Not very pleased!

[beesfan]

I've been pretty happy with Jag until recently....

My server went down on the 13th for 2 hours, ok, ok, it isn't a lifetime but never the less it went down. I lost emails in that 2 hours which is a major pain in the backside.

Then my site went down today, now, i had top running and it showed the server as active during this time but the sites weren't loading. Again, none of my emails got through.

I emailed jag and asked why my sites had gone down again and am not happy with the response at all!

I won't mention the techs name but here is his first response to me asking why my site was down...

"Hi,

We have checked the logs of your server and no parameter is hitting at the server.We also checked the load history of the node, it is also normal.We monitored your server for some time to guess the load on the server and it is also not high.You can also monitor your server whenever you think that there is any such issue by using the commands like
"top -c -d2" and "ps auxw".From here you can get an idea about processes that are consuming more cpu or causing load on the server.

Feel free to contact us if you need further assistance. "

Now, i'm sorry but my sites have been flaky over the last 5 days so what sort of message is this? It's not very helpful and is identical to a message i was sent last time my sites went down. When i said i wanted to know why my sites went down, NOT the same old speech i was sent this...

"Please see below records from your server.It is up and normal.If you face this issue in future then let us know so that we may assist you accordingly.

-------------------
-bash-3.00# hostname
my.host.com
-bash-3.00# uptime
10:01:24 up 30 days, 3:15, 1 user, load average: 0.10, 0.07, 0.02
-bash-3.00#
-------------------"

Now, i know it shows my vps as being up for 30 days but in the last 5 days my sites have been down twice and on the 19th of last month they weren't available 2 days running for about an hour each time....

I know i'm on a vps so shouldn't really expect dedicated server levels of uptime but this really isn't any better than when i started out on a $5 servage.net hosting account.

In fact, i only had my sites go down once on there in 12 months.....

I know the grass isn't always greener on the other side but this is pretty bad technical support. I mean what the hell does the following mean?

"We have checked the logs of your server and no parameter is hitting at the server.We also checked the load history of the node, it is also normal.We monitored your server for some time to guess the load on the server and it is also not high."

There was hardly any load on my vps at all when the sites stopped working so this reply is pretty meaningless.

I asked WHY my sites went down when i hadn't touched anything and there wasn't unusually high load on it...

[jason]

First off, most email systems will retry sending email messages for several hours if not days when they can't connect to a server, so I doubt you actually lost any email--it was probably just delivered later once the server came back up.

Since you mention that you are on a VPS, there are so many things to look at when a server goes "down." Have you looked at your memory usage? VZ likes to stop processes when you use too much memory. It is possible that a memory spike caused httpd processes to be stopped, leading to your inability to connect (even though the server was up and running fine). There have been several discussions about memory management wrt VPSes here before, that's one of the first things I'd look at.

--Jason

[Frank Broughton]

beefsfan,

You will not "loose" email when your server is down. That is what "queues" are all about.

What control panel are you using? How much RAM you have? What OS you using? What type of sites are you using?

Did you try to ping your IP when you felt the site was down? Did you do a tracert?

There are other issues that block a site from users besides it being down on the server.

Support here is excellent, if you are not satisfied or do not undertand a reply ask for clarification. I know it is frustrating and that very when a site is not operating properly, but there are many reasons why and patience is needed to figure it out.

Your own ISP may even be the culprit or any along the route. Verizon is brutal at times. Right now Verizon's dialup servers are wacked in my area. Some number are sporadically allowing port 80 access one number is blocking them completely and the one I am on now only allows sending email with their outgoing server. Living in the woods is nice!!! haha

[Vin DSL]

I just awoke, so...

On face value, given what you said, I would say there is some sort of connectivity problem - not necessarily a network problem, but maybe something less...

I get uber suspicious when I see LOW load averages! That means nothing is happening... which IMHO is worse than too much happening. Kapeesh?

To exemplify the situation, I have a Slackware server sitting here at my feet. Let's say the LAN card is flakey - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - or I have a bad ethernet patch cord - whatever... As far as my logs are concerned, everything would look fine, yes? And, the server load would be low, yada, yada. However, I wouldn't be able to serve pages, nor receive any email, yes? It would be worse than useless!

Personally, I think that's what's going on...

Okay, I gotta go get some coffee in me!

Hang in there! They'll fix the problem[s] - they always do!

[beesfan]

What control panel are you using? How much RAM you have? What OS you using? What type of sites are you using?

I'm using Plesk, i have 256mb ram and am running Cent OS. I have 2 sites, one is a flat html one page site. The other a few pages with a contact form that gets inserted into a database. This isn't the problem because i've made a little program that hits the form hard to test the load on the server and it's never caused any problems in the past.

I did ping the server and it timed out.

Support here is excellent, if you are not satisfied or do not undertand a reply ask for clarification. I know it is frustrating and that very when a site is not operating properly, but there are many reasons why and patience is needed to figure it out.

Support here is quick, and they've always got my VPS running properly again. It's just that 3 times in one ticket i asked what caused my VPS to stop responding and was given replies that look like they straight from a script. In fact i'm sure they were because it was identical to a response i had to another ticket.

Your own ISP may even be the culprit or any along the route. Verizon is brutal at times. Right now Verizon's dialup servers are wacked in my area. Some number are sporadically allowing port 80 access one number is blocking them completely and the one I am on now only allows sending email with their outgoing server. Living in the woods is nice!!! haha

At work, we have multiple lines, one is a fibre line straight into the building, we also have a few adsl lines hooked up to different telephone lines. I tried accessing my server/sites from these different lines and it was the same...

I forgot about mail being queued, duh, ok i'll accept that i haven't lost emails, i've not yet received emails that were sent to me but i'm sure they'll arrive.

I'm going to stick with Jag for now but if it keeps happening i'm going to have no choice but to try out elsewhere.... Maybe even a dedicated....