DMEHosting VPS Down for Seven hours

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Posted by Acorp, 10-03-2010, 09:58 PM
My VPS at DMEHosting is down and has been unavailable since 2PM CDT on 10/03/2010.

A ping to my IP address receives a reply with no loss, however no VPS services are up/available.

Attempts to access my VPS via DMEHosting's HyperVM control panel give the error, "Could not connect to the server openvz101.dmehosting.com."

I notified DMEHosting via ticket system at 2:45PM. I updated the status of my ticket several times, but have yet to receive a response (other than the automated ticket submittal response).

At about 7:30PM (5.5 hours of downtime) I attempted to call DMEHosting, but experienced busy signals, then continual ringing with no answer/voice mail/etc.

At about 8PM (6 hours of downtime) I faxed in a repair request (and of course have not received a response from that either).

The non-response from DMEHosting is a concern, though also a little bit of an aberration. Typically DMEHosting respond once the VPS is back up saying, "everything looks good here, please try it now." Which, while not really acknowledging a problem, at least is a real human response which lets me know they have worked on/resolved the issue.

An outage in and of itself is not cause for canceling service, however the lack of response to an outage approaching seven hours is unacceptable. I've switched all my services over to my backup VPS, and will be considering whether or not to continue my service when next month's bill comes due next week.

In DME's defense, this is the first outage longer than a fifteen or twenty minutes I have experienced in several months of service.
Posted by NetDepot - Terrence, 10-03-2010, 10:28 PM
That's alot of down time with not response from your provider, you might want to find a new host.
Posted by Acorp, 10-03-2010, 11:01 PM
Yup - have moved all services to my backup VPS (different provider) and am now looking for a possible replacement for DME...I like to have two low cost VPS's for "hot backup" - perfect for instances like this!
Posted by Acorp, 10-04-2010, 01:40 AM
OK, DMEHosting has, "sealed the door" on their fate. Their response to my HIGH priority ticket, 10 hours after I submitted it, is as follows:

"Your VPS has been online for the past 9 hours.
23:25:28 up 8:57, 0 users, load average: 0.16, 0.08, 0.05"

It may have been online, but it certainly wasn't reachable from the internet at large. I have my site monitored by multiple monitoring services.

MXToolbox.com reported SMTP/email failure at 2:02PM CDT 10/3/2010. I confirmed the same issue (inability to send or receive email to/from my VPS server) from my local internet connection as well.

At 2:06PM CDT 10/3/2010, SiteUpTime.com reported failure to contact my VPS. I confirmed inability to access any web sites hosted on my VPS via my local internet connection.

At 2:15PM CDT 10/3/2010, pliner.net reported failure to contact my VPS. I confirmed the inability to connect to my VPS via SSH.

All three monitoring services continued to report failures until shortly before midnight, 10/3/2010.

I think, with a reasonable response and apology, that I would have been willing to give DMEHosting another chance...but to fail to respond to a HIGH priority ticket for nearly 10 hours, then to deny any issues or problems at all, and worse, to assume that I am an imbecile who doesn't know if my VPS is online or not is unacceptable.

DMEHosting, you blew it.