Dixie Systems Down?

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Posted by gilmangroup, 10-01-2011, 11:17 PM
Got an email notice that Dixie Systems was supposed to be down for maintenance from 10AM EST until 10PM EST. My server has been offline since 2:45PM EST and wondering if any other customers are still offline?

Dixie Systems main website is down as well as their support portal. The downtime according to their email was only to be for 2 hours. They aren't answering their phones (of course in the 3 years I have been with them they ave never answered their phones).

If anyone has contact info or has been in contact and has an ETA on when they expect to be back up I would appreciate an update.

Jeff Hoffman
Gilman Group
Posted by FRCorey, 10-01-2011, 11:20 PM
red flag that they never answer the phone

maybe here's an alt contact

Administrative Contact:
Dixie Systems
Steve Shickles (sales@dixiesys.com, sales@dixiesys.com)
+1.2565345123
Fax: +1.8888173650
2311 Market Pl. SW
Suite E
Huntsville, AL 35801
US
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-01-2011, 11:27 PM
Thanks - at least that number asked to leave a message - their main support number had me holding for 30 minutes. We'll see if they respond.
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-02-2011, 03:48 AM
It has now been 13 hours since our server went down and still no response from Dixie Systems on an ETA. I see their support portal and main site are now back online. Hopefully we'll hear something from them soon.

Never got a response from my voice mail so here is hoping they'll respond to my support ticket.
Posted by twistedgamer, 10-02-2011, 04:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilmangroup

It has now been 13 hours since our server went down and still no response from Dixie Systems on an ETA. I see their support portal and main site are now back online. Hopefully we'll hear something from them soon.

Never got a response from my voice mail so here is hoping they'll respond to my support ticket.

Well that's a start I guess, but yeah so much for 2hr window......

And the 800 has always been flaky. IRC was always best way to get a hold of Dixiesy when Gary was running it. Don't think 451 press even has it forwarded anywhere.

Well I see one of the bigger clients is up and running... spywareinfoforum.com
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-02-2011, 05:31 AM
Yeah this is really a disappointment. I'm paying over $400 per month for a server - you would think they could at least update their client portal. I host only sites I manage for my clients so this is a really killer for us to be down this long. These are legitimate businesses that depend on their websites being up and I got nothing to tell them at the moment.

This is our second major outage this year so I think it is time to start considering a move - I hate the idea of doing that but I am really disappointed in their support.
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-02-2011, 12:57 PM
Well after 21 hours my server came back online for 15 minutes and is gone down again. Noticed that their entire network is down including their main site and support site.

Just wondering if I am the only one here using them as no one else seems to be reporting issues here.
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 01:52 PM
Hi all,

I've been placing clients at Dixie for nearly 10 years and have to say the service and uptime were always excellent - until this year.

As for this latest fiasco, I've been able to access the ticket system twice, once last night and once today but with no response from them yet. I also have two client sites back up but, as we do our own DNS, obviously they haven't even been moved yet.

Disappointment with Dixie, right now, is an understatement!!!
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 04:53 PM
A third client site is back up but again, no new IP assignment and still no contact with DS.
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 05:14 PM
Looks like my sites that are back up are running on the new servers. If this was supposed to be a seamless migration, why were we told to be prepared to update DNS?
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-02-2011, 06:23 PM
Our server is back up again. Almost 24 hours downtime and not a word from Dixie Systems. I understand they don't have a lot of time to answer a bunch of tickets or email but they could at least provide some kind of update. We all have to answer to clients and it doesn't give a client a lot of confidence when you tell them you can't tell them what has happened or how long their website will be down.

I also see that both Dixie's main site and support portal are again down. They are supposed to be issuing new IP addresses. I was specifically told by support that if you are using Dixie's name servers your DNS will update automatically.

I have several clients that manage their own DNS and their sites will go down when the new IP address is issued. At the moment that hasn't happened.
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 06:37 PM
I still have a reseller account down (multiple sites). No notices of new IP assignments at all - I do DNS for all my client accounts.

I can access the portal area and login. They should at least be posting updates in the Announcements area of the portal but there's nothing.

They have really 'crashed and burned' for me on this one. No comm. from them? That's deadly!!! And why were they doing a network migration during the day anyway? This kind of work should always be done at night to minimize any downtime - it always was in the past!
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-02-2011, 07:06 PM
Pretty much sealed it for me. I just got a response saying sorry for delay and downtime but your server is now up so let us know if we can be of help.
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 10:10 PM
9:45 p.m. my time. My reseller's acc't. is still down (approx. 33 hrs. now). Just had a response on a support ticket. They apologize for delay in response and interruption of service. They claim post-move router problems are the cause but they are "working diligently" on it. They have no ETA as to when problems will be solved AND they closed my ticket.

451 Press, LLC: You have a major cust/serv PR problem here. You need to recognize it and deal with it!!
Posted by cdntechgirl, 10-02-2011, 11:41 PM
DS just confirmed that no IP addresses were changed, so, there's no need to update DNS.
Posted by gilmangroup, 10-03-2011, 08:25 AM
Hope your servers came back up. Everything is back up on our end. Now Monday morning and starting damage control and beginning the look for a new home.

By the way here is some of the email I received about this:

Quote:

This notice is a reminder regarding the upcoming network migration that will take place on October 1, 2011, from 10:00 AM EST to 10:00 PM EST. During the aforementioned window, DixieSystems network engineers and technical staff will be relocating all networking hardware, hosting servers, and other hosting-related inventory to a new enterprise-level hosting cage.

So they weren't changing servers (or at least dedicated servers because mine never changed). They were moving equipment.

I had two tickets open on this and they said sorry on the first and simply closed the second.
Posted by twistedgamer, 10-03-2011, 09:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gilmangroup

I had two tickets open on this and they said sorry on the first and simply closed the second.

That's about the jist of all the support tickets for Dixiesys now.
Posted by BC-enetsouth, 10-04-2011, 02:14 AM
I see this company is running out of Huntsville, AL. We are out of Birmingham, AL. I had never heard of them!
Posted by nuthin, 10-04-2011, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BC-enetsouth

I see this company is running out of Huntsville, AL. We are out of Birmingham, AL. I had never heard of them!

Now there's a name from the past. Dixie Systems used to be quite active on this forum about 10 years ago. Likely was the different owner by the looks.
Posted by Applejack123, 10-04-2011, 06:52 AM
It's Tuesday Morning, my dedicated server is still down. I was on with tech support twice yesterday. It's sloppy support so far, "we restarted your server, check in 15 minutes and let us know if you have any problems", I guess they didn't expect me to be waiting for their email. What a disaster. I have been with them since the time Gary owned the company. This reminds me of the CIHost mess man years ago.
Posted by twistedgamer, 10-06-2011, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BC-enetsouth

I see this company is running out of Huntsville, AL. We are out of Birmingham, AL. I had never heard of them!

Dixie Systems has been around for quite awhile. They used have the 395.com domain name or something like that.

451 Press is more of a Media company. They run a bunch of blogs and decided to buy a few hosting companies and combine them. Dixiesys was one of the ones they bought 2/3yrs ago???

Either way support has gone down hill drastically now that Gary is out of the picture.