PowerVPS (Vitracore) down again

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Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 01:22 AM
Our VPS with PowerVPS (Vitracore) went down again 10 minutes ago.

It's getting to be a pain really. After years of stability, it has become an unreliable supplier.

Who are the best in the VPS busines these days?
Posted by dcsit, 11-15-2013, 02:30 AM
I can't take the crap anymore! How many hour will this one be?

Will I got a response to my ticket or any explanation??? Who knows.

All of my VPSs are down and useless... Consistently 90%+ packet loss!

Posted by andyforkgen, 11-15-2013, 02:55 AM
Same here. No response from PowerVPS as yet to my ticket. Their rapid responses used to be the selling point - now they are running out of reasons...
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 03:52 AM
It's now 2 hours 45 minutes and no response to a Severity 1 support ticket.

Fankly, I am checking out alternatives
Posted by getronic, 11-15-2013, 04:11 AM
The advantage of the always attentive and pertinent support is discredited by unstable assistance and complete ignoring of clients when issues happen. Is it so difficult to inform us about the process?
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-15-2013, 04:14 AM
They were always attentive and responsive - last couple of outages have gone ignored.
Posted by dcsit, 11-15-2013, 04:17 AM
At this point I'm just embarrassed that I'm still dependent on them! I have stuff thats not on generator running since before the last two major hurricanes with less then 20 minutes of down time. I could be hosting this crap on my home connection with less headache!
Posted by aww, 11-15-2013, 04:18 AM
Same situation.
Posted by bryanpage, 11-15-2013, 04:40 AM
Same here. Would love to have a few suggestions for an alternative company with better customer communication.
Posted by hostingvince, 11-15-2013, 04:43 AM
So sad they can't seem to get act together really since take-over days
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 04:49 AM
I have asked Liquidweb for a refugee offer. Anyone interested PM me and lets see if we can get a group deal going.

Michael
Posted by nixtree, 11-15-2013, 05:07 AM
Are they using FDCServers to host their nodes? just wondering because FDC also facing similar issues recently...
Posted by bryanpage, 11-15-2013, 05:15 AM
It is sad, even a response on Twitter saying that they are working on it would make me feel more secure. Anybody got any info on Mediatemple vs Liquidweb vs Hostgator?
Posted by bryanpage, 11-15-2013, 05:25 AM
Ulysses, I can't PM you for some reason (maybe because I'm new here?) but would definitely be interested in what they could offer.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 05:32 AM
@bryanpage I will keep you informed. There's a bunch of people on Twitter too.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 05:37 AM
We're up. Anyone else got their sites back?
Posted by bryanpage, 11-15-2013, 05:52 AM
Yes, back here too. Phew! Waiting for an email of apology or explanation now...
Posted by aww, 11-15-2013, 07:13 AM
They emailed that it was a severe ddos.

Which is plausible.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 05:53 PM
Everything down again at PowerVPS (Virtacore)!!!
Posted by dcsit, 11-15-2013, 06:15 PM
Yep all of our sevices are down and getting massive packet loss.
Posted by aww, 11-15-2013, 06:25 PM
If it really is a ddos, people doing it need time in prison.
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-15-2013, 06:26 PM
We are down again too on two separate vps nodes. Joke.
Posted by hostus-ryan, 11-15-2013, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andyforkgen

We are down again too on two separate vps nodes. Joke.

Not great, hope you get sorted soon.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 06:36 PM
Response to ticket:

+++++++++++++++++++++
Hi,

Our sincere apologies for the downtime caused.

We are aware of the issue and our engineering team is working on it.

We shall get back to you with an update at the earliest.

Best Regards,

Sreejith Sathyan
Technical Support Analyst
Virtacore Systems/PowerVPS Support

+++++++++++++++++++++
Posted by dcsit, 11-15-2013, 06:43 PM
They aren't sure if it is related to last nights DDoS. But it would be a hell of coincidence. Unless there fix is the problem.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 06:45 PM
By the way, we had a discussion with Liquidweb about a refugee offer to PowerVPS sufferers, and they were not interested.

Looking for other reliable providers - not cheap - reliable. Any thoughts?
Posted by hostus-ryan, 11-15-2013, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ulysses

By the way, we had a discussion with Liquidweb about a refugee offer to PowerVPS sufferers, and they were not interested.

Looking for other reliable providers - not cheap - reliable. Any thoughts?

How does a refugee offer*work?
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hostus-ryan

How does a refugee offer*work?

Basically, we get a group of us together to move to a new host. They get lots of new business and offer us all a serious discount off their normal rates.

Say a good 600GB VPS costs $3,600 a year, and we get a group of 10 or so to the new host, it's quick reliable money for the host.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-15-2013, 07:08 PM
We're up again. About an hour downtime this time. That's 5 hours 30 mins in 24-hours.
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-15-2013, 07:10 PM
We're back again, that was nearly another hour lost today. Our uptime is at 98% this month which isn't good.
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-15-2013, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andyforkgen

We're back again, that was nearly another hour lost today. Our uptime is at 98% this month which isn't good.

Sorry I meant an hour again this evening. It's actually 5 hours 51 mins downtime for us this week.
Posted by timothymay, 11-15-2013, 09:08 PM
Think it's about time to start shipping data away from PowerVPS .
Posted by vc293, 11-15-2013, 11:05 PM
This is going to be hard for me to ask, and I am fully prepared for the deservedly harsh response but...I hope that you will reconsider, or at least give us another chance.

Why?

Because we are truly actively trying to change and improve all aspects of the all of the PowerVPS service. These changes started with my recent arrival, and as much as I know you are going to want to hold me accountable for the downtime and terrible (non-existent) communication over the past year, I cannot do anything but apologize on my predecessor's behalf and tell you that I can only move this business forward.

Let's start with today. Today's downtime was a result of a DDoS attack. Not just any DDoS attack, this one was special. I cannot go into details, but I can say that there were companies that specialize in DDoS mitigation that were severely challenged. This wasn't just us. I think that you can all understand that this is an inherent risk due to the nature of the VPS business and that we should have been able to mitigate this faster - you are correct. Those changes are in process but they are not overnight successes. It will take some time. I can tell you that our response to these types of attacks will be far more rapid than even in the past few weeks.

Communication. Lack of it. This will end too. We will be better about communicating via support, Twitter, and this forum. Again, moving forward.

Nobody understands the cost of downtime better than me. I understand that you will feel the need to do what you have to do to protect your businesses, but I can assure you that if you will give us a chance we will right the wrongs and improve the issues from the past year. If not, I wish you the best and understand.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-16-2013, 12:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vc293

This is going to be hard for me to ask, and I am fully prepared for the deservedly harsh response but...I hope that you will reconsider, or at least give us another chance.

Would you be so kind as to have the courtesy to tell us all who you are, who you work for and what your responsibilities include? Are you management who can make such promises and keep them?

You didn't even post your name for goodness sake!

Michael Soker
APCINTERNET
Posted by vc293, 11-16-2013, 12:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ulysses

Would you be so kind as to have the courtesy to tell us all who you are, who you work for and what your responsibilities include? Are you management who can make such promises and keep them?

You didn't even post your name for goodness sake!

Michael Soker
APCINTERNET

Bill Thompson, VP Operations/Engineering, Virtacore Systems. For goodness sake.
Posted by Ulysses, 11-16-2013, 01:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vc293

Bill Thompson, VP Operations/Engineering, Virtacore Systems. For goodness sake.

Thank you, Bill
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-16-2013, 04:37 AM
Hello Bill, thanks for the reply. I think quick actions will really help here. The first one being on communication: you will have seen from responses to tickets that people are feeling very vulnerable due to the latest issues; in the old days any vulnerability was completely washed aside by your support team's blisteringly fast response to tickets. Now this just doesn't happen - we don't get a reply until way after the event, and sometimes these events have included outages of over a day. Completely unacceptable.

How busy can a first line support person be that you're not able to give them a stock response to a severity 1 issue and then have them reply to all tickets with the response, and post updates at hourly intervals. Even easier, a status page or a twitter feed that is updated hourly by a senior team member whenever there is a serious incident happening. It takes 5 minutes to set up, 30 secs to post a tweet from any device and once loyal customers such as the ones on this board hear about it, it will be the first port of call thus reducing ticket numbers for you. We have one at @GlobalizeMeUK which we update regularly.

Again we don't feel vulnerable if you keep us updated on a regular basis - tickets are even a bit old school these days and people expect different and constant forms of communication.

Bill, please act on this. I know that stability issues take longer to fix, especially those caused by external forces but internal and external communication issues can be fixed almost instantly. Please let us have a date and a feed URL for your status feed implementation by reply to this post.

Thanks, Andy.
Posted by vc293, 11-16-2013, 07:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andyforkgen

Hello Bill, thanks for the reply. I think quick actions will really help here. The first one being on communication: you will have seen from responses to tickets that people are feeling very vulnerable due to the latest issues; in the old days any vulnerability was completely washed aside by your support team's blisteringly fast response to tickets. Now this just doesn't happen - we don't get a reply until way after the event, and sometimes these events have included outages of over a day. Completely unacceptable.

How busy can a first line support person be that you're not able to give them a stock response to a severity 1 issue and then have them reply to all tickets with the response, and post updates at hourly intervals. Even easier, a status page or a twitter feed that is updated hourly by a senior team member whenever there is a serious incident happening. It takes 5 minutes to set up, 30 secs to post a tweet from any device and once loyal customers such as the ones on this board hear about it, it will be the first port of call thus reducing ticket numbers for you. We have one at @GlobalizeMeUK which we update regularly.

Again we don't feel vulnerable if you keep us updated on a regular basis - tickets are even a bit old school these days and people expect different and constant forms of communication.

Bill, please act on this. I know that stability issues take longer to fix, especially those caused by external forces but internal and external communication issues can be fixed almost instantly. Please let us have a date and a feed URL for your status feed implementation by reply to this post.

Thanks, Andy.

Andy,

You are completely correct - being in the dark until after the issue is resolved is a very bad feeling. We are going to change this behavior, and yes, systems like Twitter and basic replies are easy to do and we will utilize them moving forward.

Again, we get it. We want to make this right, and we are trying. This will get better. I am not ready to give you the status "locations" right now but I will update this thread with the info once my team is prepared. Until then, we will post updates here manually and update direct communication as we are able to.

Bill
Posted by andyforkgen, 11-16-2013, 07:26 AM
Thanks Bill, I'm feeling confident that you're on the case. Look forward to hearing more. Have a good day.

Best wishes,

Andy.