What is going on with support?

[AdrianB]

To the techs that worked so hard to get us back up and running, Thank you!

To the management of the tech support staff, I hope that a review and revamping of your support processes are in your New Years Resolutions.

I second that!

[JPC-Sabrina]

JaguarPC does have plans to implement new systems and add more staff as the New Year progresses. Your opinions and comments provide us with valuable information which allows us to make adjustments in areas where we are both weak and strong. We are listening and we always want to hear more from all of our customers. Keep coming back and participating on our community forums, share your tips, spread your knowledge and meet some good like minded people. JaguarPC intends to keep improving our current plans and services into the New Year and beyond.

[AdrianB]

So, now that the restore is finished, stuff written, content created and changes made from december 18th to 21th are lost for good, right?

[JPC-Sajjad]

If there is still some thing missing then please open a ticket in the support department and we shall sync the data for you from the old server if necessary.

[AdrianB]

If there is still some thing missing then please open a ticket in the support department and we shall sync the data for you from the old server if necessary.

I did, unfortunately the latest backup you have is from December 18th. The next backup is from December 27th, but that was after you reverted to a more than two weeks old backup. So the backup from December 27th is worse than the one from December 18th. And anything that was created or changed between December 18th and the crash (on December 21th) is gone forever.

I will try to use Google cache to recreate my most important work and then I'll remember to never rely on the not-so-daily backups here.

[AdrianB]

Just out of curiosity: What are the policies for compensations? Does this warrant compensation?

In this case JaguarPC lost three days of backup for good (newgandalf was restored to the backup of December 18th while the crash occurred on December 21th or maybe 20th). But not only that, from the crash until December 28th newgandalf was using a more than two weeks old backup and furthermore, during that period (a whole week) the customers on newgandalf was advised not to use their account because changes would be lost.

Add to this that this was the second serious problem with this server under 2011 (the first one was what led to the move from gandalf to newgandalf which caused all kind of followup troubles since the move was not very smooth for me).

Here's to hoping that 2012 will be a better year (or the year I find another hosting solution). But first I need to fix the problems cause by the latest server move, because just like the server move in March not everything works (yes I have opened a couple of tickets and one issue is already fixed by support).

[JPC-Katrina]

Hi Adrian,

Please see our terms of service at Terms of Service (TOS) under Backups and Data Loss. Customers are responsible for keeping backups of all their data. You can even automate backups with a script and cron. However, I would still submit a ticket to our customer service dept. to discuss possible compensation. Like my Dad always said, it never hurts to ask. :-)

[AdrianB]

Hi Adrian,

Please see our terms of service at Terms of Service (TOS) under Backups and Data Loss. Customers are responsible for keeping backups of all their data. You can even automate backups with a script and cron.

Yeah, that is true and I'll set up better solutions for the future. But the fact that we couldn't use our sites properly for a whole week (until the restore was finished) seems like an unusually long break (technically it wasn't downtime, but still it wasn't fully usable).

[JPC-Katrina]

Adrian, you are certainly welcome to submit a ticket to our customer service dept. to discuss this. Like I said, it doesn't hurt to ask and they would handle that.

[Vin DSL]

Customers are responsible for keeping backups of all their data.[...]

Golden!!!

When I first got an account here, in 2003, the server I was on blew up. Tech Support tried everything (for days) to resurrect it. Reported, they finally took the server out in the alley and blasted it with a shotgun -- a Texas Tradition. LoL!

A new server was built, but it blew up too. So, they built another one.

Server #3 worked, but we were looking at another couple of days to populate it, so...

I contacted Tech Support, and asked them to give me space on another machine. I told them, all I needed was a slot, and I could do the rest... because I had a BACKUP ON MY LOCAL COMPUTER. They complied, and I was up n' running in a couple of hours. This would have been impossible without a local backup!

I cannot tell you how many times backups have saved my bacon, over the years, at various hosts. And, I'm still storing every backup I ever made, going all the way back into the last century.

Anyway, regardless of the TOS, everyone should maintain their own backups! Just saying...

[mstyers]

A lesson learned the hard way from this experience.

[Vin DSL]

A lesson learned the hard way from this experience.

Heh! If you'll pardon my hacking of an ancient Chinese proverb... (source)

Restore a man's backup and you fix him for a day.

Teach a man to maintain his own backups and you fix him for a lifetime.

[AdrianB]

That's a good proverb

Though backup is only part of the problem here (for me). There are other small annoyances of how server problems are solved.

One example: I have a couple of domain names here that are using Google Apps for email. To make the web server send emails to these domains correctly the domains have to be put on a special list by support (/etc/remotedomains). I also have mailing lists in Mailman in Cpanel. Now, after the server move of newgandalf this special list was not transfered, so those using Google Apps for email stopped receiving emails from these mailing lists.

This is a kind of problem that's not immediately discovered (those sending to the list think everyone receives and those not receiving thinks the list is quiet). It's not the end of the world, but discovering it after a week or so and having to report these kind of errors to get them fixed adds to the impression that things are not done as properly as they should when there's server trouble. I wish I didn't have to spend my time (and the time of the support staff!) on things like this.