Allpar serious downtime
As you might have noticed, the site has gone down for LONG periods of time. This is just about the most aggravating thing that can happen to a webmaster, and it’s been happening despite assurances like:
“We apologize for this, there was emergency hardware replacement which took place on our edge routers, this issue is now resolved. Typically we like to send out a notice prior to maintenance, however the nature of the issue which was discovered require immediate attention to prevent a larger issue as the day went on. … We certainly have the reliability of the service in mind when such things are performed and I can assure you that at this point there should not be any reason for further service disruption stemming from this.”
And then the next day, we get a 60-minute outage during the busiest part of the day.
And of course the nice people at Hostrocket now have voice-over-IP so the phones go down along with their service. And their site goes down, too. No, they don’t have a $60/year account somewhere else “just in case.”
I am considering failover possibilities, including going to managed DNS via a service like EasyDNS, where I can quickly repoint the IP address to a backup server at 1and1. At the moment the DNS system is based on the server itself which seemed to make sense (single point of failure instead of two) but that doesn’t make sense now. The problem with this is caching; it can take up to 20 minutes for the IP address to change. Still, that’s better than an hour or, if Hostrocket folds up their tents without warning (some of us had this experience in the past), a few days.
The backup site can’t be mirrored effectively wtih the forums and all, but it can provide a “90%” solution. If I rented a second dedicated server just for these times, it would be easier than using a 1and1 VPS - there’s be more bandwidth and such for daily mirroring.
Or I could just get a better hosting service. That’s really the best solution. So I’m taking recommendations now. We are currently paying about $245 for a setup with 700 GB transfer limit, 80 GB hard drive, 4 GB RAM, 2.8 GHz dual-core Xeon processor, daily backup to hard drive array, and WHM/Cpanel. That includes tech support, supposedly. If you know of something really reliable and reputable, let me know.
Like Chrysler, get a Chinese Hosting Service…LOL
just kidding Dave i apologize I couldn´t resist.
Good luck on That u hear?
DO NOT use 1and1! These folks do not support their customers. Their tech support is BAD. Stay away!
Find a web hosting services that handles failover for you. I am sure any good web hosting services can offer that. If not find another web hosting service.
As an alternative I’m seriously considering rackspace.com - they claim 100% uptime. Any comments?
…or datapipe.
When I checked rackspace, they were mucho expensive. But in return it did sound like they provide outstanding service. Maybe you get what you pay for?
My own host was out for a bit over an hour last week, and for 2.5 hours a month or so ago. It was very aggravating. But I could get them on the phone. There have been a couple of other brief outages in the past ten months. No idea how this compares to others. At some point I’ll probably have to transition to someone more dependable.
They are indeed expensive. And as you say the service is suppsoed to be the return. We’re looking at over $500/month as opposed to over $200/month.
As a network administrator, I have had really good luck with Aberdeen servers and Dell servers. From a maximum uptime perspective with minimal cost I would look at something along the lines of your current setup although with a bigger chassis that can handle 6-10 drives in a RAID 10 configuration. If you want something REALLY robust go for something like I just talked about, only get two of them and run them in a clustered configuration. Anything can be done, the only limit is your budget.
My last comment was assuming you wanted to do your own web hosting. Using another host, I have no idea.
I don’t want to do my own…! The current setup is great though I’d now move to a SCSI HD (well, two, as RAID 1). The host however has been going down periodically.
We use Rackspace for some remote hosting at the office - I highly recommend them.
Expensive? Yes.
Worth it? HELL YES
You get what you pay for, and Rackspace delivers as advertised.
At the moment I’m thinking about Liquidweb which comes pretty well recommend and has considerable redundancy. Cost IS a factor and Rackspace is about $200/month more for similar equipment (which is well over $500/month) and that doesn’t even include the spare drive for backup, offsite backup, or a better SLA for hardware replacement.