How to Monitor Site Uptime to Guarantee Good Service by Hostgator

pjtoca · #1 03-16-2007, 08:54 AM

Recently, I have had experienced several unannouced outages of my site hosted at hostgator. i am looking for a way to monitor the durations and times of outages that are more accurate than my current method of documentation.

currently, i employ a script running a cron job from another site hosted on another server that probes the site every 30 minutes (for example). the script records connection status as well as server cpu load and days since the server had been last reset.

i found this method unsatisfactory as there had been repeated instances which i confirmed with hostgator when my site went offline (not because of my site issues) and the server/site had to be reset to bring my site back up. yet, after such instances, the server stats continued to show stats as if the server was never reset.

i found this problematic as i currently have no way to document the true site uptime for my site hosted on a shared hosting at hostgator. the terms of service at hostgator guarantees a 99.9% uptime, and yet i have not been provided with a reliable method to test/document the guarantee.

i believe hostgator to be a reputable hosting service and a company that offers its customer reliable service. as such, i like to know if hostgator can also provide an easy way for the customer to ensure that such service has been reliably provided.

can hostgator kindly respond to this?

Serra · #2 03-16-2007, 09:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pjtoca

the terms of service at hostgator guarantees a 99.9% uptime

Technically, Hostgator guarantees 99.9% uptime, not 99.9% availability, which are actually different. The outages you've described don't seem to be covered in the 99.9% uptime guarantee, as the server was techincally, not down.

In addition, Hostgator doesn't honor uptime guarantees based on external monitoring. In other words, you can't use your own monitoring as proof of downtime to claim a refund. You must report downtime using a trouble ticket and then Hostgator will determine if there was downtime. If there was downtime and it put you below the 99.9% limit, then you will be allowed to request a refund.

In other words, you aren't going to be getting that many refunds and those you do get will take far more work than the financial gain you will see from the refund.

You will be best off documenting any major outages and requesting refunds based on those, which will be few and far between.

Also, remember that network availability, website problems with scripts, slow response time and things like that are not covered in the guarantee, so that covers MOST of the downtime that sites see. Uptime based outages are rare, that is why they can offer the guarantee.

That is spelled out here:

Quote:

Originally Posted by TOS

9b.) Uptime Guarantee
If your shared / reseller server has a physical downtime that is not within the 99.9% uptime you may receive one month of credit on your account. Approval of the credit is at the discretion of HostGator dependant upon justification provided. Third party monitoring service reports may not be used for justification due to a variety of factors including the monitor's network capacity/transit availability. The uptime of the server is defined as the reported uptime from the operating system of the server which may differ from the uptime reported by individual services. To request a credit, please contact sales@hostgator.com with justification. All requests must be made in writing via email. Uptime guarantees only apply to shared / reseller solutions. Dedicated servers are covered by a network guarantee in which the credit is prorated for the amount of time the server is down which is not related to our uptime guarantee.

(My red bolding)

Despite what it says there, you must have your downtime logged in trouble tickets and send those tickets as proof of downtime to sales. I'm sure you can do it without the trouble tickets, but I doubt that it will actually work as well.

vtrain · #3 03-16-2007, 10:05 AM

The first thing I did when I noticed downtime was ask live chat to acknowledge it. This is the best use I ever had to live chat.

If they acknowledge then they cannot say it's a network problem on our part. Then I save the chat on a mail message. If the downtime was bigger then 30 minutes I opened a ticket.

If in the end of the month the mail + tickets exceed the uptime guarantee.. then asked for refund.

Never used more automation then this...

Vtrain