Server reliability reports

HG advertises 99.9% uptime. I've sat here for the past hour (a tad more) now watching all of my domains and databases be either completely down or too slow to be worth anything. And as I watch, imagining all the emails that are bouncing as undeliverable, all I have been able to get out of the staff is 'they are doing maintenance on the server'.

So that got me wondering how reliable the server I'm on really is. I haven't been able to find any announcements about this being a scheduled maintenance. I can't find any postings about "we're experiencing difficulties and expect to have it bixed by...." type of stuff. And I certainly can't find any logs/counters/indicators that can reassure me at all that the uptime average is anywhere near 99.9%.

So, now, as I switch over to another window, it looks like my domains are all up and healthy again. Good job HG Server Support. Updates take a while. Accomplishing major updates in an hour certainly requires good planning and knowledgeable staff. (all that is meant very seriously)

Glad to know I won't see so much as a hickup in the server for the next (I'll round down to an hour) 41.666666 days. (that was not meant seriously)

It would be nice to have some better communication when things like this are happening though. Certainly would have saved your on-line support staff from having to deal with me, which I KNOW they would have appreciated.

Jim

[MachineDog]

Which server? They had infact been doing some maintenace on a few dozen servers.

[twin-dad]

Best to monitor things yourself, IMO.

You can download HostAlive from http://www.hostalive.net/hostalive.html and install this freeware on your local machine so it monitors at least ports 21, 25, 53, 80, 110, 143, 443, 993, 995 and 6666. It will monitor each domain every N minutes, log any errors, and alert you any number of ways as well.

It isn't open source and it does have some idiosynchracies, but on the whole it's worth your time.

At least with your own remote monitors running, you know when HG's box is inaccessible or down. I would not depend on HG to alert you about such things.

HTH,

Sean

if you have the skills, I would suggest something like big brother

http://www.bb4.org/