OUTAGE: caliber (70.87.90.194)

#1 05-11-2007, 08:50 AM

caliber.websitewelcome.com (70.87.90.194) is currently down, as it is having some problems with its hard disks.

We're working with our dedicated technicians at ThePlanet to swap these servers with brand new ones. Once this is done, all customers on these servers will be upgraded to the new packages listed here: http://www.hostgator.com/resellers.shtml

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this. Rest assured that we are working as quickly as possible on getting this issue resolved. We will continue to keep you updated on our progress using this topic.

Serra · #2 05-11-2007, 09:21 AM

Wow, resellers are taking a beating this week!

bazonic · #3 05-11-2007, 11:01 AM

I'm assuming this would be causing my email issues?

For the last 3 days I have had problems sending and receiving email. I can usually send/receive fine late at night or early morning, then during the day I cannot send or receive for hours at time. I have tested with gmail and hotmail accounts.

I am not getting NDRs but once in a while I will get a bunch of emails at once that were sent hours or days ago. Sending is the same way - I'll check for emails I sent to myself and they don't show up for hours or days. There seems to be no consistency to the issue, except that things seem to work better late at night. I've tried webmail too and the same thing happens (love the new wewbmail interfce).

Not sure if the problem is fixed, but my domain is up and I'm still having issues. Have not received or been able to send mail since 6 am central time.

brushfire · #4 05-11-2007, 11:08 AM

Same problem here. Support indicated that it's still being worked on.

SaidaVirtual · #5 05-11-2007, 12:29 PM

Same problem. Im a little worried because I will start losing some clients because of that.

Serra · #6 05-11-2007, 12:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bazonic

I am not getting NDRs but once in a while I will get a bunch of emails at once that were sent hours or days ago. Sending is the same way - I'll check for emails I sent to myself and they don't show up for hours or days. There seems to be no consistency to the issue, except that things seem to work better late at night. I've tried webmail too and the same thing happens (love the new wewbmail interfce).

Systems that send emails often hold emails and try to resend them on a progressive scale. 1 hours, 2 hours, 4 hours, 8 hours, 1 day, 2, days, 4 days. That means that emails could be showing up as long as four days after they were sent. The longer the outage, the more weird email delivery becomes.

brushfire · #7 05-11-2007, 01:25 PM

I'm getting conflicting information now. I filed a ticket earlier, then midday I contacted online support.

Online support told me to look here for the update and that Caliber was essentially dying and we would all be moved to a new server once it was up and running.

Just now I received a response to my ticket which reads:

Quote:

Hello,
Right now, due to the RAID card swap, the load on the server is higher than normal. Once the load hits 15, I believe, Exim will stop delivering mail in order to stop from further increasing the load.

So are we switching servers or no? Is this load problem going to be ongoing, 'cuz if it is, I need to move my clients to a new host, I think....

::sigh::

kmaw · #8 05-11-2007, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brushfire

So are we switching servers or no?

Pay attention to this thread... it's coming right from the horse's mouth...

brushfire · #9 05-11-2007, 01:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kmaw

Pay attention to this thread... it's coming right from the horse's mouth...

Well, I am paying attention to this thread, but as I said, I'm getting conflicting information. I'm just trying to provide the best information I can to my clients, who are starting to get testy.

kmaw · #10 05-11-2007, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brushfire

Well, I am paying attention to this thread, but as I said, I'm getting conflicting information. I'm just trying to provide the best information I can to my clients, who are starting to get testy.

Right... what I meant is to ignore support's responses, these updates are coming straight from the top -- Brent.

brushfire · #11 05-11-2007, 01:47 PM

Oh, ok. Sorry Brent, I've listened to so many testy phone calls today that I misread the tone of your post as:

"Don't be a doofus: read the stupid thread ya ding-a-ling!"

Just one of those days!

jrarce · #12 05-11-2007, 02:41 PM

Maybe the most importante question is WHEN we could tell our clients everything will be fixed...

gtgeorge · #13 05-11-2007, 02:54 PM

How about "Our server techs are working on this to have it resolved as quickly as possible, we do not have an ETA at this time due to all hands are working to get things back up" ?

kmaw · #14 05-11-2007, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jrarce

Maybe the most importante question is WHEN we could tell our clients everything will be fixed...

You're more than likely to piss people off more when you start giving ETAs, because technical things don't usually turn out as planned or as they should... people just end up getting more pissed off because it turns into 'you said it'd be fixed by then...' this includes HG dealing with their customers too.

George has the best suggestion above there...

Serra · #15 05-11-2007, 07:13 PM

I agree with everyone's take on what to tell customers. You can't give them an ETA, even if it was your own server sitting in your basement, you still wouldn't be able to give them an ETA... it's just not possible.

Customers should understand that they are using a host that is using reseller hosting. This is the lowest grade of hosting, to be honest. They are likely all paying discount prices. $7 or $8 a month doesn't buy bullet proof hosting. If they are paying more, they are being ripped off and that isn't Hostgator's fault.

If you plan to offer quality hosting to your customers, reseller hosting is a stepping stone to real hosting, which is done through a Hostgator dedicated box, where its just you and your customers. Yes, hard drives still fail, but restores are much faster and you are in total control of when/what and how it is done, so there is no guess work.

Hostgator offers quality hosting services for resellers, but a Yugo is still a Yugo, even if you buy it at a Benz dealership.

Quote:

Originally Posted by brushfire

I'm getting conflicting information now. I filed a ticket earlier, then midday I contacted online support.

Yea, if you want bull crap answer, chat support will pile them out all day long. Stop using chat support for important questions, you are just screwing yourself.

bazonic · #16 05-11-2007, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serra

Customers should understand that they are using a host that is using reseller hosting. This is the lowest grade of hosting, to be honest. They are likely all paying discount prices. $7 or $8 a month doesn't buy bullet proof hosting. If they are paying more, they are being ripped off and that isn't Hostgator's fault.

If you plan to offer quality hosting to your customers, reseller hosting is a stepping stone to real hosting, which is done through a Hostgator dedicated box, where its just you and your customers. Yes, hard drives still fail, but restores are much faster and you are in total control of when/what and how it is done, so there is no guess work.

Hostgator offers quality hosting services for resellers, but a Yugo is still a Yugo, even if you buy it at a Benz dealership.

What a horrible attitude and analogy. The Yugo isn't going to go as fast or smell as nice, we knew that coming into this, but there is still an expectation that it will go from point A to point B while it is under warranty, and if it does break down it will be fixed in a reasonable amount of time. When I signed up for Host Gator I did so with the expectation that I would be able to send and receive email on a consistent basis. Just because it is inexpensive does not mean it shouldn't work.

Yes hard drives fail, but it doesn't take 3 days to reimage a RAID array or swing everything to another server. If we take your view, HG should just come out and say, "sign up now and maybe it will work and maybe it won't, and maybe we will get back to you." That's not what we were sold.

I tell my clients that it isn't going to be blazing, and they're ok with that. But this is ridiculous, and yes, it is HGs fault that me and my clients haven't had steady mail for three days.

brushfire · #17 05-11-2007, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serra

Yea, if you want bull crap answer, chat support will pile them out all day long. Stop using chat support for important questions, you are just screwing yourself.

Chat support actually gave me the CORRECT answer. It was the response to my support ticket that was, apparently, crap. I expect better than that, frankly, cheap reseller hosting or not. If HG isn't going to give me the correct answer to my support ticket, then they should just abandon the ticket system.

I understand that reseller hosting isn't of the quality of dedicated hosting. Sorry that we can't all afford that. But if you're going to offer reseller hosting you should at least provide correct information rather than bullshit, imo.

gtgeorge · #18 05-11-2007, 09:29 PM

It is understood that not everyone can afford more than reseller accounts. Most of us were resellers before dedicated and understood the risks involved. One of the main reasons to go dedicated as soon as possible.

Just keep in mind whether shared, reseller or dedicated, problems will happen and I believe HG one of the quickest to fix what breaks. If you doubt it, try another and I am confident you would agree and probably be back. I never found the level of service anywhere else.

Serra · #19 05-11-2007, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brushfire

I understand that reseller hosting isn't of the quality of dedicated hosting. Sorry that we can't all afford that. But if you're going to offer reseller hosting you should at least provide correct information rather than bullshit, imo.

Reseller hosting isn't lower quality... its just not as good as dedicated, they are all about the same quality. When I say that dedicated reselling is better, I'm saying it is better for resellers because it offers more control and less interaction with other customers.

The level of control that the dedicated can give, makes it worth it. If you are reselling and you have customers who depend on you (meaning businesses and stuff) then you can't really afford not to go dedicated. If you are brand new, it will take some time to get to the level where you can afford it money wise, but you should be aiming for that as a goal. One person in one of today's three restore threads said they had 50 customers down. That is well past the point where they should be dedicated. You should be able to afford it after 30 customers.

kmaw · #20 05-11-2007, 09:42 PM

If you want the reliability of a dedicated server, but not pay the price and are fine with lacking some of the settings, I'm sure there are lots of people in the dedicated forum that would love to have you sign up as a reseller under them...

brushfire · #21 05-11-2007, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Serra

Reseller hosting isn't lower quality... its just not as good as dedicated, they are all about the same quality.

Oy! I'm not trying to argue symantics here, I'm just saying that regardless of whether I have reseller or dedicated hosting, I'd like to get reasonably accurate and timely responses from support. That's all. I don't think that's really too much to ask. It has nothing to do with whether I should upgrade to dedicated hosting.

(Frankly, if I can't get accurate information at one level, honestly, what's to make me think that shelling out more money is going to improve that?

Yes, I know that you are buying alot more than support when you step up to dedicated. That's not the point. I simply was saying that I wanted to know what was going on with this particular problem. That's it.)

And there still hasn't been any word here on what the status is since the initial post at 10am. "We're still working on it" would be nice, just so that those of us on caliber know we haven't been forgotten.

gtgeorge · #22 05-12-2007, 05:39 AM

Yes it is quite frustrating not knowing what is being done to fix a problem or what the problem actually was most of the time as we had the same problems. For the sake of keeping our sanity, I gave up and just trusted HG to fix things and accepted I usually would not get a straignt answer as those that know the answer are quick to move on to the next problem. Also shifts change and you end up with various techs answering your questions.

In HG's defense though, at least it gets fixed and it seems they are getting a little better at informing customers. It would be nice to get more and accurate info, but as long as it gets fixed is the most important part!

SaidaVirtual · #23 05-12-2007, 06:17 AM

I just want to know one thing, how log take to migrate a full server? It's the third day and I cannot even access the accounts to migrato to anywhere else. That's the biggest problem, some clients of mine just want their account back to migrate to another server and right now the server still unaccessable.

Duskrider · #24 05-12-2007, 02:08 PM

Any update on this? The only person's accounts I'm hosting is my own, so it's not like I have a bunch of customers complaining, but it still affects my own sites.

For me this is only a minor inconvenience... email problems, sites up and down over the last few days... but not a huge impact to me. I couldn't imagine what it's like for people who have a fair bit of customers on this box. I understand that things take time and working with computer and servers can be unpredictable, but us Caliber folks haven't heard anything from anyone official since the start of this thread.

Just asking for an update.

Thanks.

***GatorDaveC*** · #25 05-13-2007, 08:10 AM

Hello,
The rsync is still in progress on the caliber server. The IO on the drive is pretty high, but it doesn't look like the drive is showing any sectors failing at this time, which means all of the data will be intact.

I am trying to keep someone monitoring this server at all times to make sure the IO stays as low as possible to increase the speed of the transfer.