Gah!!!

[Kaiberie]

Before I go off on a rant, I'm not actually pissed at Jaguar PC, but I *am* really annoyed that this has gone on for over 24 hours now.
I'm wondering if I'm looking for too much from my hosting, or if this is a completely reasonable thing to be angry about. I am (usually) an extremely happy customer - I just want my box back!

Yesterday, my server (Dedicated box) went down at around 10am. I opened a ticket and was told, after a small wait, that the server couldn't find an os on any of my drives, (uh oh), had I done anything to them.
I replied no, and requested they look into it and rebuild the box (7am ticket time).
I then emailed my clients and let them know that yes, actually, there was a problem with the server, we were working on it.
12pm rolled around and I'm still waiting for someone to start my OS reinstall. During this time I'd had a discussion with the tech support about it being raid and by the time Rizwan replied to anything it was already 1pm server time, which at that point they were looking, again into raid.
So we move on a few hours and they do a complete os install because of file system errors etc, and tell me that they even tried to replace the motherboard but that didn't help.
Last night, the server was back up, and we started replacing data....
Only to get up this morning and it's down AGAIN.
I now get a reply to one of my tickets (two hours ago) saying that the motherboard is failing, depsite being told yesterday they'd tried that. I am being really good right now and not screaming seven shades of sunday about this because if the motherboard has already been checked once, why is it failing again? Already? If it was even done in the first place?
What, exactly would any of you guys do? We're well outside of the 'two hour hardware' gaurantee even for the motherboard incident today - I've got clients on the warpath cause our backup company went under recently and I've been trying to source a new one, and despite this being urgent, I've not had a reply to what's happening about the motherboard (which, I would think is a 'within two hours dealie') and I'm getting really annoyed now! (and yes, I appreciate it's a weekend - is it too much to ask to get someone to answer as to a status update?)

So, yeah, all in all, GAH!

How are you guys?

Kai

[Frank Broughton]

Need a Manager?
(pm) | Tracie, Customer Service Manager
(pm) | Rizwan , Technical Support Manager

[Kaiberie]

I may do by the end of this but Rizwan was involved for most of yesterday afternoon during the OS reinstall, so I'm sure he knows already.

Updated to this is they say they'll get back to me when they've got actual news (though the update is nice) and that the board has already been replaced once (or at least thats what it looks like they're saying - the likelyhood of two boards failing in two days is minute, I would have thought) but my servers are still down.
Woo.

So much for having a couple of days to deal with family stuff before worrying about the backup system we use. Object lesson - never ignore this stuff!

Kai

[Ron]

Geeeesh, what horrible timing. I know the frustrations of being down and all the work involved in getting back up and running, and all I can do is wish you patience and all I can say is -- good luck.

[jason]

I once had a CD-ROM drive that shorted out and literally started to smoke. After it happened I removed the drive and tried to restart, but the computer wouldn't boot--no post test, nothing on the screen, just the power supply fan and a black screen. I thought for sure that the drive took out the motherboard, but after unplugging everything piece-by-piece and testing things one at a time, I found that the only thing wrong was that the drive also shorted out a ZIP drive that was on the same IDE channel (yeah, this was a few years ago!) as the CD-ROM. Once I pulled the ZIP drive out (and got it replaced under warranty, woot!) the system worked fine again and I continued to use if for at least another year and never had another problem.

What I'm getting at is that sometimes hardware problems aren't what they seem at first glance. Often a component's failure masquerades as a failure with a different component and with these kinds of failures the real cause can be difficult to find. So maybe it wasn't really the motherboard that failed--maybe it was RAM, maybe it was a drive controller, who knows... I'm sure that JPC is doing everything they can to get you fixed. I've never found any reason not to doubt what they've said to me in a support ticket (though I've never had a dedicated server with them).

I do understand your frustration, though. I recently had all the mission critical systems I oversee at work (as well as most of our data center) go down for a couple of hours because of a failure with our SAN. It was a fluke, never-supposed-to-happen kind of thing that got a lot of people upset (and in this case I was on the receiving end of it). I spent my time alternating between calls with customers who wanted to know what was up and with the data center trying to get someone to tell me what was wrong. That is never a fun place to be.

I hope JPC gets you back online soon and I wish you the best of luck. Sorry that your weekend has to start out this way.

--Jason

[Kaiberie]

Well, we're six hours on, and we're still waiting.
I'm going to try and ask if they'll move the data off to a VPS so I can at least let my clients access thier mission critical stuff, cause one of them was moving to a whole new amalgamated site this weekend and is really upset that we're stuck in no mans land.
I wanted to 'do stuff' of my own that's now on hold - not as important as my clients, but still.
Anyway, thanks for the notes and good thoughts.

Kai

[Spathiphyllum]

I can only sympathize with the frustration. Don't let it get you too down.

Anecdote since we're on the subject. My system had been fine but for some reason, out of the blue, the system froze on boot indicating an issue on the boot screen to be the USB ports/devices. What the heck? Hadn't been a problem before and moving device from port x to port y made no difference. Fail no matter what.

So, I figured I'd move the RAM modules around since lockup occurred so early in the boot process. Aha! That worked... once. Then it went back to freezing on USB port scans. At least I figured RAM might be the issue though diagnostics didn't indicate that. So, I replaced two of four modules (the 4 modules were of exactly the same spec and mfg. though the heatsinks were different on one pair of the dual-channel RAM) to make all modules exactly the same, specs/mfg/model and all.

Bingo. System booted right up as before and hasn't hiccupped since.

The point is that sometimes even bootup diagnostics can be wrong and can lead you down the wrong path. Issues that should not have been a problem can be. Sometimes it's just luck that you figure out what's going on even if it's contrary to what you "know." And, as is the case with computers, it's a binary thing. On or off. Work or not. Yeah, it's frustrating, but sometimes it's just plain unavoidable to escape the quirks of electrons and circuit wiring.

Good luck, and say a prayer for Jaguar's techs.

[Frank Broughton]

But kai's account could have been moved by now and up and running instead of waiting for a system to be restored that is obviously not responding to normal troubleshooting procedures? With an expensive dedicated server that should be s.o.p. - no?

[Kaiberie]

Hi Frank - I don't understand the acronym you used, but we *were* moved - to a VPS. I'm currently sifting the server for the thousands (or so it feels) of misconfig, permission etc errrors and am wondering whether it would have been worth waiting for my motherboard to come back.
The reason they moved us to a VPS is they didn't have a motherboard for me - and every time I relaxed and thought things were mainly ok, the server fell over again. I suspect the permissions are fracked left right and centre, but all I can do is troubleshoot what I'm seeing and pray that my requests to reboot the server when it doesn't respond go through as fast as possible.
This has definitely been an...experience - and to be fair, I do believe that JPC and their staff have done everything they can - I just question some of what's gone on this weekend.
It's been hard - put it that way.

I'm still satisfied customer and have no intention of moving (but I may have *something* to say about some of this weekend), but I *am* looking at what I'm supposed to do to preserve against this happening in the future that isn't going to double our costs.

Kai

[Frank Broughton]

sop is standard operating procedures. JPC support as usual is doing their fine job. I thought that you would be moved with all the trouble they are having with your dedicated box. Hope all works out soon for you and with little work in the restore.

[Kaiberie]

Duh - I should know that, I was a squaddie in my formative years (wasn't that long ago...errr...maybe it was...lol).
Update to this is we're finally winning. I'm being permanetly moved to a hybrid, which is cheaper and less likely to suffer complete hardware failures - WITH backups 'etc'. It's all good, even if it did take a while to sort.

Jag rocks!

Kai
(who gets to rearrange her book launch to AFTER my exams - might be a good thing...)