hosting365.ie

johnl · Staff Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 60

We are going to attempt a wholesale replacement of Win1 and Win3 tonight, by building two replacement servers, taking the originals offline, pushing hsphere configuration to the new servers, uploading all the web pages etc. and then uploading the databases still on win1.

We'll be tackling win1 first (most likely around 22:00), and then if that is quick and successful, we intend starting on win3 around 02:00 or so, hoping to be finished by 05:00.

These servers will be down for that period of time. It is expected that some configuration will be lost; password protects, specific application .ini settings, but we'll try keep as much as we can, and the old disks will be around for reference for a few weeks.

Hopefully this will be the end of our windows troubles for the near future. If the procedure goes well, we'll try and proactively reinstall all windows servers every six months or so.

john

johnl · Staff Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 60

It seems it's not as easy as we'ed hoped. The replacement win1 server can't be installed; we are getting errors during the HSphere (the shared hosting software) install procedure, and cannot work around them (the error shouldn't happen, and no logs are generated).

The replacement win3 server did install, however when we plugged in the old win3 hard drive to the new box, the new Windows installation just died, and could not be restored from a Windows 2000 rescue CD.

After eight hours, we'll give up, and try again tomorrow evening.

John

johnl · Staff Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 60

We are making a second attempt to rebuild win1 and win3 this evening. These servers will be out of commission during the move.

John

johnl · Staff Joined: 06 Feb 2003 Posts: 60

OK, the rebuild of Win1 has yet again been hampered by it's SQL installation. We know what we have to do, but it'll take a little longer than we have before starting of business hours again.

On the plus side, win3 is nearly rebuilt (currently restoring the user information), so that should be nice and stable this morning. It's online, though visitors will be getting blank sites for the next few hours.

John

Gavin · Busy Newbie Joined: 31 Mar 2003 Posts: 24

So much for these email notices we were promised.

azrayal · Newbie Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 15

well done lads on the change over.
But still im finding the same error

CGI Error
etcetc....

Can you please find this script that is crashing the server and get rid of it..
I was going to change accounts over to linux, but I've plan's for an asp based site so I want to stay with the windows shared hosting. This is becoming really anoying as my sites seem to be down more than up. I dont want to change hosts as I'm happy with what is offered by hosting365 but unless this is sorted out soon I've no real choice.

Thanks
Ken

dcowman · Newbie Joined: 20 Jun 2003 Posts: 1

Hi Lads,

I appreciate that you are working hard within the constraints of your expertise in this area. However as any technician in your tech support department will tell you I have sent a lot of emails about issues in the last two months.

I would like to echo the posting of the last customer in that my site is down almost every day for varying reasons.

It is not very good service, no matter what way you look at it. The bottom line is that a) I lose business when potential clients cant access my site and b) given the PPC activity that I undetake for the site , I am paying for the privelige of having them get a server error or not found error.

I have little alternative but to look for alternative providers of hosting, which is a shame because what you promise is quite good.

David Cowman

PipeDreams · Newbie Joined: 16 May 2003 Posts: 5

I concur with dcowman.

My sites have been down quite a lot over the the last 2 months also and even more so in the last 2 days it has been worse.

I'm have also decided to seek my hosting elsewhere...

wwwuser · Posted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 10:26 am Post subject:

Hi PipeDream,

The last 2 days have been periods of significant work on the servers, we will have the work completed today/tomorrow, after which we expect stable service. In contrast, our email, db, control panel, and linux web servers have been 99.998% for the last 6 months running.

sposs · Regular Joined: 25 Jun 2002 Posts: 54 Location: Kildare

As a customer on a linux platform my site has been up 100% since i signed over a year and a half ago,as has my email etc.

i also have a few windows accounts but i accept Window boxes are known to be hard to stablise and before recently they had excellent uptime.

I think you should give the staff at hosting 365 a bit of lee way after all service is usually impecable and in the IT sector especially their uptime is as good as you'll get anywhere else.

azrayal · Newbie Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 15

sposs thats good to see that the linux machines are running stable. I would use them except that I need asp capability.
I have to say that I'm happy with the quality of the product but the one bug I have a problem with since day one has not been sorted out.
a script of some sort is crashing out the server and so leaves all the other users to site and wait.. if this script was removed then everything would be fine.. I'd be a happy bunny and would simply enjoy using hoting365's services and would probably consider moving more of my sites to there servers but as it stands it would be suicide.
Sorry for the rant, but its becoming time to move.

Thanks
Ken

cherrytree · Newbie Joined: 20 Jun 2003 Posts: 2

do you guys have a clue what u are doing continual issues occur on the windows systems which is not the way windows works

Windozz is a perfectly stable platform in the right hands.. as for "OK, the rebuild of Win1 has yet again been hampered by it's SQL installation." whats the issue lads can u not install SQL server. Even if your linux is 200% uptime it would seem that your resource is evidently lacking in microsofts product and fobbing off us the customer of your service with issues been the instability of using windows is just not good enough.

Many of the largest financial institutions that deal with equity markets and have a portfolio of 3 triliion ++ run windows and guarantee 99% uptime to there staff.. instability does not seem to be the issue here surely it must be the administrator of your windows systems.. reinstalling windows every 6 months is an attempt at a joke surely you guys cannot be serious..

I as a windows customer will be seeking an alternative hosting company that CAN provide stability.

wwwuser · Posted: Sat Jun 21, 2003 7:47 pm Post subject:

Hi Cherrytree,

The issue here is not windows stability per se (we manage over 50 other perfectly stable windows systems, and indeed win1 and win3 delivered almost 12 months of stable service before the recent issues) but rather the lack of transparency and useful tools in windows to diagnose and fix issues when they do arise.

Shared hosting systems are inherently instable, and it is an accepted norm for shared hosting companies to regularly re-install windows systems.

We anticipate that the migration work we are doing will be completed by early next week, and we are making every effort to minise issues for the 200-300 customers effected across both machines.

We also plan introducing a new Windows solution in the next two months, which will offer full load-balancing and high-availability to circumvent such issues in the future for customers who demand the highest levels of availability.

To give you some perspective, win1 has delivered 98.5% uptime this month, and win3 98.9%, compared to the typical 99.998% we see on our unix systems and other windows servers, this is unacceptable, however, it is still comparable to similar hosting companies at the price points we offer on Windows.

You have our assurances that it is obviously not in our interest to have customers dissatisfied in any way, and that we are doing everything possible to imporve these systems reliabilty and avilability.

azrayal · Newbie Joined: 23 May 2003 Posts: 15

Just a sec, your saying that this month win3 has been up 98.9%. How is that when nearly on a daily basis I have to send emails to supprt to restart the server because it has crashed out for a period of 2 to 3 hours.
This being im told because someone has a asp script they are running that is knocking out ther server. The response then being that we will try to fix this problem soon. This problem now has been going on for several weeks.
I'm afraid your statistics are wrong.

wwwuser · Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2003 6:53 pm Post subject:

Hi Az,

98.9% uptime is 7.92 hours downtime.