HostGator.com Down? [Threads merged]

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Posted by Tinkleondabeach, 05-12-2009, 05:48 PM
Looks like my website as well as hostgator.com and it's forums are down
Posted by everity, 05-12-2009, 05:51 PM
There is an outage at The Planet. It is affecting a lot of hosting companies, including HostGator.
Posted by Tyl3r, 05-12-2009, 05:51 PM
Yes, due to theplanet.com being down.
Posted by coloheart, 05-12-2009, 05:52 PM
Hostgator is really down .. I must admit it is a NEWS.
Posted by HRDev Hady, 05-12-2009, 05:52 PM
/me waits for updates on the situation. Hopefully nothing major.
Posted by everity, 05-12-2009, 05:55 PM
At this point, I am being told that they are "working on it."
Posted by houlie, 05-12-2009, 05:55 PM
Any update on this issue from hostgator?
Posted by elektrobank, 05-12-2009, 05:57 PM
All their hosted accounts are down, and their own web site is down. And their support line is disconnected. AHHHHHHH!
Posted by SenseiSteve, 05-12-2009, 05:59 PM
What happened to the windmills?
Posted by cylence, 05-12-2009, 06:00 PM
All their overselling must have come back to bite them
Posted by SenseiSteve, 05-12-2009, 06:01 PM
See the thread on Network Outages.
Posted by txitcs, 05-12-2009, 06:05 PM
No more wind.
Posted by Orien, 05-12-2009, 06:06 PM
Basically, some parts of The Planet (which HostGator uses) are down.
Posted by Tim Greer, 05-12-2009, 06:08 PM
As if overselling would have that wide, global result for all of their services suddenly being gone. Anyway, it's just a global issue at one of the planet's data centers and a lot of hosts and servers at TP are affected (many thousands of them).
Posted by MikeDVB, 05-12-2009, 06:10 PM
It doesn't surprise me to see ThePlanet down again, this is why I moved all of my servers out of there last year.
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-12-2009, 06:10 PM
Hello, I have contacted some of the higher ups at theplanet to find out what is going on with this network outage. I should be getting a call back any minute with a status report.
Posted by UnderHost, 05-12-2009, 06:12 PM
Gator was eaten by the competition!
Posted by txitcs, 05-12-2009, 06:13 PM
It's nice having friends in high places.
Posted by MikeDVB, 05-12-2009, 06:13 PM
More like HostGator's provider has had a major issue, I hope the truth comes out as to what the issue is.
Posted by nibb, 05-12-2009, 06:15 PM
Same here. I moved when I saw the network was having some small glitches. And yes, overselling came back to bite them. Their unlimited plans where just to low priced. Their network must be suffering the effects now of wide overselling. Its just a matter of time before some customers use their traffic all at the same time and BLOW up switches and routers.
Posted by MikeDVB, 05-12-2009, 06:16 PM
That's fantastic, we'll love to see what they have to tell you being that you are [one of] the largest customers of theirs last time I checked. Here is the thread about ThePlanet being down (including HostGator): http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=861154
Posted by medic7103, 05-12-2009, 06:17 PM
WHT comes through again! Thanks elektrobank for asking the question. I just logged on to find my all my sites offline. Freaking out I came here hoping someone else might know what was going on. I can relax....a little :-P
Posted by m44verick, 05-12-2009, 06:17 PM
WTF, their phones are dead too? UPDATED: All back up now
Posted by txitcs, 05-12-2009, 06:18 PM
Yeah, I'm pretty interested myself. I think it's time for HostGator to get off of The Planet's boob and start their own data center anyway.
Posted by txitcs, 05-12-2009, 06:20 PM
think you could handle 2k phone calls at once? When stuff like this happens, even phone companies are like "WTF?!"
Posted by Tinkleondabeach, 05-12-2009, 06:22 PM
Sites are back up
Posted by m44verick, 05-12-2009, 06:22 PM
I think it was more then 2k phone calls
Posted by BrentOfHG, 05-12-2009, 06:22 PM
I just got a call back a minute ago and was told it had something to do with a router not "advertising" a route. It looks like everything is backup and running so hopefully it stays up.
Posted by elektrobank, 05-12-2009, 06:22 PM
Finally back up. Does anyone have any idea how long that downtime lasted? I'm done with these guys for good, I'm moving my site to another company right now.
Posted by everity, 05-12-2009, 06:23 PM
It appears that everything is working again.
Posted by afshin, 05-12-2009, 06:23 PM
The question is why is it when you call their number the message says "this number is no longer active..."
Posted by WinterServer, 05-12-2009, 06:23 PM
My dedicated server (and about 150 sites) and about 20 sites on my resold account are back online. Hostgator needs to host a site elsewhere to let their clients know what the heck is going on during these outages.
Posted by txitcs, 05-12-2009, 06:24 PM
This can happen with any web host, and will. Well good luck on your move, just make sure your host's server's are not located at The Planet.
Posted by m44verick, 05-12-2009, 06:26 PM
OK, so right now I want 12 months of free hosting, because of my heart attack.
Posted by afshin, 05-12-2009, 06:28 PM
I definitely agree... Hostgator needs to host their own site elsewhere to let their clients know what the heck is going on during these outages. I was going crazy... All my clients started calling... and when I called them, and the phone was dead... I was like... #$%^&
Posted by merletweb, 05-12-2009, 06:30 PM
They are up and running again!
Posted by Jay W, 05-12-2009, 06:32 PM
http://twitter.com/hostgator/ is the best place to get updates in a situation like this.
Posted by nibb, 05-12-2009, 06:34 PM
your right. I wasnt referring to hostgator. They just depend on The Planet. I meant The Planet is overselling. Hostgator could possible not be responsible for this as they just host their servers there.
Posted by nibb, 05-12-2009, 06:35 PM
That doesnt make sense. Why would hostgator host their website in another place where they dont host their clients? Any DC can have downtimes. If they host it on another DC the same could happen.
Posted by plumsauce, 05-12-2009, 06:37 PM
But, the likelihood that they would both be down at the same time is small.
Posted by afshin, 05-12-2009, 06:40 PM
Exactly My Point...
Posted by nibb, 05-12-2009, 06:43 PM
I would not host in a company that doesnt have faith in their own setup. They should always use the same they give their clients. It doesnt look to good if they host on another facility then the service they give to their clients. They have twitter for that and WHT. Its not worth to host on another DC. This was a major outage so this is not going to happen again in the next 5 years. So i think its ok to host in the same network as their own clients.
Posted by plumsauce, 05-12-2009, 06:48 PM
Well, twitter is a separate physical location, so why not a separate physical location for support? No one is suggesting that the *main* site should not be on their network. Just that there should be an *alternate* facility. Anyone with any pride thinks that what they sell is good. The ones with experience allow for disasters.
Posted by afshin, 05-12-2009, 06:49 PM
I didn't know about them being on twitter... They should put that somewhere on their homepage... They are honestly the best Reseller Hosting I've ever been with. Amazing Customer Service... And The Owner Of The Company Brent Is the nicest guy ever. Some one who listens to their clients... and responds back. You don't see that often with big companies.
Posted by afshin, 05-12-2009, 06:51 PM
Great Point...
Posted by layer0, 05-12-2009, 07:02 PM
Please enlighten me as to how this has anything at all to do with overselling...hopefully you just weren't serious with this post. How exactly do you know that this won't happen again in another "5 years"? Some customers of ThePlanet have been through an outage spanning several days. Having a website in an alternate location can prevent you from losing many customers in such a situation. Having faith in your own infrastructure is one thing, but you should realize that it certainly can fail at some point. Hosting your own site or support center, etc. at an alternate location is simply a way of being prepared for disaster.
Posted by whmcsguru, 05-12-2009, 07:42 PM
Actually, it looks professional if they split things up like this, for this very reason. Keeping off network status pages and helpdesks helps to relieve the problems that could come up, and it helps get the word out to clients, providing them the one on one support they need. Firstly, twitter and WHT are absolutely no substitute for a helpdesk, or status page, even temporarily. It's not WHT's responsibility, nor is it twitter to provide support for a massive influx of clients because of problems like this. The professional and mature response is to place things on a separate network. This doesn't mean the company doesn't value their OWN network, it merely means that the company understands and accepts that secondary measures must take place. Secondly, this COULD happen easily again in five years. In the 7 years I've been running things, ThePlanet alone has had at least 4 or 5 massive events, fire, explosion, circuits going, you name it. That's just TP, I'm sure there are others with just as horrific problems. Never say "it won't happen for 5 years", because it CAN and WILL happen at any time.
Posted by nibb, 05-12-2009, 08:04 PM
Well he hope it doenst happen again. As far as I know TP has several facilities, and today several where affected. So splitting things inside TP which would be different DCs would had not helped here. Putting it on different network, companies or better, another continent. Then you should have 100% redundancy. One DC in the US , the other in Europe. But all this costs money, having 2 DCs, still they could look at Terramark Cloud Enterprise which lets you live load your server between their worldwide DCs as well plug and play 160 carriers. Redundancy is great, and im sure HG can afford it. I think some misunderstood what I said. I dont believe at all in putting all eggs on the same basket. But if HG is suppose to do this they should not only host their website in another DC but do it for their clients as well. Sounds fair?
Posted by plumsauce, 05-12-2009, 08:53 PM
You started out claiming a host should have all their eggs in one basket, and now this redundancy everywhere position. So which is it? As for customers, any customer is free to decide they need redundancy, and pay appropriately for it. Even better, they should obtain it from multiple vendors. As for twitter. Some twits like it.
Posted by elektrobank, 05-13-2009, 02:54 PM
They need to have an email notification system in place and host their own site elsewhere. The fact that their own website was down and their phone lines were not in service, made me think the worst. I immediately signed up for another hosting company just so I could at least put up a simple page explaining that we were currently down, which turned out to be a big waste of time and money. Without any indication from hostgator as to the type of problem and estimated downtime, I was left completely in the dark as to how to deal with the downtime and I feared the possibility (because of their phones being down) that they were out of buisness. They could have sent out an email, or had a notice on their own page notifying of the downtime. That is the part of this that is not forgivable. Downtime happens, but we shouldn't all be left in the dark. Thanks to whoever posted the twitter page, I wish they would make that better known. And no apology or explanation email after the fact? I had to send an email to all my clients notifying them of the problem and applogize afterwards, and even offer some free services to some of them to make up for it. Not to mention that email was down and I missed support emails during that time period. Last edited by elektrobank; 05-13-2009 at 02:58 PM.
Posted by everity, 05-13-2009, 05:00 PM
From my perspective, it seems like HostGator and The Planet are getting some rather harsh treatment. I have a few servers at The Planet, and my total downtime was 45 minutes. I am not sure where the 3 hour figures are coming from. I did not worry for 1 second that they had gone out of business. Just because your site and your provider's site go down at the same time does not mean they went out of business, especially for a big provider such as TP. I contacted them and got an almost immediate response, and was told they were working on it. On behalf of all hosts, let me make a very important point here that a lot of people seem to miss. If a major issue happens, your provider is going to know about it. They don't need 10,000 people overloading their support system and yelling at them. As ldcdc said, downtimes happen even to the best of the best. It does not warrant all this animosity. Most providers do not guarantee 100% uptime, but the ones who actually deliver it get the harshest criticism during the rare circumstance when something goes wrong, because their customers are spoiled. I think TP provides a great service overall, and I think they handled this extremely well. In fact, I don't think they could have handled it any better.
Posted by plumsauce, 05-13-2009, 05:47 PM
Yes, but aren't you criticising HG for not hosting an auxillary presence somewhere else? If that is the case, then by the same token, where was your auxillary email server and support area?