Server about to explode

[Firejack]

Hello!

1) Domain Name: terranovagaming.com

2) Server Name and IP address: Merlin

3) Description of problem: Server about to explode. From Cpanel: Server Load 167.54 (4 cpus)

4) Anything you might have done which may have caused the problem:Nope

5) Anything you have done already, to try and resolve the problem: Can't do anything.

6) Any additional information you think is relevant: No idea what is going on. This weekend though the server has performed really poorly with man time outs

Thanks.

[WelshTom]

Please open a support ticket by e-mailing support [at] eukhost com about this issue, and they'll get the problem sorted for you in no time.

[eUKhost.com]

Merlin has developed some problems with the Primary Hard drive and we will need to replace its hard drive at the end of this week.

We will be switching to SAS 15k RPM drives for all our servers one by one to avoid any such problem in future. We apologize for the inconvenience but it seems that life of SATA drives is very limited and the performance starts degrading within couple of months in shared hosting environment.

[Eidolon]

I recommend using live chat when the server load goes crazy, as it's the quickest way to alert someone and get the problem worked on. Merlin has tended to be a bit of a poorly server from time to time, glad to see things are being sorted.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

I recommend using live chat when the server load goes crazy, as it's the quickest way to alert someone and get the problem worked on. Merlin has tended to be a bit of a poorly server from time to time, glad to see things are being sorted.

We managed to imrpove CPU and RAM for Merlin but now the drives are making problems. We have ordered new SAS 15k RPM drives so hopefully there wont be anything else left on Merlin that would make problems.

SAS drives will give less usable space but its better to have less usable space instead of drive problems.

[Eidolon]

Merlin's on a hissy fit. Off-hand if I recall livechat the server was being restarted, though this was nearing 10 minutes ago and sites which is on merlin still appears to be down. I'm taking a guess that the main hard-drive has given up the ghost, or is being more moody than normal. Either than or my Virgin internet is being selectively temperamental (which it has periodically done in the past).

[Firejack]

Server does indeed appear to be offline. Not looking promising as its been down for awhile now.

[jps]

I have been a member for one month now and my website is also hosted on Merlin.
Over the past 4 weeks I have logged 6 tickets related to issues with Merlin including the one just created. Although each time the issue was resolved and support response times were outstanding, I am starting to loose confidence in the quality of the service.
Do you have any server monitoring or automated alerts when something goes wrong or are you simply waiting for customers to start logging tickets before any action is taken? If I am wrong, then please explain to me what the Network Status thread is for.
Or am I just very unlucky to be hosted on the worst server in the room?

[Eidolon]

@jps: It's a case of an unlucky server. I personally have other sites hosted on 'typhoon', 'puma', and 'edinburgh' which as far as I'm aware run fine without such problems.

Maybe merlin has become an evil wizard, to which I say warlocks.

[jps]

I am just a bit sceptical about the reasons given though. Monday night when the server acted up, the explanation was that they faced a DDOS attack and the sysadmin had to stop some services to counter the attack. Now it is the hard drive that is giving problems...
Advanced detection and notification for both these issues is not rocket science. Detecting any issue and posting an immediate warning to the status thread in my opinion will go a long way to improve the customer perception of service.

[Rock]

Apologies for lack of updates. Merlin is back online now. Please open up a support ticket if you are still experiencing any issues with your website.

[Eidolon]

It was working earlier this morning but I think it may have died again, or at least I'm not getting a connection at the moment.

[EDIT]
Ah I see there's now an announcement in regards to it at Merlin is Down
[/EDIT]

[MikeB]

Oh this is not a good sign.

As someone who has only been with eukhost since 19th December, this is the 2nd lot of downtime that I am aware of, there could have been more that I don't know about.
Not only that but it's 2 days running.

I spoke to live chat last night at about 12:15 and was told:

Originally Posted by Ralf

Ralf: Our server is rebooted
Ralf: Server will be up in the next couple of minutes

It was still not back 30 minutes later but had to go and deal with other things, so no idea what time Merlin came back up last night.

Checked this morning about 9ish and it was back, only to notice soon after it had gone again.

And by looking at the thread in network status it could be down for some hours yet.

I moved from my old host due to this excact sort of problem, in fact they had 3 days of downtime, but they had a complete lack of support, and still as yet no official word or appolgy what happened to the server then.

At least eukhost support works, just a shame I seem to be on such a troublesome server again...

[jc8654]

Hopefully with this load of fixing, everything should be back to working order. I think it's just unfortunate you've just arrived and the server has gone a bit mad. If there is a problem eUKhost are normally straight on top of it which is why I'm still here after almost two years.