Singlehop issues .. An hour or more downtime every week

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Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 02:42 AM
Hi all,

Just need some help.

We have a dedicated server (Managed) with SingleHop for more than a year now. Had no issues until last month but since last 4 weeks, we are getting these regular downtimes every 3-4 days. Luckily, we have a server monitoring services which alerts us when server is down and then once we contact SingleHop, they take atleast 90 minutes to restore the services with little or no explanation of what went wrong.

Every time, we have to pay $10 for a priority response to get them to work on the issue quickly. If the server is down, they should get to it ASAP without us alerting them in the first place but we have been pay $40-$50 just to get their attention when they screw up.

This is seriously becoming a joke - I have contacted my Account Manager who is willing to refund for the time site was down ($3-4 for 2-3 hours) and no other help. We get around 10,000 uniques a day and now this is causing us financial loss and driving customer away from the business.

There is definitely something wrong but they can't figure out the issue or not interested in it. As I write, my server is down for almost an hour and technician last replied to me 30 minutes ago saying server was back online but it never came back online.

Should I give up on them on go to another host? Any experiences/ideas on getting them to offer better service. 3-4 hours a week during day time is JUST PLAIN HORRIBLE for any hosting company.

Thanks
Posted by LevelHosting Inc, 09-18-2011, 02:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tobarga

Hi all,

Just need some help.

We have a dedicated server (Managed) with SingleHop for more than a year now. Had no issues until last month but since last 4 weeks, we are getting these regular downtimes every 3-4 days. Luckily, we have a server monitoring services which alerts us when server is down and then once we contact SingleHop, they take atleast 90 minutes to restore the services with little or no explanation of what went wrong.

Every time, we have to pay $10 for a priority response to get them to work on the issue quickly. If the server is down, they should get to it ASAP without us alerting them in the first place but we have been pay $40-$50 just to get their attention when they screw up.

This is seriously becoming a joke - I have contacted my Account Manager who is willing to refund for the time site was down ($3-4 for 2-3 hours) and no other help. We get around 10,000 uniques a day and now this is causing us financial loss and driving customer away from the business.

There is definitely something wrong but they can't figure out the issue or not interested in it. As I write, my server is down for almost an hour and technician last replied to me 30 minutes ago saying server was back online but it never came back online.

Should I give up on them on go to another host? Any experiences/ideas on getting them to offer better service. 3-4 hours a week during day time is JUST PLAIN HORRIBLE for any hosting company.

Thanks

Hello tobarga,

I don't believe your post is in the correct category. Is there an actual provider and network outage? No. This thread is somewhat misleading and not fair to SingleHop since technically there is no outage or downtime with their network. However, in this particular case you seem to be having issues with your server. As outlined in the forum heading "This forum is provided to discuss current outage issues and to allow a way for customers and providers to communicate."

In regards to your original inquiry, I think you summed up your own answer. If you receive 10,000 unique visitors a day then the real question you need to ask yourself is, what sort of impact does this have on your bottom line?

Good luck...
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 03:01 AM
No further update .. sever still down.. last email was a long time ago.

Quote:

Hello,

Your server is running a FSCK at this time:

Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
/: |====== \ 9.2%

Please standby for updates.

No issues reported at official status page for Singlehop.
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LevelHosting Inc

Hello tobarga,

I don't believe your post is in the correct category. Is there an actual provider and network outage? No. This thread is somewhat misleading and not fair to SingleHop since technically there is no outage or downtime with their network. However, in this particular case you seem to be having issues with your server. As outlined in the forum heading "This forum is provided to discuss current outage issues and to allow a way for customers and providers to communicate."

In regards to your original inquiry, I think you summed up your own answer. If you receive 10,000 unique visitors a day then the real question you need to ask yourself is, what sort of impact does this have on your bottom line?

Good luck...

Hi,

I am not too sure if there is no issue with network. Last time, it turned out to be issue with a shared Firewall which was affecting a lot of servers but it was not updated on their status page. Once we reported our server to be down, only then they discovered the issue and reported on the status page.

This is a managed server - they get paid to manage and maintain it. Not that it is an issue with a website hosted on the server being down - the whole thing is down without an explanation.
Posted by LevelHosting Inc, 09-18-2011, 03:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tobarga

Hi,

I am not too sure if there is no issue with network. Last time, it turned out to be issue with a shared Firewall which was affecting a lot of servers but it was not updated on their status page. Once we reported our server to be down, only then they discovered the issue and reported on the status page.

This is a managed server - they get paid to manage and maintain it. Not that it is an issue with a website hosted on the server being down - the whole thing is down without an explanation.

From the information you provided in your last post it looks like your server is running a FSCK and from what I know this procedure can take quite some time.

I can't say I feel your pain however, if I were you I could understand the frustration and inconvenience you're in. For that very reason, if you don't feel like you're getting the level of service you deserve and require then perhaps you should start working on an exit plan?

Ciao...
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LevelHosting Inc

From the information you provided in your last post it looks like your server is running a FSCK and from what I know this procedure can take quite some time.

I can't say I feel your pain however, if I were you I could understand the frustration and inconvenience you're in. For that very reason, if you don't feel like you're getting the level of service you deserve and require then perhaps you should start working on an exit plan?

Ciao...

Thanks ..

Now more than 2 hours and server still down.

They are still investigating
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 04:12 AM
Just can't believe what's going on. After 2 hours of downtime, I receive below response:

Quote:

Hello,

I am transferring this ticket to our General support queue for further review.

Note that any responses to this ticket will be submitted into the General Support queue, and that these queues are monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. If you require additional technical assistance with an unrelated issue please submit a ticket into General Support and do not respond to this ticket. This will guarantee faster service.

Thank you for your patience and standby for an update from one of our Support Technicians!
--
Eric Wayda
Datacenter Technician
SingleHop, Inc. – Chicago

No idea what the hell above means and what am I supposed to do???
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 04:33 AM
Still down .. they are not even replying to emails.. if you judge a host by how well they respond when you need them, SingleHop are really letting us down.. just bad bad communication..
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 04:41 AM
2 hours and 55 minutes ..

Got an email from lead administrator and now he is looking into the issue.
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 04:47 AM
Apparently the network connection to server is down .. the nightmare continues.
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 05:05 AM
Tech reports that the issue was with Shared Firewall ... this was the exact same reason when it went down 3-4 days ago.. not sure what's going to prevent it from happening again.

Sites not online yet.
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 05:31 AM
3 hours 50 minutes
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 05:48 AM
now WHM is working but no sites .. more than 4 hours
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 07:13 AM
Sites are now back online after 5 hours .. what a traumatic experience?

Now hope they can find out the issue and prevent it in the future instead of causing damages to their customers.

If they can't tell me what went wrong and how they are going to prevent it from happening again (considering 4 downtimes in such a short period of time), they shouldn't be in this business.
Posted by gate2vn, 09-18-2011, 08:37 AM
Just wondering if there is anything wrong with firewall, why your server needs to run fsck?
Posted by tobarga, 09-18-2011, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gate2vn

Just wondering if there is anything wrong with firewall, why your server needs to run fsck?

First tech tried a few more things as well like suspending all the domains (told by second tech) and managed to mess up DNS as well. He spent 3 hours doing these experiments and I was lucky that issue got escalated to a senior tech who finally resolved it.

I have asked them to explain to me what went wrong initially and how they will prevent it from happening again considering it has happened 3-4 times already in a very short period of time.

If they can't figure that out, obviously they can't be trusted with my business.
Posted by SingleHop_Kevin, 09-18-2011, 08:38 PM
I am very sorry for this morning's tech issues and our lack of clear communicated solutions. I am working with our technicians to make sure we preemptively resolve these issues moving forward.
Posted by tobarga, 09-19-2011, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SingleHop_Kevin

I am very sorry for this morning's tech issues and our lack of clear communicated solutions. I am working with our technicians to make sure we preemptively resolve these issues moving forward.

Kevin,

Can you please let me know if any issues were identified? I have not heard anything yet and want to avoid any future downtimes moving forward.

Last time it was a firewall issues which was not fully addressed as long as server came back online and it caused more than 15 hours downtime. I don't have the patience to go through all over again.

Thanks
Posted by SingleHop_Kevin, 09-19-2011, 11:07 PM
We are pulling in our senior team to comb over your setup and fortify things going forward so you're more comfortable with your service.

What time are you available tomorrow to have a conference call with our senior support team?
Posted by tobarga, 09-25-2011, 11:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SingleHop_Kevin

We are pulling in our senior team to comb over your setup and fortify things going forward so you're more comfortable with your service.

What time are you available tomorrow to have a conference call with our senior support team?

Just to closing the loop on this one.

Finally, after another down time, I think the issue has been identified. It was the var/temp which kept filling and brought the whole thing down by creating server load. Thanks Jordan Cooks in helping figure this out.

Having said that, I am least impressed by the level of knowledge and turnaround time for critical issues. This thing should have been identified very easily at the beginning.

Thanks
Posted by SingleHop_Kevin, 09-26-2011, 11:56 AM
I am truly sorry this issue was not resolved in the manner or time in which you would have preferred. I can only promise we are constantly working to improve our products and services. Thank you for your honest opinions throughout this entire process.