Server6.specialservers.com - HardDrive Failure. - UK Web Hosting | Dedicated Server Windows and Linux VPS Forum

**eUKhost.com** · #1 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 15:45

Dear Customers,

Server6.specialservers.com ( 147.202.46.197 ) has gone offline due to failure of harddrive and we may need to reload the OS on a new drive and copy the existing contents on the new drive. This process will take 3 - 4 hours approximately and your websites will remain offline during this period. We apologise for any inconvenience caused due to this downtime.

Regards,
Technical Support Team,
http://eukhost.com

**acker** · #2 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 16:53

If this is just a hard-drive failure, can you tell me why the hard drives aren't RAID'd so that you don't suffer downtime like this?
There is no mention of any possible data loss that may have occured, it might be nice if you could reasure us of that point.

Why is it that earlier in the day when I mentioned this problem, it was fixed in a matter of minutes and I was told that "a service was restarted", it feels very much to me like you aren't telling us the whole truth about this!

The downtime and problems have lately been getting worse, I'm seriously thinking about moving my services else where.

**eUKhost.com** · #3 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 19:32

This server is a old server that we had setup before 2 years. We didnt choose RAID option for servers at that time but all our new servers purchased in last couple of months have RAID 1. Server had some problems from start of the week and we were resolving those errors with our technical knowledge but it crashed today.

We wont loose any data as the data will be restored as it is once the new drive is setup. It is going to take couple of hours more for the restore to be completed as most of the accounts on this server have consumed more than 1 GB Space. We offer mirroring and RAID on our semi dedicated plan. If you wish to move your account to any of our new servers then you can open a ticket with our support department and we will move your website without any cost for upgrade.

Anonymous · #4 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 22:00

I must say that I have had some great tech help over the past months but I cannot afford the downtime and the strange happenings! For instance why did the time of the server change the other month by a couple of hours, Basically the difference between USA and UK? I have many MYSQL's shops etc that need to be offset to reflect UK time. This is very annoying and embarrassing to be told the time is wrong by the client!

I read the post above with some concern!

I have a reseller package on this OLD server and I have many clients relying on the service that I supply. I need the 99% uptime as advertised! If this is not possible on the OLD server then it must be moved to one that can ASAP.

I have a website on another server of yours and yes I notice the difference!

Recommendation. Would it not be a good idea to send a text message to your customers when there is a problem! So that they can be prepared and be pro-active to keep their customers informed. At the end of the day ...Unhappy Customers leads to No Customers! None of us want that!

Gary

PS: The time is wrong on this forum too! 1 hour out

**Gary** · #5 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 22:07

Um got me down as a guest?

**eUKhost.com** · #6 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 22:10

If we had intimation of this downtime then we would have done everything possible to avoid it. We will move your account to another server but the existing server needs to come online to transfer your account. We apologise for this inconvenience but we could not make out the problem untill and unless the drive failed to function completely.

Hopefully you will get 100% uptime for coming few months which will compensate this downtime.

Anonymous · #7 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 22:30

I'm getting pretty pissed off with this myself.

I noticed that things had changed with my website a couple of days ago - things that could only have changed because they were making changes to the servers.

I sent support an email and they denied they'd been doing anything.

It's pretty clear from the 'official' postings on here that they have been doing something recently ("Server had some problems from start of the week") to the server, so they COULD have told us about what they were doing - at least that might have given us a clue that things might soon go wrong. I'd have backed up some of my stuff for a start!

And it is crazy that it's been down so long. It's been way more now than the original estimate plus the extra "It's going to be a couple of hours longer". I really don't understand how it's not possible to have a very good idea of how long it's going to take - they must know how long it takes to build a server, and I'm sure any backup software tells you exactly how long it's going to take to do the restore!

**eUKhost.com** · #8 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 23:14

Initally we tried to bring the server online with old drive and we decided to move the accounts on a new server to reduce the downtime. Efforts of our system admins in datacenter failed to bring the server online with the old drive.

It takes close to 2 hours to setup a new drive and 2 - 3 hours to restore accounts from one drive to another drive. Websites will start coming online one by one from now as we have started the restore. New drive and latest version of OS will ensure that this server will never face any problems for at least next 1 year. We maintain daily and weekly backup of all our servers on 3 different backup servers which allows to convince our customers that they wont loose data more than 24 hours old.

All websites hosted on the server will be online in next 3 hours. Restore will progress in alphabetical order whcih will restore accounts with usernames from a - z. Those who have their usernames starting with a should see their websites online in less than 1 hour.

Anonymous · #9 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 23:17

OK, guess I'll have to wait even longer then with mine starting with "w"!

What's been happening to email in the meantime? Presumably mail with have been bouncing and possibly getting lost?

**eUKhost.com** · #10 (**permalink**) 20-05-2006, 23:19

Yes.

Emails are bouncing. We dont have mirroring service on shared and reseller plans. Mirroring service is offered on semi dedicated plans only.

**eUKhost.com** · #11 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 01:53

All accounts have been successfully restored on the server. No data has been lost other than emails for last 8 hours.

**Gary** · #12 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 07:34

Ok it's back on!

Hopefully my customers will wake up this morning in a better mood and will have not lost too much trade or credability due to the time the server was down. Some of the websites have affiliates so as you can imagine the problem of server downtime has an impact on hundreds of people not just our direct customers, as they will all be checking their stats and be wondering where the best part of Saturday went to!

So is the time on the server going to stay at minus 6 hours GMT or are you going to set it up as GMT. Because I need to be assured that you wont keep changing the time. In my earlier post I pointed out the problems this causes with MYSQL scripts by the changes in server time. Please can you set the time and leave it I don't care what time it is as long as it stays the same! so that I can offset all the scripts. Incase you are unaware the server before going down was minus 1 hr GMT.

Hopefully this will be the end of this servers problems. It's been a bit of a bitch for a couple of months.

As I said previously I have had some good support over the past months so hopefully this was just a one off!

Gary
Hub Enterprise

Anonymous · #13 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 08:14

I have to concur with the majority on here. The service from EUKHost is often abysmal and I often feel that I'm being lied to or not fed the relevant information. Oh and guys, you all work in an Indian call centre. That's great, but it's insulting when you use Western names. Just use your Indian names please - they are often very beautiful and don't need pathetic translations to somehow make Western customers feel more comfortable.

EUK are a stop gap for us. When we project ourselves more seriously, we will move

**eukrobert** · #14 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 10:16

Hello,

I must add to this as i feel customers should NOT get as upset with this matter yes it is a pain but computers do go wrong and i am sure everybody on here has had a computer that has failed. The better option is for you to blame us for the hard drive failure.

Before working with eUKhost i was with many hosting companies who when disks failed on a Sunday morning never bothered to get the issue resolved until late on Monday and data was also lost.

We work our hardest to ensure no downtime or loss of data but when customers respond nastly we feel upset that all the work we are putting in is just getting thrown back at us.

We experiance very little downtime on servers across our network but like i say issues do happen computers do fail. We work hard to maintain high quality services but staff get very un-happy when people complain at them when they trying their hardest to get the issues resolved.

Further more yes some staff are located in India to help out with demands due to the low cost pricing of our services the only way we can ensure high quality is having some support relocated to India some of our best staff are located there and all are highly trained professionals.

Regards

Robert

Anonymous · #15 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 12:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by eukrobert

Hello,

I must add to this as i feel customers should NOT get as upset with this matter yes it is a pain but computers do go wrong and i am sure everybody on here has had a computer that has failed. The better option is for you to blame us for the hard drive failure.

Before working with eUKhost i was with many hosting companies who when disks failed on a Sunday morning never bothered to get the issue resolved until late on Monday and data was also lost.

We work our hardest to ensure no downtime or loss of data but when customers respond nastly we feel upset that all the work we are putting in is just getting thrown back at us.

We experiance very little downtime on servers across our network but like i say issues do happen computers do fail. We work hard to maintain high quality services but staff get very un-happy when people complain at them when they trying their hardest to get the issues resolved.

Further more yes some staff are located in India to help out with demands due to the low cost pricing of our services the only way we can ensure high quality is having some support relocated to India some of our best staff are located there and all are highly trained professionals.

Regards

Robert

It's not just the hard drive failure though 'Robert' is it? Also, none of us are complaining about the quality or professionalism of Indian services rather instead the use of fake names. If you use fake names it also suggests that the level of service is fake along with any discourse. Other call centres are learning this.

Can I also add, that whilst you suggest we keep our complaints relevant i.e. by concentrating on a hard drive failure, can you then understand we will do this if when you say4 hours downtime you don't mean 6 hours or 8 hours or whatever. This is insulting

**eUKhost.com** · #16 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 14:00

Hello Gary,

This time we have setup new drive with GMT-0 timezone and you can see the same from your scripts. I can assure you that there wont be any problem with this server for at least next 1 year as we wont be adding any new customers to this server and security settings are perfect with the server. Hardware configurations get old in time of 2 - 3 years and its always recommended to upgrade hardware once the technology gets outdated.

Earlier we mentioned that it will take 3 hours for the OS to be reloaded on new drive and data restored but things went wrong when our system admins in the dtacenter lost 3 hours in getting the old drive to start working again by doing FSCK. I am pretty sure that many of you loose data in harddrive crash but you dont admire our ability to restore data from any type of harddrive failure.

We have expertise in Rsync backup / trasfer, mirroring and load balancing service and with help of this skills our team has managed to upgrade hardware of servers without any downtime. This time harddrive crashed and we could have managed to bring your websites online with 1 week old backup but that would have created many problems for databases as the entries for 6 - 8 hours would have gone in 1 week old database and once server6.specialservers.com had come up, you would have lost the changes for those 6 - 8 hours.

You should see the differene in performance of your websites after the OS reload as the server seems to be working very well now.

**Gary** · #17 (**permalink**) 21-05-2006, 22:26

Hi Martin,

Keeping the time zone the same makes things easier for all. These sort of things should be done automatically so as to avoid the problems I have experienced in the past with shops etc showing incorrect times on invoices etc.

Regarding your skills and ability. I always appreciate it but unfortunately the customer at the end of the line who has the web website doesn't care about any technical stuff all they want is their website to be up and running and taking money 24/7. When I transferred my business to EUKHOST last year. I had just given up on a hosting provider due to the downtime as my clients demand 100% and I strive to give them that.

Hopefully this revamped server will start to behave and give us the quality we and our customers expect.

Anyway the phones have gone quite for now 23.20 GMT on Sunday. Hope you sort the remaining problems out with my account soon!!!

Gary

**Gary** · #18 (**permalink**) 22-05-2006, 07:45

Ok its morning and guess what!

The phones are ringing again!

You still haven't sorted out the password problem with the email via the HORDE Link!!!

Yes there is other ways to collect email but this is the way all these customers affected collect there mail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is why it was set up in the first place!!!!

HELLO EUKHOST anybody awake!

I have had enough of this crap

**eukrobert** · #19 (**permalink**) 22-05-2006, 09:54

Hello.

The problem is we have to work close with our data center and when a ETA is told to us we can only persume they do resolve the issue within the estimated time but on Sundays they do lack in resources and it takes longer to resolve the issues.

We try our best to get all problems resolved as quickly and as secure as possible. People fail to understand exactly how much work is involved to resolve large isuses like hard disk failure.

Our staff lose motivation when people complain to them which i hate to see because it means the job is done slower. the problem is exactly the same no matter what business, motivation is lost if someone is angry with you.

I just would like customers not to jump to conclusions over matters and be less hasty when comments are placed. It upsets me when i see staff upset because of comments.

Regarding the Indian workers, we simply prefer them to use English names because when responding to support it is much easier for customers to remember the English name rather than their Indian name it does not at all mean fake support it helps with support.!

I hope people do understand.

Kind Regards

Robert King
Sales Manager

**eukrobert** · #20 (**permalink**) 22-05-2006, 09:58

Hello Gary,

So you basically expect us to work 13 hours on Sunday and be up at very early on Monday morning. We had alot of problems yesterday and all staff worked 13 hours to resolve issues on a SUNDAY and everyone is very tired and we dont like to wake up and come to work and see angry comments from you.

There is a lot of customers hosted on the server which went down and only 3% still have small problems which i think is amazing work from the staff but where is the praise in this.

Your issue is being worked on we will have the problem resolved just please stand by us in difficult times and NOT against us because it is upsetting for me and staff to read.

Thank you.

Kind Regards

Robert King