Help...Cybershouts down and clients are ticked!

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Help...Cybershouts down and clients are ticked!

Posted by CentralMass, 03-19-2003, 09:54 AM
My server at Cybershouts has been down for 2-3 days now....email was working for most of the time but now has crashed as well. I was suppose to have a client move yesterday and deploy the brand new site....she is pissed and says that it is just her luck that she gets the .1% downtime when she goes to deploy her new site. I am not a big hosting company, I only host for web design customers as an added service, but I can't stay in business with this type of feedback. I don't expect to be treated like a King when I pay only $20 per month, but I just want a server that remains up with email working. I am on my second server since late January. I don't know the full extent of what happened on the first server, but I do know that I got moved (even though I said not to). Now, yesterdays email from Cybershouts said that there was a hardware failure... uh..what kind of hardware? The email ended with: "Hopefully you'll all wake up tomorrow to find everything back to normal." Well, I woke up today and aint nothing working! Are you guys located in Iraq????
Posted by CaroNet-Hesham, 03-20-2003, 06:47 PM
Hello, First of all allow me to deeply apologize for the problems we had on one of our servers, it's only 1 server presenting a small % of the total sites we host, so for those who were wondering, no..cybershouts was NOT down neither were the rest of our customers on the other servers we have. This problem started with a hardware failure which on reporting to the DC suggested that we re-install OS and Cpanel, we recieved the server a couple of hours later and started adding all the accounts manually which was ok for a while then Cpanel starting crumbling again, suspecting that the main hardware issue wasn't solved we asked for further investigation which leaded to the re-installation again after we setup all the accounts manually..The DC appears to find re-installing easier than troubleshooting! Ok..so for the 2nd time now, we are surprised by Cpanel services not being installed in the first place! so we reconfigure everything building and reconfiguring Cpanel manually with the help of our admins lead by John C. Bambenek who truely did a fab job on a near dead server. Bringing everthing up again we were faced with something new...the server was under DDOS attack aiming the main serve Shared IP! We logged into one of our other Ips and resumed adding sites only to have that one down too.. Calling the DC they informed us that our IPs were automatically blocked because of the Attack and that we had to reach the source...that was at 3am, so we traced down the IPs owner through ARIN and contacted them. The attack was over a couple of hours later and we resumed our work. Our comment regarding this incident is that it was a big mess of bad luck but we've fighted through it and sent a constant flow of emails to all our clients on the damaged server keeping them updating with all the moves we're taking to get the problem fixed. This is the first incident of its kind in our 2 years of hosting, unfortunately these things do happen in the hosting world, all clients who were on this server will be moved to a brand new server later on at NAC with a free upgrade to all packages. We didn't want to reply to this post ealier since we were emailing all the people concerned..now that all is back to normal we can reply back and say that the nightmare is over and everything will go on normally. CentralMass, Your sites have been online since yesterday.
Posted by intraweb, 03-22-2003, 01:55 PM
What was the total downtime? During this downtime were customers able to clearly communicate problems?
Posted by CaroNet-Hesham, 03-24-2003, 02:11 AM
We moved you and 4 other clients because the server you were on was in fear to be overloaded with sites, so in order to make everyone happy we transferred you to another server, unfortunately the 2nd server you were on crashed..and yes..if we never moved you in the first place you wouldn't have been down..but it was impossible to predict that we'd have a problem there. Again we apologize for any problem we caused because of this issue
Posted by CaroNet-Hesham, 03-24-2003, 02:21 AM
The total downtime wasn't exactly calculated because the server was fixed in the middle for about 12-16 hours before Cpanel failed again. It was then clear that we needed to transfer all our clients to a brand new box with skillfull DC support. A little over 10 generic emails were sent to customers telling them what's going on step by step. And over 500 personal emails were sent back and forth. I guess that's why most of our clients are still with us. Yes, we did lose some customers..all of which are new clients who signed up within this month, other than that all of our customers are still with us. I don't blame the new customers though, they didn't know if we were commited to solve this problem or not..some companies who are faced with the same problem just close shop and run away with the money they made.. The old clients stayed because they know our Tech Support team.. we got a lot of email from them supporting us on the situation, even clients on other servers sent us encouraging emails after reading the post here at WHT, and we were still getting new clients through the problem we faced who were setup on new servers.. So I guess all is back to normal
Posted by Knogle, 03-24-2003, 07:58 AM
BTW just wondering how you got that custom title when your post count is < 500?
Posted by CaroNet-Hesham, 03-24-2003, 08:23 AM
Most of my posts was in the Request area, The WHT moderators have decided recently not to add posts in the Request Area to the total count. There are a number of threads regarding this topic, some members lost over 1000 post counts.. It's ok with me though
Posted by UH-Matt, 03-24-2003, 10:58 AM
I lost 1900 Opps we better not start this one off again!
Posted by CaroNet-Hesham, 03-24-2003, 01:33 PM
I was curious though Matt..what's the idea behind it.. The lounge and the Request area are just like any other part of the board, less problematic as well in my opinion..
Posted by UH-Matt, 03-24-2003, 01:38 PM
The idea behind it was to make post count a true reflection of participation. Someone who posts 5000 adverts in the offers/requests sections isnt really taking part in the community. The community consists of the "main forums" posters and this is where postcount is still recognised.
Posted by alapo, 03-24-2003, 02:38 PM
Back on topic, I'm glad there was a happy ending to this. My blood boils when a company suffers a massive disruption in service, but does not notify their clients for days.

Add to Favourites Print this Article