Relocation of Servers to Maidenhead on 18th, 25th and 26th May 2007

[Hallief3]

I'm have a bit of strong opinion running through my posts this morning and i'm not going to stop here.

I think you should all stop complaining!

If they don't move then when your servers die or something needs fixing, there will be no one available at the DC to fix any problems, which means that you will have to wait even longer and over the period of a year possibly suffer the same amount of downtime if you are unlucky.

eUKHost do their best by customers and this is no reason to lose faith in them. The move is for customers benefit as much as their own. I back eUK all the way and as origionally posted hope the move goes well.

[esnail]

I do agree with some of the comments regarding communication. I have been impressed with eukhost on the whole but my major criticism with them has been lack of communication when disruptions to the web space - planned or otherwise, has occurred.
This is the first I've heard about this move and the affect it will have on uptime - my clients need to be informed of this and I feel that I should have been informed much sooner and more personally than just managing to catch on a forum. There has been many a mention on this forum that eukhost are aware that possibly 60-70% of customers are either unaware of the forum or simply don't visit it - does this mean that these unfortunates will have no idea about this planned disruption?
I am lucky, my clients will understand that sometimes, in the pursuit of a better service, disruption is inevitable - but that doesn't mean I should take their easy-going nature for granted. I have a responsibility to advise them of any disruption in the same way the eukhost has an obligation to advise its customers of any disruption.

You do many things right eukhost - but it would appear this time you have handled this wrong.

[Richard Blunt]

EUKhost's UK servers are supplied and managed by Rapidswitch, a large company which supplies servers for other people to re-sell. (You can tell this by doing a traceroute, or looking the IP addresses up on ripe.net).

It's Rapidswitch that is moving your servers (because it's Rapidswitch which owns them), not EUKhost. EUKhost will have had ample warning of this event. That is why there is pretty much nothing that they can do to postpone the move.

I think it's disgraceful that you were not informed earlier. As you can see here (http://www.rapidswitch.com/News.asp), Rapidswitch posted the news that they were moving servers back in January.

[Ben]

I can't believe people are complaining over what eUKhost is benefiting for you - the client. Firstly, eUKhost may have only been informed recently to post it here, secondly there might have been slight difficulties with the information they needed to direct to their clients. And lastly, its to improve the services and if you want a service that is perfect - you won't find it. I have been with many web hosts with ridiculous downtime. If you are looking for a web host that is perfect - you won't find that anywhere my friend.

[nams]

I agree that we could have been informed sooner. But am happy that it is late night UK Time in my case 11.00pm onwards.

As for service, EUKHost has been excellent. Got all the features I want and low downtime. There are problems sometimes but they do get resolved. I do stand by an old saying though. If it isn't broken don't try to fix it. In this case it is out of their hands, but sometimes I fins eukHost change server settings without notification. More communication or a server News Communication Channel would be better on the main page. Rather than on this forum.

On another note, what is a good message to put on your website for customers to be informed of downtime.

I was thinking

"Our website will be un-available from 11.00pm until 5.00am Friday 18th May 2007, we are moving to a new inproved Data Centre to bring you an improved service"

[247h]

Ben, you're 14 — surely it's not possible you have huge experience of web hosting, other than short-term experimentations I expect?

I can tell you categorically that my information email that was intended to be sent was not, until much later by Mark himself (along with an apology). Having said that, it is probably ridiculous to speculate that Rapidswitch didn't inform eUKhost until midday yesterday.

You are entitled to your opinions about this but they add little to the seriousness of this situation when expressed here. For most of us that are resellers (are you?) with responsibilities to our customers, we need to plan ahead and keep people informed — most of the time they don't give a toss about why their website is down, even when there is a perfectly sound reason (as in this case) — they expect uptime no matter what.

Fortunately I don't target customers like that, I am selective and I have a dedicated server for optimum reliability — shouldn't I have expectations of receiving a professional service here in order to offer one myself? I'm not expecting or demanding a perfect service ...

[eUKhost.com]

This discussion will continue till our last rack gets migrated but its not just our servers which are getting migrated. even Rackspace had to push out of telecityredbus last year and now we all who are left behind.

more than 5000 servers of different companies are getting migrated in three stages and all necessary precautions have been planned from long time.

I may not be in a position to update you once the migration process starts at 11PM but emails were sent to all customers who have their servers / VPS or shared hosting account scheduled to be migrated today. If you have not received any email so far then your server wont be moved today.

[esnail]

Originally Posted by Ben

I can't believe people are complaining over what eUKhost is benefiting for you - the client. Firstly, eUKhost may have only been informed recently to post it here, secondly there might have been slight difficulties with the information they needed to direct to their clients. And lastly, its to improve the services and if you want a service that is perfect - you won't find it. I have been with many web hosts with ridiculous downtime. If you are looking for a web host that is perfect - you won't find that anywhere my friend.

No one is complaining about the server migration - it is the lack of communication from eukhost that is being brought into question. This is not the sort of information that should be merely posted on a forum the evening before the upheaval.

As for it being through the night - its only through the night in this country (UK). Many websites have overseas visitors for whom it'll be very much daytime.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by esnail

No one is complaining about the server migration - it is the lack of communication from eukhost that is being brought into question. This is not the sort of information that should be merely posted on a forum the evening before the upheaval.

As for it being through the night - its only through the night in this country (UK). Many websites have overseas visitors for whom it'll be very much daytime.

If the notification was sent before 2 weeks then what difference would that have made to you ?

It would have made a huge difference for us as we would have had more tickets from all customers and I would have got exhausted by now by answering this thread. let me know the IP of your server so that I can find out if your server is scheduled for migration tonight or not.

[flesso]

I think that this move shows eUKhost's dedication to customers. I say this because there should always be people on the floor at the DC, and the fact that this is being discontinued at the current DC is completely rediculous. However eUKhost obviously realise how important this is, and so have decided to carry out the move.

I do agree that all customers should have been told about this earlier. Depending on how long eUKhost themselves have known, a notification should have been sent immediately.

Also, I don't want anyone saying to me that I have know knowledge of the hosting business and that I don't know anything. I have been with hosts for the last 2 years, and so have good experience with the usiness

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by esnail

You do many things right eukhost - but it would appear this time you have handled this wrong.

Your server ( 87.117.234.246 ) is scheduled to be migrated on 25th. let me know if you need it to be moved next month or next to next month.

[esnail]

I don't have a major problem with it - and I assume that mine isn't one of the servers being moved as I have not received an email - fair enough. However, I am championing some of the thoughts in this thread because I think they have a valid point. If you are aware of this upheaval that does affect the hosting and does cause significant downtime, then you should inform your customers. Why do you think that two weeks is too much time? I think it would be perfectly reasonable for you to send a two week warning to all customers then a reminder warning a couple of days before. I don't understand why that is seen by eukhost as a wholly unreasonable request. This thread is only active because of that short notice as far as I can see.

I have informed my clients and backed up my data so I'm quite happy. But I sympathise with those who are perturbed.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by esnail

I have informed my clients and backed up my data so I'm quite happy. But I sympathise with those who are perturbed.

I am here to answer those who are perturbed.

[DavidAllen]

Any chance of knowing which servers are in which rack?

Schedule:

1st Rack :
Date: 18th May 2007
Time: 23:00 – 07:00

2nd Rack :
Date: 25th May 2007
Time: 23:00 – 07:00

3rd Rack :
Date: 26th May 2007
Time: 23:00 – 07:00

My websites are on jaguar and 87.117.234.246
Also can you tell me if emails go to reseller contact or to individual website contacts?

Thanks

[TaintedWoods]

I can understand some of the concerns here regarding the lack of notice, indeed i only found out through this post yesterday. Perhaps an email to everyone may have been more appropriate.

However... if the servers have to be moved, I would much rather it was in the dead of night (UK dead of night as they are UK servers) than at 1PM in the afternoon during normal working hours, I'm sure the people doing the move aren't overjoyed at moving servers at 4am on a Saturday morning.

Unfortunately it's just one of those things, it has to happen regardless and for speeds sake rather than duplicating and updating everyones data for 8 hours of what will be on the whole the quietest time of the day eUK have decided to just bite the bullet and I agree with their decision on that. It's not because they are 'cheap' or 'small' as I highly doubt some of the bigger players in the market would do things any differently.

The short version? It's a one off situation that's going to have to happen one way or another and should mean it shouldn't have to happen again for the forseeable future. On the whole 'our' clients will be very understanding providing you don't spin them a tall tale.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by DavidAllen

Any chance of knowing which servers are in which rack?


My websites are on jaguar and 87.117.234.246
Also can you tell me if emails go to reseller contact or to individual website contacts?

Thanks

Your server is scheduled to be migrated on 25th. We cannot make the list public as previous FTP injection problem occurred due to public display of server IPs.

[steppen]

My apologies If I've misinterpreted the communication here, but I'm getting slightly worried to observe that this time, ulike other similar situations where critisim has been raised, the usual modesty seems to be absent.

The little I've seen and experienced here (so far) has been of a very good quality, and I know I'm not in a position to tell eUKhost anything. Even so I would like to ask: Please can't you just say: "Sorry for the late notice. When this move is done we'll review the situation and the experiences we made. Then we'll (, in cooperation with you,) look for ways to improve the information flow in the future"?

That way your customers (well, me anyway.. ), will rest assured that our opinion does matter to you.

Bootom line: Wether or not you yourself consider this late notice a mishap, I'm sure your loyal customers can forgive it. Just not let it repeat itself..

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by steppen

My apologies If I've misinterpreted the communication here, but I'm getting slightly worried to observe that this time, ulike other similar situations where critisim has been raised, the usual modesty seems to be absent.

The little I've seen and experienced here (so far) has been of a very good quality, and I know I'm not in a position to tell eUKhost anything. Even so I would like to ask: Please can't you just say: "Sorry for the late notice. When this move is done we'll review the situation and the experiences we made. Then we'll (, in cooperation with you,) look for ways to improve the information flow in the future"?

That way your customers (well, me anyway.. ), will rest assured that our opinion does matter to you.

Bootom line: Wether or not you yourself consider this late notice a mishap, I'm sure your loyal customers can forgive it. Just not let it repeat itself..

I do feel better now and I am calm after reading your post

You are a senior person with 40 Years of experience behind you but other customers wont be like you. no sooner we use words like "Sorry" or "Apologise" and we will get tickets of n number of customers asking for compensation. people would have reacted in final 24 hours only even if the notification was sent weeks before but now they have a point to raise and they will do so as they are customers. Customers who have been with us from years know how much we care for their business but its difficult to help when people have n number of questions in their mind.

We are overloaded today with work but its difficult to explain the situation over here.

[steppen]

Originally Posted by eukhost.com

I do feel better now and I am calm after reading your post

You are a senior person with 40 Years of experience behind you but other customers wont be like you. no sooner we use words like "Sorry" or "Apologise" and we will get tickets of n number of customers asking for compensation. people would have reacted in final 24 hours only even if the notification was sent weeks before but now they have a point to raise and they will do so as they are customers. Customers who have been with us from years know how much we care for their business but its difficult to help when people have n number of questions in their mind.

We are overloaded today with work but its difficult to explain the situation over here.

I do understand your position, but look on it like this:
Those "n" numbers of complaints/questions/concerns, many of them from (maybe unfairly) "impatient" customers, is coming today anyway. By giving a heads up earlier, at least a number of your more "seasoned"/"serious" customers wouldn't have been on your necks at this point of time.

Earlier information might look like a burden, but I'm confident that it would actually 1) ease the situation here and now (at least some of your customers would leave you alone.. ), and 2) it will make you look even more serious about your bussiness.

As pointed out earlier by others, it's not only your reputation and "seriousness" that's at stake, but also all your resellers (us).

I hope you see my point..

And to cheer you up with one of my cockups: As a preparation for transfering more accounts to you, I went through all my domains. And guess what I found? I've managed to miss one of my main accounts when configuring my email setup, so today I discovered that it was 24 595 emails waiting in que for me. It's taken me almost 2,5 hours to doenload them all. Thankfully I can delete 95% straight away - thanks to the spammers.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by steppen

As pointed out earlier by others, it's not only your reputation and "seriousness" that's at stake, but also all your resellers (us).

It is one of the biggest migration process of my life. I've been through many many small small migrations in last couple of years but this one is something that I never imagined previously.

one should think many times before having so many kids.