centaur

[KaiserSoze]

Centaur down for 6 hours now. Any idea when its going to be back up?

[Zacrifice]

I wish I knew, a clients site is on centaur.
Today was not the best day either since it was publicised in a local paper!

I aint happy!
Aint happy at all!

[paulocon]

Hi guys,

Been down over 6 hours now. Have been talkin to the people at jaguar - apparently they a running disk check at the moment but are unable to give any feedback on how long it'll take. It had been down last week and yesterday morning so obviously some ongoing problem there - hopefully this will clear it up.

In a similar position to you Zacrifice in that I had just launched a site - looks like I've lost a couple of clients ('where is your website gone') so not happy either. That an customers getting irate on the phone

[KaiserSoze]

I'm not happy at all either. I had important work scheduled for today so its been a complete waste of a day for me. I wonder where this leave the 99.9% uptime.

[paulocon]

Have been reading up on that and I think the 99.9% relates to the network as a whole not to any particular server.

To me, the killer is that I reported this problem last Friday, then again yesterday (don't know how Monday/Weekend was because I was off), and then it happened again this morning. Now I know, it could have been hardware failing but there were warning signs (I got told that it was a problem with SpamAssasin then told there was a peak that required a reboot).

The feedback from Jaguar has been poor - I only found out about the disk check by being a pain in the ass and I'm cautious as to whether to believe it or not having being told two different things friday/yesterday. I appreciate that there will be downtime but I think it very important to keep clients well-informed and 100% up-to-date on developments so they can liase with their own customers..

[Zacrifice]

Hey, I feel all your pain!!!!
Paulocon, Yeah I bugged the hell out of support too and got told they where running a disk check!

Support has always been pretty good for us who want more information then "its done" "fixed the problem" and "corrected" in every other way jaguar is almost perfect. This does piss me off a hell of a lot.
BTW the uptime does mean the network, not the server.

6 hours of downtime is getting really excessive, if its a problem with a hard drive, replace it, something else, replace it. don't keep the server down for six ****ing hours while they sit on there arses trying to "correct" the problem.

I maintain my own 3 servers at home and although its not nearly as many as on jaguarpc, I can tell you, they aint never been down for 6 ****ing hours while I fiddle fart around!!!!

[paulocon]

Zacrifice,

If you do hear any more keep me in the loop.
6 hours is very excessive alright - it's hard to explain to your customers what is taking so long - some of which have started out patiently but who are now getting quite agitated (especially given not only their email but their website is down also).

Lets hope email is queued and doesn't bounce..

[rainboy]

I'm not happy at all either. I had important work scheduled for today so its been a complete waste of a day for me. I wonder where this leave the 99.9% uptime.

Sad to hear about the downtime, but hardware failures can happen, and they always happen when we least want it too. And yes 6 hours is a lot, but i wonder where you got this uptime quote from, while not impossible, it is still a number which always make me guess. Ever did wonder 99.9% of what ?

If you are talking about a 99.9% uptime per month, you are right, those 6 hours are getting you 99.16% a month (based on months of 30 days)

If you are talking about a 99.9% uptime per year, you are still in the 99.9% as that would be 99.93% a year (based on months of 30 days).

But i saw some hosts even using this 99.9% over the existence of their server. So if someone says to me 99.9% they have to explain to me what they exactly mean with it.

BTW in general an uptime of 99% is a acceptable number in the industry, and always excluding maintenance hours. If this is not a number you are looking for you better make sure you have a failover system, and even then .. fingers crossed.

Nevertheless, as a customer i also would like to hear about what is being done, i think posting on the forum you have a problem with a server is allready an improvement, i can tell you about tons of hosts which not even do that. Certainly there is always room for improvement.

[rainboy]

Zacrifice,

If you do hear any more keep me in the loop.
6 hours is very excessive alright - it's hard to explain to your customers what is taking so long - some of which have started out patiently but who are now getting quite agitated (especially given not only their email but their website is down also).

Lets hope email is queued and doesn't bounce..

Did you setup MX records and have backup mailserver configured ? In that case your mail will be queued on the backup mailserver, if not, most (but not all) MTA's will keep retying for a certain time (48hours), however more and more providers are cutting this down. Makes it all the more important to look into a mail-backup solution. I believe JaguarPC can set this up for you, i believe Jag wrote an article about it in their blog.

Kind regards,
Patrick

[paulocon]

Patrick,

Thanks for the post. I will certainly look into the backup Mail solution as soon as I get over this hurdle (hopepfully before we go over 7 hours!!)

[KaiserSoze]

Ok i take the point of 99.9% relates to the network and not the server. But what difference does it make to my websites if the server is down or the network is down? In both cases it means my sites are not up and running. So i see as a bit of a cop out saying the server might be down but the network is till up, that doesnt help me at all.

[paulocon]

Hi guys,

Anyone else hear anything back on this?
Nearing close of business in Ireland and it looks like my clients will be heading home disgruntled!!

[rainboy]

Ok i take the point of 99.9% relates to the network and not the server. But what difference does it make to my websites if the server is down or the network is down? In both cases it means my sites are not up and running. So i see as a bit of a cop out saying the server might be down but the network is till up, that doesn't help me at all.

If you have a failover situation this is of major importance, as when the network is down ALL servers are unreachable, when a server is down only those clients are affected. (still doesn't mean you should be happy your service is down at the moment, but for some it does matter what kind of uptime guarantee there is on the network).

i.e. if you have a mailbackup to another server in the network, and your server fails, it will still queue your mail (As paulocon describes, lost email can even be more important as a website down).

If however the network would be down, and your backup MX and all of your DNS servers are in the same network you don't have anything. For some of my customers a fail proof DNS and MX are required, others are not even interested in it. It all depends on what you need to keep your business running and what the clients are willing to pay.

Kind regards,

Patrick

[Zacrifice]

I agree with you fully there Kaiser...
I also have my own website on these here servers and thankfuly its still accessable so I'm glade the network is still up but do find the 99%uptime for the network is a little weak
hell saying you can keep your network up for 99.99999999999999999999% of the time I would believe, networks can be extreamly stable (ie, in some cases more so then something like a tv and switching out a hub (that doesn't do much but rout traffic) can littleral take a few minutes and can take a few minutes to find the problem router.

eh, its all just a pain, I hope its working by tomorow morning when I wake up!

[paulocon]

Latest word from the helpdesk is...

'We are sorry but we have not recieved an update from the technicians on it and they are still working to get this fixed.'

Feel like I'm being fobbed off - surely the lines of communication between the technicians must be more open that this. Was told 4 hours ago that the fsck has started and that it should take a couple of hours, no meaningful updates since..

It's been a bad bad day!