Westhost - when crap hits the fan. | Warrior Forum - The #1 Digital Marketing Forum & Marketplace

14 years ago

So.....what do you suggest for them to do?

You realize that 99.9% of the web hosts out there are as just as helpless as you are when a server crashes right?

For every email you send them, I am willing they send the same to the datacenter asking for updates.

Servers crash. It happens.

I would say move elsewhere if it is really that big of a deal to you, but you are going to experience this type of thing regardless of which host you use.

How long have you been with West host?

How much downtime have you had overall?

I think the lesson learned should be pay more than $10/m for a web hosting plan. Get fail over, load balancing if it is hurting you that much.

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Marty S

14 years ago

At the very least, redirect to page where I can inform customers. And no, this type of crash is not usual. When you are talking days out of service, possibly a full week.... well you obviously have not been in that spot with a high profile site. Irrelevant of past service, as what I am saying is how they manage a crisis > this is a FAIL.

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Daniel Brock

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

At the very least, redirect to page where I can inform customers. And no, this type of crash is not usual.

That lies on your end. Login to your domain registrar control panel and do an auto-forward.

How long have you been with them? Have they provided a decent service?

If they have done decent, why trash their name over one hardware failure?

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Marty S

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Daniel Brock

That lies on your end. Login to your domain registrar control panel and do an auto-forward.

How long have you been with them? Have they provided a decent service?

If they have done decent, why trash their name over one hardware failure?

I guess you have trouble understanding, but its crisis management at issue not down time over the past. When a host goes down, that's one thing, but now they are saying up to week offline. That is not good management and yes, they deserve a spanking in my view for that.

On the other hand, can you explain the redirect to me and will it screw up my hundreds of pages that have been indexed? I mean if they do it, at least it can be on the same location to one of their other servers, that are working.

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Daniel Brock

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

I guess you have trouble understanding, but its crisis management at issue not down time over the past. When a host goes down, that's one thing, but now they are saying up to week offline. That is not good management and yes, they deserve a spanking in my view for that.

On the other hand, can you explain the redirect to me and will it screw up my hundreds of pages that have been indexed? I mean if they do it, at least it can be on the same location to one of their other servers, that are working.

Switching name server IPs like that can cause some serious trouble and would probably only make the issue worse... unless they are routing to dedicated DNS servers, which I doubt.

Sounds like they must colo and are waiting for the item to be shipped.

That's a tough situation to be in.

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Floyd Fisher

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

I have taken all the precautions in regards to backing up my websites and spreading my websites between different hosts, but am still helpless in the Westhost situation that has seen some of their servers fuse-out over the weekend. Many websites hosted with Westhost are still down.

Now I realize that accidents happen, like some wanker pulling a fire suppression switch thinking it was a light bulb or something, but a host needs to be trusted when the crap hits the fan and have some protocols in place for getting customers back up in a reasonable time. On that end, it is a monumental management collapse, not an employee gaff.

Every update they have generously posted has announced further delays with nothing they can do do speed things up. So I am stuck with several of my biggest sites on this server.

I score it >> horrible << for their management and crisis team. If you are currently looking for hosting, look elsewhere.

Oh please. Do you expect webhosts to survive a nuclear bomb too?

They have what 1,000 servers or more in the building that were lost? Do you realize what a monumental job restoring all that is, even with a disaster recovery plan?

Not to mention the fact it's probably not the only thing they gotta replace in there.

I know if mine went down like that, I'd be hunting for temp hosting to get back up on. It's either that or grab a Snickers, cause it's gonna be awhile.

Maybe you should take this as a hint to go on vacation?

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Marty S

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

Oh please. Do you expect webhosts to survive a nuclear bomb too?

They have what 1,000 servers or more in the building that were lost? Do you realize what a monumental job restoring all that is, even with a disaster recovery plan?

Not to mention the fact it's probably not the only thing they gotta replace in there.

I know if mine went down like that, I'd be hunting for temp hosting to get back up on. It's either that or grab a Snickers, cause it's gonna be awhile.

Maybe you should take this as a hint to go on vacation?

Dude a nuclear bomb? Seriously?

Well a vacation does sound good,

but no there was no explosion and only a small percentage of their servers are down, so your facts are all askew. Again, its crisis management at issue and no I haven't exp something like this over 10 years and probably 10 different hosts I do business with.

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Floyd Fisher

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

Dude a nuclear bomb? Seriously?

Well a vacation does sound good,

but no there was no explosion and only a small percentage of their servers are down, so your facts are all askew. Again, its crisis management at issue and no I haven't exp something like this over 10 years and probably 10 different hosts I do business with.

I've done network installs, so I know what kind of time it's going to take to get that stuff back up.

It's not just goto best buy and get a emachines, load it up and you're back up and running. There is a bit more to it than that, even if it's just a fraction of machines that went down.

The Planet (which is the webhost God Himself uses) had something similar happen, and IIRC, it took them at least a week to recover.

Take a chill pill before you say something we both will regret.

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Daniel Brock

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

Oh please. Do you expect webhosts to survive a nuclear bomb too?

They have what 1,000 servers or more in the building that were lost? Do you realize what a monumental job restoring all that is, even with a disaster recovery plan?

Not to mention the fact it's probably not the only thing they gotta replace in there.

I know if mine went down like that, I'd be hunting for temp hosting to get back up on. It's either that or grab a Snickers, cause it's gonna be awhile.

Maybe you should take this as a hint to go on vacation?

HOLY CRAP??

They lost 1000 servers???

OMG that would be devistating.

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Marty S 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Daniel Brock

HOLY CRAP??

They lost 1000 servers???

OMG that would be devistating.

Haha. No. The list of complete servers is here. Only a few are effected.

WestHost Inc - Network Status
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- Floyd Fisher 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Marty S
  
  Haha. No. The list of complete servers is here. Only a few are effected.
  
  WestHost Inc - Network Status
  
  Yeah, that's the Westhost stuff there. How many servers total in the datacenter were affected? Plus, what else went down?
  
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  Kirk Ward 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher
  
  Yeah, that's the Westhost stuff there. How many servers total in the datacenter were affected? Plus, what else went down?
  
  I was given the figure of approximately 70 total. Approx 35 each for shared and dedicated. Don't remember the actual split, but the total was just over 70.
  
  Didn't ask who their other clients were. Westhost probably wouldn't reveal that even if they knew.
  
  Mine have been up for over 24 hours. The datacenter is probably overbooking the remaining servers as Cron has been turned off for a few days to reduce server load.
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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

I have used WestHost for almost 13 years, ever since Chris started the company with e boxes in his apartment. In that time I have suffered less than 150 hours of down time. This downtime has occurred in two separate instances of approximately 72 hours each. That is better than 99.85% uptime.

I like them, and their 24 hour live telephone support is fantastic.

The datacenter that they contract with lost 70 shared and dedicated servers, approximately half each. I think the datacenter may hold 1,000 servers, but I would not be able to attest to that or comment on that.

The last estimate I made of WestHost capacity was that they had over 28,000 direct bill accounts, which does not include those managed by their resellers, of which I am a very small one.

Mud happens.

If the OP has taken proper precautions, they will have business interruption insurance in place, and will be able to recover any losses they are able to prove. This means showing documentation of income to the insurance company, probably from merchant account history. If they do not have that, then they "might" be able to make a claim against the datacenter as my information indicates it happened during a routine annual fire inspection mandated by the datacenters insurance company.

As an additional note, the actual damage was caused by the reaction to chemicals in a more environmentally friendly fire supression system. At this point I am thinking the datacenter needs to rethink their commitment to the "green" movement.

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Floyd Fisher

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

As an additional note, the actual damage was caused by the reaction to chemicals in a more environmentally friendly fire supression system. At this point I am thinking the datacenter needs to rethink their commitment to the "green" movement.

That has nothing to do with a committment to envrionmental friendliness. Halon is illegal, so what would you like them to use?

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

That has nothing to do with a committment to envrionmental friendliness. Halon is illegal, so what would you like them to use?

Have no idea. That's the only fire suppression gas I am aware of.

But, something that doesn't destroy the machinery micht be good. Used some sort of dry powder when I were in the restaurant business.

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Floyd Fisher

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

Have no idea. That's the only fire suppression gas I am aware of.

But, something that doesn't destroy the machinery micht be good. Used some sort of dry powder when I were in the restaurant business.

That's 'Purple K' powder, and it eats through electronics. CO2 has this tendency to freeze stuff, which isn't good either.

And water is just asking for trouble.

So.....got any better ideas?

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

That's 'Purple K' powder, and it eats through electronics. CO2 has this tendency to freeze stuff, which isn't good either.

And water is just asking for trouble.

So.....got any better ideas?

How about a really big vacuum cleaner to suck all the air out?

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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

How about a really big vacuum cleaner to suck all the air out?

Hmm...I wonder if the air could be sucked out without collapsing the building. Something would have to take it's place I would think.

How about a deoxygenator? It just takes the oxygen out of the air?

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Floyd Fisher

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

Hmm...I wonder if the air could be sucked out without collapsing the building. Something would have to take it's place I would think.

How about a deoxygenator? It just takes the oxygen out of the air?

Does such a device exist, and is it even semi cost-efficient?

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Floyd Fisher 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

How about a really big vacuum cleaner to suck all the air out?

Then you have a vacuum, and the building collapses in on itself...not good.
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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

OK, If I do so Dennis, could their current FAIL slow down the propagation in anyway? What makes this a little more difficult for me is that it was a Joomla! site, which yes I back-up every night, but the design and template would prb be all screwed up until I could get to it.

Something to consider though, thanks.

The DNS change will propagate fine without the current host. If it would be too much to upload your whole site, you could upload a placeholder page informing people what happened and when you'll be back online. You could also upload a few key pages, like an index and product pages. If all you can do is let people know your host is down, that's better than letting them think you went out of business, and I know that's what some will think based on my own experience.

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

That has nothing to do with a committment to envrionmental friendliness. Halon is illegal, so what would you like them to use?

I was under the impression that if you had a halon system prior to the Montreal Protocol of 1987 you were allowed to keep using it. Has that changed?

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Kirk Ward 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

That has nothing to do with a committment to envrionmental friendliness. Halon is illegal, so what would you like them to use?

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

I was under the impression that if you had a halon system prior to the Montreal Protocol of 1987 you were allowed to keep using it. Has that changed?

I would guess that 98.6% of all datacenters were built after 1987. But still, interesting fact.
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Floyd Fisher 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

I was under the impression that if you had a halon system prior to the Montreal Protocol of 1987 you were allowed to keep using it. Has that changed?

Question: When was the internet opened to the public?
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- Dennis Gaskill 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher
  
  Question: When was the internet opened to the public?
  
  I get that, probably not applicable in this case. But I know of one small insurance company who's mainframe computer room was turned into an server data center. Insurance company outgrew the old space, built a new building, sold old building which was a really nice set up for a data center. There are probably others...maybe more than you think.
  
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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

If one of my hosts (yes, I use several hosts) was going to be down a week I'd sign up for another hosting account somewhere and upload my site there, then go to my registrar and change the DNS pointers. Depending on the particulars of your site and if you have it backed up, you could be up and running as fast as a few hours. DNS changes, at least at my registrar, seem to propagate quite swiftly. (Actually I'd just upload to one of my other hosts but I'm assuming you only have one.)

If you want to stick with this host once they get their house back in order, you can always switch your site back to them. In the meantime, why stay out of business just because they are?

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Daniel Brock 14 years ago

I really dont think there is a web host in existance that could survive such an event without any down time.

If your whole datacenter gets f**ked, what more can you do?

Have a backup datacenter?

That would mean the back up datacenter would need 1000 spair servers laying around for the unlikely event that a whole entire datacenter goes down.

Take your $10.00/m cost and multiple it by about 5 to get the cost if you want something like that.
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Marty S 14 years ago

OK, If I do so Dennis, could their current FAIL slow down the propagation in anyway? What makes this a little more difficult for me is that it was a Joomla! site, which yes I back-up every night, but the design and template would prb be all screwed up until I could get to it.

Something to consider though, thanks.
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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

How about smaller rooms with fireproof walls and independent fire suppression systems?

How small a space can be considered cost effective to minimize damage and increase safety?

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mikkosant

14 years ago

Thanks for the heads up. Hostgator had been pretty good to me, but I'm definitely going to be diversifying my hosts this year.

I'm sorry to hear about your misfortune though.

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Marty S

14 years ago

Sadly, this nightmare is going into day 5, as I think I am on one of the few remaining servers to be resuscitated.

I was wondering if after being down for nearly a week, what kind of damage will have happened (ranking, indexing) with search engines not being able to crawl a site that gets updated on a regular basis, and

if there is any damage control that I might be able to do once back up?

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Dennis Gaskill 14 years ago

Originally Posted by Floyd Fisher

Does such a device exist, and is it even semi cost-efficient?

Don't know if there is such a thing, I might have came up with a concept for a new product as far as I know. Just running stuff up the flag pole for you to salute!
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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

Sadly, this nightmare is going into day 5, as I think I am on one of the few remaining servers to be resuscitated.

I was wondering if after being down for nearly a week, what kind of damage will have happened (ranking, indexing) with search engines not being able to crawl a site that gets updated on a regular basis, and

if there is any damage control that I might be able to do once back up?

Hi Marty,

I'm lucky in that I was only down three days, but I've also been wondering what I could do to ameliorate this type of problem in the future.

My plan is to (1) do full site backups and monitor for hourly or daily changes using a desktop based system to a local external hard drive, then (2) learn what I can about Rsync and start running mirror sites with a hosting company that uses a datacenter in another geographical part of the country, and then also (3) starting a program to migrate my hosting to multiple servers and datacenters.

I like WestHost, and for almost 13 years, they have been very good to me. But, this is twice in one year that a major interruption has occurred. I don't know how long they've been with this datacenter, but I am wondering if some changes may have taken place after Chris sold the company last year.

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Marty S

14 years ago

Thanks. I get daily MySQL backups of my site Joomla sites, so that part had already been taken care of. I was more interested in the marketing and customer service end of damage control.

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

Thanks. I get daily MySQL backups of my site Joomla sites, so that part had already been taken care of. I was more interested in the marketing and customer service end of damage control.

News announcement and (no pun intended) a "fire sale."

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Fraggler

14 years ago

It doesn't help you now but if your site is central to your business and customers rely on it for whatever you offer then you really should have a backup server yourself that you can point your domain to in the case of problems such as this. It really isn't Westhost's fault if you don't have a backup plan yourself.

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seobro

14 years ago

OK buy several small USB hard drives. Make many back ups. Keep them in places that are safe and secure. You can now get USB 1TB drives for approx $100. I like them because they are easy to store and not expensive.

Right now I am hosting my sites on seven servers. Each is in a separate geographic location and hosted by a different company. The chance of all seven going down, barring a nuclear war - well, it is near minimum.

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ARVolund

14 years ago

If you have backups of your sites why would you stay down for a week?

Get a server in another data center if you do not have one already.

Add your domains and upload your files.

Change the nameserver info at the domain registrar.

Total time less than a day and you are up and running.

Even if you did not have backup files you could load a basic site that gives people a way to contact you or an alternate way to place an order.

When the Gnax datacenter in Atlanta had their main router problem a few months ago most of our servers were down for hours along with half the other servers in the datacenter. By the time they came back up I had already finished loading backups of all the sites on the new server and was ready to start changing nameserver info if they did not come up that afternoon. It was a seriously bad Monday but if they had not recovered Tuesday would have been OK.

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by ARVolund

If you have backups of your sites why would you stay down for a week?.

Easy to say if all you are doing is selling simple downloadable IM type products without complicated scripts and server setups. And, if your your scripts don't require professional install and license transfers.

ROFLMAO

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Fraggler

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

Easy to say if all you are doing is selling simple downloadable IM type products without complicated scripts and server setups. And, if your your scripts don't require professional install and license transfers.

ROFLMAO

If it can be installed once it can be installed twice. If you can afford to have your business down for days then that is your choice. Either pay for two licences or take the gamble. Just don't blame the data centre or host if something happens. Like he said, you can even use the backup host to post up a temporay site informing customers of the problem.

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Fraggler

If it can be installed once it can be installed twice. If you can afford to have your business down for days then that is your choice. Either pay for two licences or take the gamble. Just don't blame the data centre or host if something happens. Like he said, you can even use the backup host to post up a temporay site informing customers of the problem.

I agree totally. I don't blame the host, and I'm not upset with the datacenter. Like has been mentioned here before ... mud happens. I was distracted and took a gamble.

It wasn't an expensive gamble fortunately, and my subscribers seem to be loyal enough that a three day outage can be tolerated. And, when the high end subscription site came back up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a larger than expected influx of subscriptions. Go figure.

My sites have some complicated and custom built scripts, also some that I am migrating away from because I got into a spitting contest with the developer and getting a second license is not in my vocabulary, since I am migrating away from the first.

Short story, there were choices that I made and I live with that.

I made the comment because it sounded the poster was being simplistic in their assumption that there was a simple answer.
.

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Marty S 14 years ago

Yeah if my site was a straight up HTML business, I probably would have done that, in spite of Westhost dragging me along with no real time frame until half way through the fiasco.

Then when I learned how long it would be from that point, well I have to weigh the work required to reinstall and recreate a rather complicated Joomla template and database.
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mojojuju

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

Easy to say if all you are doing is selling simple downloadable IM type products without complicated scripts and server setups. And, if your your scripts don't require professional install and license transfers.

ROFLMAO

As far as scripts go, regardless of their complexity or whether or not they have to be installed by professionals, most decent web hosting control panels can make perfect backups of all of your virtual hosts and their file systems.

And as far as server setups, just make sure to keep backups of your config files, like those for Apache, MySQL, etc. Also keep lists of software installed like Apache modules and stuff.

Basically everything can be backed up and restored.

Why would you need a license transfer for the scripts? Are they not licensed per domain?

Last year, I went through a disaster with the Vaserv fiasco, I lost a lot of data, but now I'm better prepared. These things are learning experiences.

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by mojojuju

These things are learning experiences.

I absolutely agree. Learned some the last ime. Even more this time. And I've learned a whole lot more from this thread.

BTW - Is the mutton in Potemkin Village as delicious as I remember?

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mojojuju

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Kirk Ward

I absolutely agree. Learned some the last ime. Even more this time. And I've learned a whole lot more from this thread.

BTW - Is the mutton in Potemkin Village as delicious as I remember?

Actually it's not really mutton. It's made from seasoned pork byproducts further enhanced by soaking in a proprietary broth/MSG mixture. I'm glad you liked it though.

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:)

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Kirk Ward

14 years ago

Originally Posted by mojojuju

Actually it's not really mutton. It's made from seasoned pork byproducts further enhanced by soaking in a proprietary broth/MSG mixture. I'm glad you liked it though.

That explains a lot about the sheep and the Empress.

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"We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

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sbucciarel

Banned 14 years ago

If you have a backup, as you say you do, point the nameservers at a new host and get it up and running on a different host.

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Kirk Ward 14 years ago

Originally Posted by sbucciarel

If you have a backup, as you say you do, point the nameservers at a new host and get it up and running on a different host.

I noted previously in the thread that I'm up and running. Marty has noted that his is pretty complicated. I'm assuming he is making a business decision.

KW
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"We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice."

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Dennis Gaskill

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Marty S

Yeah if my site was a straight up HTML business, I probably would have done that, in spite of Westhost dragging me along with no real time frame until half way through the fiasco.

Then when I learned how long it would be from that point, well I have to weigh the work required to reinstall and recreate a rather complicated Joomla template and database.

I hope for your sake your host's backups are good, since you seem to be counting on that. You should know though, that a lot of times they are not for one reason or another.

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Jeremy Morgan

14 years ago

I have to disagree with many of you, and say that a webhost should have some sort of backup plan when we're talking about a week of downtime. That is excessive in my opinion.

That being said you have to exercise due diligence yourself if you're running a business dependent on this. I have had this happen to me a couple times in the past, and I was able redirect everything to another site in about 24 hours. My stuff was a week old (weekly backups) but I'd rather have a week old site up than no site at all.

What it comes down to is, you need to either pay more for a hosting service with a solid backup plan in place (this is why people pay so much for Rackspace hosting) or have your own set of backup plans, or both.

You never can be too careful, and stuff like this happens more than you think.

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Marty S

14 years ago

Originally Posted by Dennis Gaskill

I hope for your sake your host's backups are good, since you seem to be counting on that. You should know though, that a lot of times they are not for one reason or another.

Yeah, they seem rather confident of that at least.

Originally Posted by Jeremy Morgan

I have to disagree with many of you, and say that a webhost should have some sort of backup plan when we're talking about a week of downtime. That is excessive in my opinion.

I agree with that and feel to a large degree this is a management FAIL more than just an obscure accident. On the other hand, I now think they will be better prepared than most other hosts for such random meteors, so I have no plans to move any site I host with them.