e-mail account they claimed to contact us on is being used everyday for all our customers and NONE of them have had any issues with it, so how could EUK not have got through to us? I suppose it's too much too expect a phone call from EUK before they disrupt our entire business and lose us potential thousands in revenue, but for a host to just fire off one e-mail and then pull the hosting doesn't give us much faith!

[Justintime]

2.30PM: Last person I spoke to at EUK was Julie at level 1 who assured me she would have someone at Level 3 (Jason) look into the problem and explain to us exactly what the script problem was that caused 97% of CPU to be used.

Instead, I get THIS from Nick J in my e-mail:-
Hello,

I would request you to contact your web-developers in order to get your scripts optimized.

Regards,
Nick J.
Senior Admin
Support Team.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!! How many times do I have to ASK!!! Keep saying "optimize your script" means nothing to us. We don't have a web developer. If I'd known I need one to get a simple question answered on EUK I wouldn't have chosen them as host.

Still no answer to why we weren't informed before they pulled our site!


So I call back. Julie has gone home because she's feeling sick apparantly. (I know how she feels). Steven has taken ahold of the reins. Let's hope he can do a better job because seriously the outcome of this will determine my future with EUKhosting as well as my recommendations to all the other companies we deal with about their competence as a web host.

Steven has suggested that he have the technical guys take a closer look at the problem and come back with reports. He was even kind enough to suggest they modify the script for us. The former request is what I asked Julie to do in the first place and all I got in return was the same old mantra "optimize your script" like a broken record from the technical department at level 3 she passed my request onto.

Way to go guys! My web site is my livelihood and I am still absolutely fuming that you pulled it without so much as an e-mail notice or warning of any kind. There is NO justification for that. NONE. As a host you should take care of somebody's web site as if it were real estate. Not just send the bulldozers in!

[NickJ]

Hello Rob,

As per the monitoring system, here are the details stats for your website :

indikitc indikit.com 42.39 40.16 40.0
Top Process %CPU 97.1 /usr/bin/php /home/indikitc/public_html/index.php
Top Process %CPU 97.0 /usr/bin/php /home/indikitc/public_html/index.php
Top Process %CPU 96.0 /usr/bin/php /home/indikitc/public_html/index.php
Top Process %CPU 76.9 /usr/bin/php /home/indikitc/public_html/product_info.php

Your script (index.php and product_info.php) was causing a very high load on the server as a result of which the entire server was sluggish, potentially affecting all websites and other services, until the process was killed and the account was suspended.
As per our Terms of Service (Refer - SLA 7.3), if you operate any site using what we deem to be excessive CPU cycles or any resources that cause strain to other sites, we reserve the right to impose new terms on you in exchange for the current terms that you enjoy (i.e. an upgrade). You are allowed to use upto 25% of total resources available on a shared server and if your account continues to use more than 25% of the resources, it will result in suspension.
It is our job to keep the server up and running without being sluggish or experiencing any issues. Any account which causes the server's load to go up will be suspended and the process will be terminated. If you choose not to optimize your scripts (most of the time database queries you are using in your script), you will most likely be suspended for overloading/crashing the server.

Regards,
Nick J.

[Justintime]

Nick,

That still doesn't explain why we weren't warned you would suspend our website in advance?

How were we to know that our script was causing this problem. It's never affected this way before, so without prior warning from yourselves there was no way we could have known about it.

Furthermore, at the very least, I would have hoped someone from your company could have offered us a suggestion on upgrading to an improved hosting package with yourselves to avoid this problem, instead of just cutting us dead. At the very least that would have given us confidence in yourselves and made more money for your company.

[flesso]

I'd like to add that it isn't unusual for web hosting providers to give no notification prior to taking sites down on the grounds of over-using server resources.

[Justintime]

I'd like to add that it isn't unusual for web hosting providers to give no notification prior to taking sites down on the grounds of over-using server resources.

And that makes it right does it?

Either way, I'm impressed enough with what EUKhost are doing to help me rectify the problem. I spoke to a couple of guys there on the phone today who are going that extra mile to assist me. That's all I ask and that's all it takes to retain someone's custom and faith.

Just being told it's perfectly acceptable to pull a site and leave the customer in the thick of it isn't going to retain custom.

Customer service representatives who are genuinely sincere and helpful WILL. Fortunately EUK has those so I will just see how it pans out in the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, a few frantic e-mails have gone out my end to the Getafreelancer that originally built the site for me. I accept it's my responsibility to get the script right and I will certainly do it.

My site was only down for half an hour today and I commend EUK for acting so swiftly to bring it back up. I can't say fairer than that. As hosts go they have been the best I've used so far, but this has been the first major disappointment I've experienced with them. When a host is as reliable as EUK are you can imagine what a major disappointment it is when something goes wrong. I don't want to leave them because I doubt very much there is anyone much better when it comes to hosting cost and reliability. When I have downtimes with EUK they only last for a few minutes at a time, and the speed of my site is about 10 times faster than when I was hosting with Godaddy.

I'm at least confident enough now that EUK will help sort this problem for me, so I have every reason to remain a customer and say good things about them. I don't want this thread to detract from that, and I'm happy to delete it should the mods wish me too when I reach a conclusion. It's impressive enough that they allow threads to remain like this on a public forum so you can't accuse them of being dishonest with their customers!!

Thanks for all your help!

[OliverTreend]

The fact that your website was using 97% CPU means that the web server would have been extremely slow for others trying to access other websites on the same machine. I'm assuming you wouldn't be too happy if your website took several minutes to load just because somebody else's website was being greedy.

eUKhost could have simply disabled access to your index.php file, which seemed to be causing the most damage. However, although the rest of your website would still work, your website would still be have ultimately been rendered useless because users cannot access the main homepage of your site.

I can understand your frustration that eUKhost didn't email you or contact you prior to suspending your account. However, I think it's important to remember that this was happening there and then - in other words, it was seriously slowing down the server, and it had to be dealt with right away...

It simply wouldn't be pheasable for eUKhost to send you an email telling you that your website is using too much CPU time. They'd have to wait possibly several hours before they receive a reply from you - meanwhile, their server is on its knees, being crushed under the weight of your website.

Furthermore - from a business perspective - it would be more appealing lose your custom than to lose everybody else's custom whose website is on that server because they are unhappy with the slow access speeds being caused by your account.

And that's what business is all about - right? Making fast & blunt decisions in order to maximise profitability. It's a harsh world! I know for a fact that eUKhost are very lenient when it comes to custom requirements on servers and being so helpful - most companies aren't like that! I can only imagine that any other hosting provider would have done exactly the same thing. In fact - I guess it's actually quite good that eUKhost could even detect which script was taking up to much CPU - otherwise they could have just permanently terminated your account and told you to "go take a run & jump"!

I know this must have been extremely frustrating for you, though. I'm not in eUKhost's defence - I agree that even just a phone call wouldn't have gone amiss. But that's not the point. I just wanted to explain this.

Apologies for being blunt at times - however, I hope this has helped you to see it from their point of view. And if not, damn... because I would've just spent 20 minutes typing this out for nothing!

[eUKhost.com]

The number of shared servers, reseller hosting servers and vps nodes we host has increased a lot in last 2 years, which makes it very difficult for our senior system administrators to email customers and explain reason for such suspension of their websites.

I will talk to our CRO and see if he can provide us with some ready made templates which we can use to email such customers and inform them why their website was suspended. Communication is extremely important and we will need to focus on improving our communication with customers to prevent cancellations in recession period.

[Justintime]

It simply wouldn't be pheasable for eUKhost to send you an email telling you that your website is using too much CPU time. They'd have to wait possibly several hours before they receive a reply from you - meanwhile, their server is on its knees, being crushed under the weight of your website.

The crucial point here Oliver is that EUK DID send out an e-mail telling me that my CPU was at a critical level. At least that's what they claimed when I spoke with them on the phone. I didn't get it. That's the source of my frustration. Calling the helpline number just to be cut off after 20 rings every time just compounded my frustration further and believe me, after not getting an e-mail, not being able to contact the host and having my website down, the last thing I am going to be doing is sitting there twiddling my thumbs saying "Hmmm, let's just see this from EUKs perspective."

Furthermore, it's unlikely the problem page leapt up to 97% CPU in a few hours. It would have been a gradual build up. Perhaps taking days. I don't know, as this is purely speculative. I don't want to chew the fat on what's happened, rather find a solution to what is happening.

Incidentally, I have just had my new web developer look into the problem page and they can't find the error. They need more information that only EUK can provide.

[Justintime]

Okay, so as of 5pm today our web developer is telling us they can find nothing wrong with the files EUK are telling us are causing a problem. EUKs suggestion is that we 'rebuild' the pages.

In other words, we are expected to redesign our entire web site so that we can continue to host with EUK.

How are we supposed to fix something that as far as we can tell is not broken? And there has been no suggestion whatsoever that the problem could be with EUKs server.

By the way, my earlier praise of EUK helping me with this problem was pre-emptive. Now I'm being told no-one will look into the problem for me. Any further assistance we try to get from EUK is just met with the same mantra:

"Fix your script."

Okay. Time to find a new host.

[eUKhost.com]

The crucial point here Oliver is that EUK DID send out an e-mail telling me that my CPU was at a critical level. At least that's what they claimed when I spoke with them on the phone. I didn't get it. That's the source of my frustration. Calling the helpline number just to be cut off after 20 rings every time just compounded my frustration further and believe me, after not getting an e-mail, not being able to contact the host and having my website down, the last thing I am going to be doing is sitting there twiddling my thumbs saying "Hmmm, let's just see this from EUKs perspective."

Furthermore, it's unlikely the problem page leapt up to 97% CPU in a few hours. It would have been a gradual build up. Perhaps taking days. I don't know, as this is purely speculative. I don't want to chew the fat on what's happened, rather find a solution to what is happening.

Incidentally, I have just had my new web developer look into the problem page and they can't find the error. They need more information that only EUK can provide.

Both pages from your website went in loop as per Nick(CTO). There was nothing much he could do to rectify this problem without suspending your account. You can always contact us on livechat or open a ticket if you fail to get solution from the phonesupport department. Our phone support department deals with large volume of calls and they can simply let you know what was said to them from the technical support staff.

Probably you were not the one who created this problem, but we see your website creating trouble for the server and we are forced to take necessary steps to keep our server in good shape.

[eUKhost.com]

Okay, so as of 5pm today our web developer is telling us they can find nothing wrong with the files EUK are telling us are causing a problem. EUKs suggestion is that we 'rebuild' the pages.

In other words, we are expected to redesign our entire web site so that we can continue to host with EUK.

How are we supposed to fix something that as far as we can tell is not broken? And there has been no suggestion whatsoever that the problem could be with EUKs server.

By the way, my earlier praise of EUK helping me with this problem was pre-emptive. Now I'm being told no-one will look into the problem for me. Any further assistance we try to get from EUK is just met with the same mantra:

"Fix your script."

Okay. Time to find a new host.

eUKhost is a hosting company and we cannot troubleshoot anything which involves coding errors. We can recommend some good PHP programmers if you are looking for a better webmaster.

[texterted]

Perhaps you have just outgrown your current level of shared hosting?

Maybe you would be better off with a higher spec VPS or dedicated server, particularly if downtime could cause you to lose revenue?

[Justintime]

Just got a message back to me from my web developer. This is NOT the one who designed the original site, this is a brand new developer.

They have tested the site on an isolated server, running the identical script. They have seen absolutely nothing wrong with it. Nothing.

Their suggestion is that EUKhost take a closer look at their server.

As I said before, my site has been running for nigh on 5 months with EUK without a hitch. No problems at all. Then in minutes my site supposedly hogs 97% of their CPU resources. Unlikely.

Again, I maintain the issue is with EUK and not the script. But like I say, I know they are not interested so I will be moving hosts, and I have no interest in recommending EUK further.

[John]

Hello,

It's truly unfortunate when we need to suspend any account, but we have to act in the best interests of the vast majority of our customers.

Shared servers often host hundreds of clients, potentially thousands of domains. As someone else has already pointed out in this post, you wouldn't be too happy if your website was down due to a resolvable issue relating to another client.

In regards to this specific problems, 97% of CPU is simply huge. While you can quite rightly say there was no issue in the previous 5 months, we have not had any issues with other clients on that server. I feel that rules out our server in this case. I would also question your acceptance of a test on an isolated server, when you previously admitted it worked without problems for 5 months. I'm unsure as to what you think a test would show up. A website can react differently depending how many people are on it at once, and just what they are doing.

In the past, we have asked our coders to stop working on internal projects to try and resolve coding problems, but this isn't what they are there to do. Also, with the salary requirements of a good coder, we can't have a coder sitting idle for a "what if" scenario of a shared hosting client.

The one point I would concede is your point about the lack of a phone call, but such a phone call can only take place after a suspension occurs, as the problem was having an impact on hundreds of other clients. All staff have been updated regarding the procedure they should follow when suspending a client's account.

[Justintime]

John, I appreciate your response and I understand what you are saying with regards to coders. However, Steven - who I spoke with on the phone the day the problem occurred - offered me the option to have your coders take a look at the script. If you offer a customer such assistance and then withdraw it, expect the customer to be upset.

Secondly, if you are putting forward the scenario that the script could have errors that can only occur and be found when it is on a live server with X amount of users on board, then it's impossible to find the problem outside of a live environment. This is where further information from your company would have been helpful. But again, your comments are speculative. I just checked the cpanel logs and we had less visitors that day than usual. So it seems improbable the error occurred as a result of visitor traffic. And without detailed information as to what was happening when the error occurred, it appears that the only people who would truly be able to isolate such a bizarre anomaly would be the engineers or coders at your end, who's skills I was first offered the services of.

I also find it a little disconcerting that you are dismissive (and confident) enough to not even consider looking into your own server, just in case the problem may be at your end. That may not bode well for the other few hundred customers who are currently on the same server.

EUKhost.com: "We can recommend some good PHP programmers if you are looking for a better webmaster."

By all means, please e-mail them to me. I would love to chat with them and forward them my coding so one of them can take a careful look at it and see if they can find any errors. However, if they give the all clear just like the original programmer and my current one, what will EUKhost do next? Reimburse me? Take a look at their server?

[John]

Hello,

I don't want this to turn into one of those threads that goes back and fourth forever.

Steven did what any good customer service person does; He explored all options. If for some reason one of our coders has some free time, we will have them look into client issues. I don't want to undermine your package with us, as shared hosting made us what we are today, but this is usually more likely to happen to a Dedicated Server customer. Even then, that is my no means part of the service we offer, nor would I claim it to be. I say again though, we have had coders check into shared hosting clients websites before, when schedules permit.

In regards to the server, you need to look at it from a logical point of view. If the server only has an issue with your files, is it the server at fault? If the server then becomes normal after your website is suspended, is that by chance? The log files showing your processes using the memory, are they false? Other than log files and the fact that this problem hasn't happened to other clients, there is nothing we can "check". The log files point to your scripts, and the fact no other customer has had problems points to your scripts. Now, I sincerely ask you, what could we possibly look at?

As for a refund, you have the option to claim a refund for any unused portion of your hosting fee. Our terms and conditions have always allowed for this.

Please feel free to view the above questions as rhetorical. I know you don't have answers for them. There is no need to prolong an issue arguing back and fourth.

[Justintime]

"Please feel free to view the above questions as rhetorical. I know you don't have answers for them. There is no need to prolong an issue arguing back and fourth."

I think the issue prolongs until it reaches a conclusion. Right now my conclusion is to leave your hosting as an unhappy customer. As of now I have copied over all my files onto a new host and I will be updating the database later tonight. I will then redirect my domain to point to the new host until such time I have moved everything away from EUK. Until I have all files working on the other host it's crucial for me to ensure my website stays up your end until it's sorted.

I understand that you don't wish to discuss this issue any further John, that's your choice, however let me just ask you this one last question.

All day today we have seen our website dissappear and reappear with different error pages in it's place. One was a MYSQL database error page and then about 10 minutes ago we had a timeout stating that the server was taking too long to respond your end.

Is this normal activity for your servers, as this has been happening all day today. Or am I to assume my two 'faulty' pages are to blame for this entire outage?

Incidentally I'm still waiting for your chief marketing officer who posted on this thread, to e-mail me the list of PHP programmers he suggested he could put me in touch with? Is this another EUK customer service offer gone awry?

[John]

Hello,

I trust you have contacted technical support for any issues you may be having with your domain. Believe it or not, they are there to help.

[John]

Just to add, Mark is currently working in a later shift, as his previous forum posts may suggest.

I'm sure he will send you an e-mail in due course.