Completely dissatisfied with (nearly) EVERYTHING

[dave-dave]

To whom it may concern,
I am posting here to give a review on the lousy service I have been getting from hostgator. I have loved hostgator, recommended it to anyone looking for a host and have generally been pleased with the service until recently.

I started three months ago on gator71 I believe, the server loads went up and I emailed support about it and got an answer similar to this: "There is nothing wrong with the servers, it's normal for the server load to be in the 30s". I ignored it and the server load went down.

Today, at 5:05 PM CST, the server load is at 47.
The load has gotten to 69 today, I have a screen shot. In fact, I have about 10 screen shots over a period of time within the last hour showing the server load, as high as 69, then dipping to 4, then up to 50. The shared server I am on is bipolar. And hostgator is denying it.

I called support, after 12 minutes on hold, I was told that 37 is a perfectly normal server load, it's normal for spamd a, ftpd, and exim are perfectly fine to be down and its not affecting anything. I didn't want to fight with him so I hung up (and took another screen shot).

Three minutes after hanging up pop went down, port 110 started timing out.

I started a live chat session, here are some highlights (Please don't get mad at Nick M, he did a fine job on helping me and he's the only technician I don't want to yell at).

Dave: What is considered a high server load?
Dave: over 20?
Nick M.: 10
Nick M.: over 10

Dave: I can't retrieve mail, it has worked an hour ago, and our small business uses your mail server as our primary communication system
Dave: 39.93 load
Nick M.: You're actually second from the top on overloaded servers right now
Nick M.: IMAP and POP3 went down
Nick M.: so no email

Nick M.: but the server is being rebooted
Nick M.: How long has this been going on for you?

Nick M.: but you're on the top of our overloaded server
Nick M.: list

Dave: I'm seeing a load of 69
Nick M.: that's right

Here's a different's rep. take:

Joseph V.: Yep, anything that is stressing the server above 10% is considered a high load to us
Dave: is there a server load number
Dave: for example, 10?
Joseph V.: Hold up let me ask
Dave: ok
Dave: thanks
Joseph V.: Ah okay, 8 or higher
Dave: okay, thanks
Joseph V.: No problem

Thanks Nick M for ironing out all those lies I've been fed in the last hour. Because I'm pretty darn sure I've seen numerous times on various forums that above 15 is a bad server load. And I'm pretty sure that if exim, spamd, and ftpd didn't matter, they wouldn't be being monitored by cpanel. And I'm almost certain that everything IS NOT FINE when red lights are flashing.

Go ahead and tell me everything's okay now, as I post this, it's not. And if I still was within the 45 day money back guarantee period, you can be pretty sure that I wouldn't still be here right now.

Oh great, cpanel's timing out again.

Try proof6, it has the 69 load

Here's the proof:
AEX-2716498
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof2.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof3.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof4.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof5.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof6.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof7.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof8.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof9.png


I do realize I'm being harsh here, but when it's a server that holds your business website and 10 people's email, and two other accounts, you sort of, kind of, have to be harsh.

And this isn't the 1st time - sorry hostgator, no sympathy this time.

Hi,

I looked over quite a few of your tickets, and was not able to find anyone saying a load of 30 was "normal" and "OK". What ticket number was that?

I don't see anyone lying to you either; rather, it sounds like the chat techs (who do not actively monitor the servers as part of their job description) were not sure what load level triggers a warning. Dangerous loads differ depending on the number of processors; a quad-processor might very well be able to handle a load of 20 without much noticeable slowdown, for example. We start looking at servers if they exceed a load of 10.

Nobody is trying to lie to you about anything.

As far as load, I'm sure there was a spike. However, at this very second, here are the current numbers on that server:

top - 18:17:09 up 26 days, 19:41, 1 user, load average: 4.85, 4.05, 6.91
Tasks: 219 total, 2 running, 214 sleeping, 0 stopped, 3 zombie
Cpu(s): 5.3% us, 7.8% sy, 24.7% ni, 12.9% id, 49.0% wa, 0.2% hi, 0.2% si
Mem: 4153244k total, 3980924k used, 172320k free, 130988k buffers
Swap: 6289408k total, 76872k used, 6212536k free, 2788772k cached

I just saw it spike up again out of nowhere, but happened to be on the server at the time. Core issue addressed in: AHM-2716787 (not your ticket). Again, nobody is lying to you. If you have a ticket where you feel someone lied to you, please provide those ticket numbers and I will review them.

[dave-dave]

Okay, let me clear something up,
Someone did lie. It was over the phone.
I cannot remember the name but I got directed to someone who told me that a 37 load was fine. Another person, told me that it was okay that ftpd and spamd were down.

As of right now, MySQL is down.

See these:
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof10.png
http://www.hyperwebnetwork.com/proof11.png

You need to admit that you're not handling this issue correctly.
Thank you for fixing the server load, but every time the load goes down, I watch it climb again.
Over the course of 2 hours:

1. mysql has been down
2. pop has been down
3. spamd has been down
4. eximstats have been down (still down)
5. ftpd has been down
6. The server load has been as high as 69

MySQL was restarted after the load was driven up by a user going crazy with SQL queries, and has been up for at least 15 minutes since the restart. It would be more effective for you to communicate through your ticket on the issue.

[root@gator71 /var/log]# date
Tue Jun 10 18:37:00 CDT 2008
[root@gator71 /var/log]# mysql
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 14569
Server version: 5.0.45-community MySQL Community Edition (GPL)

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE '%uptime%';
+---------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------------------+-------+
| Uptime | 1021 |
| Uptime_since_flush_status | 1021 |
+---------------------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> quit

[dave-dave]

Originally Posted by GatorJamyn

MySQL was restarted after the load was driven up, and has been up for 15 minutes. It would be more effective for you to communicate through your ticket on the issue.


mysql> SHOW STATUS LIKE '%uptime%';
+---------------------------+-------+
| Variable_name | Value |
+---------------------------+-------+
| Uptime | 903 |
| Uptime_since_flush_status | 903 |
+---------------------------+-------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Actually, I would have to disagree. Calling gives me number 14 in line. And you guys on the forum respond much quicker. My last ticket took over 2.5 hours to be responded too. I'm just voicing my opinion. Every thing's been down, I've been told numerous answers that contradicted each other and most importantly, I watched a server load climb from 4 to 69 while being told by a phone rep. that there was nothing wrong, that it was just a normal traffic spike.

[GatorDaveC]

Hello,
I'm sorry about all of the problems you have had recently. I just ran into this forum post as I was about to head to bed actually.

I just took a look on the server, and noticed a couple of users that are clearly abusing the resources of the server. Two users were abusing SQL, the other was using large amounts of ram.

If there are still load problems on the server, PM me and I'll make a quick process dump script to constantly monitor that one server per process.

[dave-dave]

Originally Posted by GatorDaveC

Hello,
I'm sorry about all of the problems you have had recently. I just ran into this forum post as I was about to head to bed actually.

I just took a look on the server, and noticed a couple of users that are clearly abusing the resources of the server. Two users were abusing SQL, the other was using large amounts of ram.

If there are still load problems on the server, PM me and I'll make a quick process dump script to constantly monitor that one server per process.

Thank you very much for looking at this. I hope that those users were suspended as I'm sure the server load should not fluctuate constantly at such dramatic levels (i.e. from 4 to 69 to 37 in roughly 5 minutes). Thanks for your help, I received an email notice from two monitors that my site was down for 6 minutes (not including pop, mysql, ftpd, spamd, exim). That was earlier today. I'll stick with hostgator. I'd give it an 8/10 in my book. I just hope you understand that when issues occur, I don't necessarily like to be told that there's nothing wrong when the server load is 37 and climbing, when exim, ftpd, and spamd are down and when cpanel loads in 3 minutes - I was told by a live chat rep. when I requested help because Fantastico kept timing out that there was a load and that it was settling down.

Thanks for your help, just try to get everyone in the support area on the same track and I hope you mean it sincerely when you say that you're monitoring every server 24/7 so that I don't feel like I have to do your job. I'm sure the admins were looking at it when I called in, but I just don't know any more.

I'm not ready to mark this as resolved, but I will stay with hostgator. Thanks for the help, sorry this post was a bit more than a review, it was a rant/problem that needed to be fixed/review mixed in together.

[dave-dave]

Just want to update this forum. My server load has been below 2 for two days now. I think the problem's solved. Sorry about my attitude on this forum.

Could a staff member change the negative logo to a green one and mark this as resolved?

Thanks.

[GatorDaveC]

Hello,
We do have our Admins monitoring servers 24/7. There is a monitor that all of our admins should constantly be looking at while they are working. One of the reasons why they are given 3 computers monitors to work with, is so they can have one of them watching servers.

If you see high load for an unacceptable amount of time. Send me a PM with the time the server was having problems, and I'll take a look at the logs for you, and talk to the people working on that shift.

I've changed the icon to positive, and have given you a 1 month credit since I believe the negative post could have been prevented if the server was looked into.

[dave-dave]

Thank you very much. Glad this got resolved.