Essential Maintenance - 06/10/11 - 07/10/11

[Justin]

I will be taking the forum offline at approx. 11pm tonight (06/11) for essentail maintenance. If everything goes according to plan we will be back online within a couple of hours but I need to switch the forum off to ensure I get no data corruption.

I will update this thread with more details when we come back online.

Many thanks for your patience.

Justin
DSF Admin

[JSR]

Could I request that we have a little more notice next time? I didn't see this post 16 hours ago. I was in the middle of replying to something and suddenly I couldn't. Post gone.

Thanks!

[Justin]

Usually I would but I had a window of opportunity and grabbed it! I'd hoped everything would be sorted by now but it's still in progress. Will update again soon.

[Justin]

My apologies for the unexpected downtime. I have just changed the host of the forum and it took a while to get everything across and get us up and running again.

The previous host had been excellent but a recent request for support was badly dealt with so I took the opportunity to upgrade the hosting platform and change companies. We are now being hosted on a Cloud platform which guarantees 100% uptime, should be interesting
The support is also far far better with this new company and I can speak to someone instantly 24/7.

The forum appears to be running well, perhaps quicker than usual but I would appreciate any feedback/problems that you might have by emailing [EMAIL="justin@dyesubforum.co.uk]justin@dyesubforum.co.uk[/EMAIL].

Thanks again to everyone for their patience, I'm hoping this is a clear step in the right direction towards even better stability and reliability.

[Renniwano]

I would agree that the forum is running slightly quicker.. definitely not waiting as long between page changes

[JSR]

100% uptime - wow, they're bold..!

At least you're being hosted in the UK now, and that's got to be a good thing.

I recently migrated a bunch of websites to new servers, which involved updating them all as well. I'm quite chuffed that I achieved it all with zero downtime. So I know what you've been going through. Glad it's all worked out okay.

[Justin]

Many companies are starting to offer 100% uptime now, whether it's through geographic redundancy or cloud hosting as we have. The previous host was excellent and I'm keeping them as a backup. They dropped the ball with the last support call, still not sure if the problem was anything to do with them but they should have dealt with it quicker anyway.

[JSR]

Many companies deliver 100%, but if one stated 100% then I'd be digging into those T&C quicker than anything - because there are times when the inevitable happens. My hosts state 99.995% uptime, and they state that any downtime longer than 26 minutes over a whole year (0.005% of the year) will result in a credit to the customer. In the 7 years I've been with them, I've not needed to be credited for anything.

Other hosts that may claim 100% uptime might say, oh let's see, that they'll credit the customer for each 30 minutes of downtime - so if you have several 15 minutes worth of downtime throughout the year, they won't credit the customer even though they state 100% uptime. In this instance, the company that states 99.995% is offering a better service than the one that states 100% uptime.

And, of course, this uptime guarantee only applies to unplanned downtime. If they're planning changes and warn you in advance, your site could still be down because it's classed as "scheduled downtime" - which, in their calculations, doesn't affect their "100% uptime" guarantee.

I'm having to read up on "cloud hosting". I was under the impression that all websites were in the "cloud". I suspect "cloud" is an overused word these days... :biggrin:

[Justin]

"With High Availability, you can be guaranteed that your websites will be assured of 100% uptime on our fully redundant and clustered infrastructure"

[JSR]

That may be what it says on the sales page, but the SLA probably says things like:

Service Downtime is any unplanned interruption

(downtime for planned interruptions is not covered by the 100%)

Network downtime is measured from the time a trouble ticket is opened by a customer

(if downtime happens in the middle of the night when you're asleep and you don't alert them, then it's not covered by the 100%)

provided the interruption is determined to have been caused by a problem in the immediate network segment as confirmed (by the host)

(if downtime is caused by something just outside the network, or the host claim that it's just outside the network, then it's not covered by the 100%)

This SLA does not cover Service Downtime caused by ... Client initiated server over-utilization

(if your site gets too busy and causes downtime, it's not covered by the 100%)

This SLA does not cover Service Downtime caused by ... Any problems related to attacks on the machine such as hacking, bandwidth-based attacks of any nature, and service or operating system exploits.

(if their firewall isn't up to the job or they're running an unpatched OS and you experience downtime, it's not covered by the 100%)

This SLA does not cover Service Downtime caused by ... Problems associated with Operating System, Software, or Applications.

(anything running on the machines that causes downtime isn't covered by the 100%).

The list goes on, and the 100% gets smaller and smaller. The only thing the 100% seems to cover is the actual hardware. Okay, that's probably the same as every other host out there, but it's not the same as saying you'll have access to your site 100% of the time. Such a guarantee is simply a sales tactic when the SLA excludes the guarantee from so many things.

My contention is that claims such as "assured of 100% uptime" is a meaningless one in the real world. Stuff happens.