HostDime.in Shared Server Down

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Posted by shakensoul, 08-26-2013, 11:05 PM
Hostdime's India shared server suffered a major hardware failure and is down since about 48 hours now. Even though the accounts have been restored, they are going on and off intermittently.

I have been recommending Hostdime's service in India for reliable hosting, but these issues seriously puts my business at risk.

Hope Hostdime is looking to resolve these downtime issues permanently, as the India server was giving issues intermittently.
Posted by shakensoul, 08-27-2013, 12:43 AM
Tickets are not being responded, sites still down, not expected from Hostdime.
Posted by Fakher, 08-27-2013, 01:09 AM
Did you tried to talk to them through online support? or just call them?
Posted by shakensoul, 08-27-2013, 01:21 AM
Contacting them through chat gives the usual response

".....We are trying out best....restoration is 85%...95% complete.....we will try to fix it within 2-3-4-5 hrs....."

While some accounts have been restored, they have screwed up with the DB restore. Old DB have been restored instead on most current ones.

I know the usual drill...Backups, Backups, Backups...but if you still need to be careful with a host like Hostdime, then where will the budget customers go?

Nowadays when you boast about the latest technology, offline/offshore backups, RAID10, redundancy, etc, etc....but in moments of failure all these things fall flat on your face
Posted by DimeNOC Dennis, 08-27-2013, 08:18 AM
Hello shakensoul,

I am sorry to hear about the issues you are having with one of our shared servers in our Indian branch. Can you please post or PM me a ticket ID for your account so I can look up further information for you and see what can be done to help expedite this issue? As you know, issues can occur but I want to ensure that everything that can be done for your account, is.

Thank you and have a great day
Posted by shakensoul, 08-27-2013, 09:25 AM
I have PMed you the ticket details.

Similar problem was reported almost a year ago.

What frustrates you, the account was brought online yesterday evening for sometime and with a previous DB restore from 25th August, so you have already lost the recent post and other details since the server went down.

You think everything is okay and you can cope with the few missing post and the forum goes live. Suddenly in the middle of the night, the websites are taken offline again, and it is restored in the morning again with the same previous database from 25th August. So in the process you have already lost the previous post and the post from yesterday

And the other niggling issues of broken links, SMTP errors, etc..

No matter Hostdime service is good, but these are the issues which leave a bad taste in the mouth and you'll always have second thoughts if your data is in safe hands.

The India shared server has been misbehaving since a long time, and I am sure the India staff knew about the impending problem, but maybe chose to ignore it and tried to fix the broken machine repeatedly.
Posted by shakensoul, 08-27-2013, 10:28 AM
Hello Dennis,

Will you please assign some serious L3 tech to look into the issue.

The tech have started blaming incorrect coding and scripts for the malfunctioning broken urls, 404 errors. Everything was up and running smoothly till the server crashed and now the coding is incorrect ?

This has happened before when the tech tried to push the blame on incorrect scripts when they were unable to fix the problem. I cannot go through the ordeal of trying to prove that their is nothing wrong with the website.

Posted by shakensoul, 09-01-2013, 08:15 AM
Server again down for 6 hours and counting...seems like time to move on now.
Posted by DimeNOC Dennis, 09-01-2013, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

Server again down for 6 hours and counting...seems like time to move on now.

Hello shakensoul,

I am in communication with our India team on this issue at this time. I will update you via our ticketing system once we have further information. We appreciate your understanding at this time.

Warm Regards,
Posted by shakensoul, 09-01-2013, 11:59 AM
What the f*** is going on with Hostdime India ?

This is the message received

Quote:

Your domain server suffered a severe hard drive crash today. This was the results of two hard-drives going bad in the RAID setup once after the Reboot was made due to a load surge on the server. This error is unrecoverable, and we needed to perform an emergency restore from the latest available Backup from the backup drive.

At this time the operating system and cPanel are online and working. The server is currently restoring all accounts alphabetically from the backup drive. The server is currently still undergoing the restore procedure, in an alphabetical order.

We apologize for any inconveniences at all caused by this procedure. Please feel free to contact us at any time, regarding the status of the backup completion. Due to the large amount of accounts on this server, there simply no estimated time until completion at this time.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused on you. You may contact us at any time to receive updates on this.

This is after the server was supposed to have been moved to a new server after almost a 3 day downtime last week.

This has gone beyond acceptance now. Your support, reliability and credibility has gone for a toss. You are no better than those budget host working on budget hardware, cutting corners on hardware to save cost.

Seriously I was considering that Hostdime was one of the better providers in India, but it turns out my data would have been safe with godaddys or hostgator, maybe slow but atleast safe.

Fortunately I decided to have my VPS elsewhere, and this will be the last of any business with you.
Posted by DimeNOC Dennis, 09-01-2013, 12:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

What the f*** is going on with Hostdime India ?

This is the message received

This is after the server was supposed to have been moved to a new server after almost a 3 day downtime last week.

This has gone beyond acceptance now. Your support, reliability and credibility has gone for a toss. You are no better than those budget host working on budget hardware, cutting corners on hardware to save cost.

Seriously I was considering that Hostdime was one of the better providers in India, but it turns out my data would have been safe with godaddys or hostgator, maybe slow but atleast safe.

Fortunately I decided to have my VPS elsewhere, and this will be the last of any business with you.

Hello shakensoul,

I understand your frustration, as I share in it completely, however we are being honest with you on the situation and trying our best to offer you some recompense to assuage your concerns. Unfortunately we work with technology and situations like this happen in very rare cases to any service with any provider. I assure you it isn't something we intentionally did to harm you or your business, as I'm sure you understand. Please take this into account when formulating your opinions moving forward.

Thank you
Posted by shakensoul, 09-01-2013, 12:47 PM
In normal circumstances, one can understand that these technical glitches will occur and are beyond control. I was ready to move on with the previous week's lost data and cope with the missing data.

Also dealt with clients calling and enquiring why their websites were down and mail not working.

Also dealt with loosing google serp ranking. Dealt countless hours trying to ensure all your links are working fine.

Static & dynamic websites are fine, but I have a forum dealing with sensitive topics and members put a lot of emotions and research when posting. You can cope with losing 3-4 days of data, but dealing with repeated failures strongly discourages members and you can never recover those important data lost.

As they say, If it's too good to be true, then it probably is. Good hosting is almost impossible to find, no matter how tall the claims are.

I wouldn't touch HD again with a ten-foot pole.
Posted by feastboy, 09-01-2013, 02:07 PM
@DimeNOC Dennis
this is not user expect from you..?

Server or hardware crashing is occur in other host too, but they don't take 3 day..? max they take 6 hour.

also what is the use of Raid 10, nothing..?
Posted by swatkats, 09-01-2013, 03:29 PM
Sad to Hear this and I hope you find a Good Host.
I've Had Issues with HD India last year, Apache Server used to crash and there used to 1Hour+ downtime every month regularly Support Never Agreed Multiple issues every month are bad.

Initially the Server performance was Good and later it Degraded However vps server benchmarks which the support provided were fine.

Its been 1year since i have made an move from Hostdime.in and I never looked back at them. There is no comparison between HD in and HD US.
HD US Support are of top notch. HD IN is still in the market because of Brand Hostdime and Caring Management from US branch.

Shakensoul, are you on the ip 109.73.166.3?
Posted by shakensoul, 09-01-2013, 11:55 PM
@swatkats - Yes, the server IP is 109.73.166.3.

Are you using shared hosting in India ? If yes, please let me know where.
Posted by shakensoul, 09-02-2013, 12:12 AM
I think hostdime have their servers colocated with Spectranet.in in Delhi.

http://www.spectranet.in

Not sure if that is one of the better datacenters in India.
Posted by swatkats, 09-02-2013, 05:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

@swatkats - Yes, the server IP is 109.73.166.3.

Are you using shared hosting in India ? If yes, please let me know where.

I'm Using Leapswitch SSD shared hosting. The Speeds are amazing. You should try them.

Yes HD uses Spectranet Delhi DC, Apart from them i Don't see any Reputed provider using them. Previously they used to have their servers at Webwerks, Mumbai. Looks like they got a Good Pricing from Spectranet.
Posted by swatkats, 09-04-2013, 01:01 PM
OP, are you still with HD?
Posted by gingir, 09-04-2013, 02:38 PM
how long did the downtime last?
Posted by shakensoul, 09-05-2013, 03:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swatkats

OP, are you still with HD?

Yes, I still have a couple of months to go, will change after that. But considering leapswitch is a new player in the market, I don't want to take a hasty decision and land up in a worst situation, if you understand what I mean.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gingir

how long did the downtime last?

Downtime was for around 9 hrs, pingdom report attached.
Posted by ishan, 09-05-2013, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

Yes, I still have a couple of months to go, will change after that. But considering leapswitch is a new player in the market, I don't want to take a hasty decision and land up in a worst situation, if you understand what I mean.
.

Dear shakensoul,
I just wanted to pop in to clarify that we are in business since 2006 (this is our 7th year in business). Please feel free to PM me in case you have any questions.
Posted by swatkats, 09-07-2013, 12:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

Downtime was for around 9 hrs, pingdom report attached.

So you run myfaridabad? This site is probably one of the most oldest sites hosted on 109.73.166.3 AFAIK.

- Leapswitch is not new firm and even i was skeptical about their services, but they match the quality even with their rock bottom pricing. A happy customer and Fan of SSD Hosting
Posted by feastboy, 09-08-2013, 03:11 PM
i also planned to host in leapswith.

@swatkats
i also love SSD based hosting too because we all guys using wordpress or forum (all are database oriented) so i hope it load faster then normal 7.2k rpm drives based hosting
Posted by ishan, 09-08-2013, 03:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swatkats

So you run myfaridabad? This site is probably one of the most oldest sites hosted on 109.73.166.3 AFAIK.

- Leapswitch is not new firm and even i was skeptical about their services, but they match the quality even with their rock bottom pricing. A happy customer and Fan of SSD Hosting

Thank you for your feedback.

Quote:

Originally Posted by feastboy

i also planned to host in leapswith.

@swatkats
i also love SSD based hosting too because we all guys using wordpress or forum (all are database oriented) so i hope it load faster then normal 7.2k rpm drives based hosting

I look forward to seeing you host with us
Posted by webbew10, 09-19-2013, 07:45 PM
I had a site with leapswitch.
It was fairly reliable and fast and the support used to be competent but that changed. I would not recommend leapswitch for anything important. When your site is down for 2 days and it's always the same name on the person replying to your ticket and all you get are responses like "We are looking into that for you" and then they never do anything. I should add that the site wasn't down because of some server or network failure. The site was down because they screwed something up. Oh and their IP addresses are dirty dirty dirty.
Posted by ishan, 09-20-2013, 03:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webbew10

It was fairly reliable and fast and the support used to be competent but that changed. I would not recommend leapswitch for anything important. When your site is down for 2 days and it's always the same name on the person replying to your ticket and all you get are responses like "We are looking into that for you" and then they never do anything. I should add that the site wasn't down because of some server or network failure. The site was down because they screwed something up. Oh and their IP addresses are dirty dirty dirty.

Hello,
Can you provide your domain name or PM me your name/registered email address ? We have 10 technicians working round the clock so unless all your tickets are in the same timeframe the chances of same technician responding are very less.
2 days of downtime is huge, so I would like to see the ticket where this happened.
Shared hosting IPs can have some issues at times due to abuse, but generally resolved within a short time. A technician sends me weekly report of Blacklisted IPs as well as SenderBase reputation. Most of our shared hosting IPs have Good SenderBase reputation as per the latest report.
Posted by webbew10, 09-22-2013, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ishan

Hello,
Can you provide your domain name or PM me your name/registered email address ? We have 10 technicians working round the clock so unless all your tickets are in the same timeframe the chances of same technician responding are very less.
2 days of downtime is huge, so I would like to see the ticket where this happened.
Shared hosting IPs can have some issues at times due to abuse, but generally resolved within a short time. A technician sends me weekly report of Blacklisted IPs as well as SenderBase reputation. Most of our shared hosting IPs have Good SenderBase reputation as per the latest report.

I can but I'm not going to. The site is long gone from your servers.
The trouble was with a vps account not shared hosting. On numerous occasions requests were made about emails not going through and your ultimate solution was to use gmail.
When one day the site was left with an open directory listing and the index page was gone (!!!!!!), response from support was so slow and took so many repeated requests to restore a backup, that we had to put our own backup of the site somewhere else. How does something like that happen anyway?! Sorry, but something like that is unforgivable. If it was corrected on the spot, within moments of it happening, that would be one thing. Still bad, but the fact that it dragged on for an agonizing and embarrassing two days and had to be moved somewhere else speaks volumes for the competence of your technicians responding during that period. If you have more than one technician, they were all using the same name.
Posted by ishan, 09-22-2013, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webbew10

I can but I'm not going to. The site is long gone from your servers.
The trouble was with a vps account not shared hosting. On numerous occasions requests were made about emails not going through and your ultimate solution was to use gmail.
When one day the site was left with an open directory listing and the index page was gone (!!!!!!), response from support was so slow and took so many repeated requests to restore a backup, that we had to put our own backup of the site somewhere else. How does something like that happen anyway?! Sorry, but something like that is unforgivable. If it was corrected on the spot, within moments of it happening, that would be one thing. Still bad, but the fact that it dragged on for an agonizing and embarrassing two days and had to be moved somewhere else speaks volumes for the competence of your technicians responding during that period. If you have more than one technician, they were all using the same name.

None of this sounds like an experience of one of our customers. If a customer is pissed, technicians escalate it to our Operations Manager or to me. Please PM me name, IP or something I can use to identify you and take a look at what happened.
Posted by webbew10, 09-27-2013, 07:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ishan

None of this sounds like an experience of one of our customers. If a customer is pissed, technicians escalate it to our Operations Manager or to me. Please PM me name, IP or something I can use to identify you and take a look at what happened.

Why should I?

Is there something in it for me to go through that trouble?

As for being "pissed" in order to get through to someone who is knowledgeable, I normally stay pretty calm. I was trying to get someone to restore the site and they could have easily not done that if I was too pissed. I never got anyone to work harder by being pissed and frankly, I don't know what more I could have done to express my displeasure. There's submitting tickets (all of which where marked URGENT) and if you're lucky you can get support via live chat once in a blue moon. Can't call you.
Posted by shakensoul, 10-06-2013, 12:30 AM
Update: 6th October

The website is down for about 6 hrs+ in the night.

In the morning, I wake up to a blank website, i.e. no files.

Support had no clue until ticket was raised.
Posted by troboy, 10-06-2013, 01:33 AM
Hostdime is hosting their serves in India at WebWerks.in data center.
Posted by prateek, 10-06-2013, 02:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by feastboy

i also planned to host in leapswith.

@swatkats
i also love SSD based hosting too because we all guys using wordpress or forum (all are database oriented) so i hope it load faster then normal 7.2k rpm drives based hosting

it depends on user choice

ssd based raid got 4-5 times higher chance of random crash compare to a normal hdd while 7.2k hdd is 8-10 times slow
Posted by ishan, 10-06-2013, 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prateek

ssd based raid got 4-5 times higher chance of random crash compare to a normal hdd

This is based on ?

We are running a dozen SSD RAID10 nodes over past 2-3 years and none of them have had a random crash, while SATA RAID10 nodes have had multiple HDD and RAID failures over the same period.
Posted by swatkats, 10-06-2013, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

Update: 6th October

The website is down for about 6 hrs+ in the night.

In the morning, I wake up to a blank website, i.e. no files.

Support had no clue until ticket was raised.

It's time to move on, You gave them many chances but they continue their Saga.
It's a Shame. Hostdime.in Services are no longer suggestible while Hostdime.com Remains one of my Favorite brand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by troboy

Hostdime is hosting their serves in India at WebWerks.in data center.

It's been almost 2years they moved to Spectranet Dc.
Posted by HostDime, 10-08-2013, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shakensoul

Update: 6th October

The website is down for about 6 hrs+ in the night.

In the morning, I wake up to a blank website, i.e. no files.

Support had no clue until ticket was raised.

shakensoul,

We monitor all servers 24x7 if something is down the NOC techs address it. If your specific website has a blank white site it maybe related to something specific on your website. We would not know about your specific site as it is not feasible to go through millions of websites each day. So we do rely on you letting us know if you need assistance. I hope you see what I mean here.

It is also possible the issue you are seeing is specific to your website only and not the whole server. I would be happy to look into this personally please contact me

manny.v @ hostdime.com
MSN and GoogleTalk: manny.v@hostdime.com
Skype: HostDime
Posted by HostDime, 10-08-2013, 01:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by troboy

Hostdime is hosting their serves in India at WebWerks.in data center.

That is incorrect we own and operate our OWN network in India which you can trace in our ip's 109.73.166.43

When we expanded to India the importance of running our own network and hardware was important to be able to supply our clients the best level of service.
Posted by HostDime, 10-08-2013, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swatkats

It's time to move on, You gave them many chances but they continue their Saga.
It's a Shame. Hostdime.in Services are no longer suggestible while Hostdime.com Remains one of my Favorite brand.

swatkats we love to you too!

One issue doesn't mean thousands are having issues
Posted by swatkats, 10-08-2013, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostDime

One issue doesn't mean thousands are having issues

That is Correct
Posted by HostDime, 10-08-2013, 03:45 PM
You are correct and your suggestions are very much respected. I am going to be going to India in the next coming months I hope we can meet.
Posted by swatkats, 10-08-2013, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostDime

That is incorrect we own and operate our OWN network in India which you can trace in our ip's 109.73.166.43

TATA is your only upstream provider? Doesn't look like a multi homed setup? Correct me if i am wrong.
Posted by HostDime, 10-08-2013, 04:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swatkats

TATA is your only upstream provider? Doesn't look like a multi homed setup? Correct me if i am wrong.

Airtel is running on hot-standby, we don't run them in parallel due to best performance with tata routes.
Posted by shakensoul, 10-09-2013, 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostDime

shakensoul,

We monitor all servers 24x7 if something is down the NOC techs address it. If your specific website has a blank white site it maybe related to something specific on your website. We would not know about your specific site as it is not feasible to go through millions of websites each day. So we do rely on you letting us know if you need assistance. I hope you see what I mean here.

It is also possible the issue you are seeing is specific to your website only and not the whole server. I would be happy to look into this personally please contact me

manny.v @ hostdime.com
MSN and GoogleTalk: manny.v@hostdime.com
Skype: HostDime

Hello Manny,

I understand that its impossible for a host to monitor if all websites on their server are working, however its also unfair to expect a customer to monitor and raise tickets to restore their sites after every downtime occurs. Downtimes are expected and I have no complaints, however it becomes a concern if the frequency increases, and moreover after a downtime, you atleast expect that your websites will be running as before.

When I said the website was blank, it meant that when I opened my main website, I was greeted by this message,

Index of /

Apache/2.2.25 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.25 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_bwlimited/1.4 Server at www.website.in Port 80

which meant that the files/folder was removed. The rest of the sites were working.

I still believe Hostdime is one of the reputed providers we have in India, and that is the reason I am still with HD, however it would be a shame if HD reputation went the Hostgator way and service quality takes a hit.
Posted by shakensoul, 10-09-2013, 03:58 AM
Well, it seems I spoke too soon.

Apparently I was under the impression that my subdomains would be working.

After making the above post, I decided to check my other subdomains, and to my surprise, they were not working. I checked cpanel, and as expected, no files under my subdomain, screenshots attached.

Also all my cron jobs were deleted. After the previous fiasco where data was lost, I installed a script which would automatically backup and transfer the DB/files to Amazon S3 daily. These cron jobs were also deleted, hence backups were not taking place.

Also it seems that HD deleted all my previous backup which I had saved in the root folder.
Posted by prateek, 10-09-2013, 05:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HostDime

That is incorrect we own and operate our OWN network in India which you can trace in our ip's 109.73.166.43

When we expanded to India the importance of running our own network and hardware was important to be able to supply our clients the best level of service.

out of curiosity where in india is hostdime located?
Posted by swatkats, 10-09-2013, 01:27 PM
This is Surprising, How could the files go missing?
Posted by swatkats, 10-09-2013, 01:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by prateek

out of curiosity where in india is hostdime located?

Offices are at Trivandrum,kerala and Dc is Spectranet,Delhi.