Recent site outage **Update**


Recommended Posts

Below is email from a level-2 tech.  They want to move my site to another server, but in order to do this they have to change DNS records, which means DNS needs to propagate around the globe again (so much for "cloud" hosting).  I'm going to let them do this, because honestly, I have bigger fish to fry right now.  I don't want to go through all the hassle of moving hosts again at this time, but as soon as release 5.0 is "final", believe me, I'll be revisiting this.

 

The effect is going to be this.  At 8PM PST today, I will put the forum in "Maintenance Mode".  At 9PM PST (they say), they will start moving the files and databases to some other server, and when they tell me it's complete, I will put the forum on the new server back to "Normal Mode".  So when you see the forum in Normal mode starting later this evening, you'll know you're seeing the new server.


Hello Thomas,

 

First of all, we sincerely apologize for all inconvenience you have experienced.

 

We do not put too much accounts together on our cloudhosting servers, but sometimes just few accounts may cause high load on server which influence other users. We currently have similar situation on server your account is located on. Your site is not the main reason of load, but along with others cause sometimes significant overload on server.

 

So let's me propose next solution: we will migrate your account to another cloudhosting server, where load is minimal. We will investigate issues with overloaded server nevertheless, but this could take some time, so right now migration should solve your issues faster. It will take about 24 hours and there will be no downtime -- we will copy your data, change DNS settings for your site, wait until propagation completely finished and only then remove data from old server.

 

Please confirm, if you want us to migrate your account.

--

Kind regards,

 

Taras Bondarchuk

L2 Support Engineer

VPS.NET

Link to comment

It also sounds like the typical oversell capacity and hope no one uses it business approach. That or they're simply incompetent.

 

Fortunately for the sites I run, we opted to go with dedicated hardware from the get-go to avoid hassles such as these. The only issues we've run into in the 10+ years of doing so is with hardware failures, but that happens in either situation.

 

Currently we're pleased with the support and assistance Softlayer has provided.

Link to comment

It also sounds like the typical oversell capacity and hope no one uses it business approach. That or they're simply incompetent.

 

Fortunately for the sites I run, we opted to go with dedicated hardware from the get-go to avoid hassles such as these. The only issues we've run into in the 10+ years of doing so is with hardware failures, but that happens in either situation.

 

Currently we're pleased with the support and assistance Softlayer has provided.

 

I've been lurking for a while waiting for 5.0 to go final. I have the trial up and working under VMWare and plan on purchasing the PRO version. This isn't relevant to this post but I want to make it clear I'm not some transient troll.

 

The dedicated servers at SoftLayer are better than the VPS, but IMHO that isn't saying much. We had about 80 VPS (They use XenServer) and 15ish dedicated servers. We had multiple problems with our dedicated servers in which the power cords just fell out or became loose. This is according to their own tech support. Why they don't use some sort of positive retention mechanism is beyond me. The VPS servers were downright slow and overcrowded with poor transfer rates and latency. Their tech support was slow and unresponsive (Some of the above power issues took 6+ hours to resolve).

 

I apologize for the somewhat malicious first post, but please pick anywhere but SoftLayer.

 

Edit: If anyone is curious our VPS (Cloud) were in their Seattle DC. Our Dedicated servers were in Dallas, though I don't recall which DC. I believe they have two in Dallas.

Link to comment

It also sounds like the typical oversell capacity and hope no one uses it business approach. That or they're simply incompetent.

 

Fortunately for the sites I run, we opted to go with dedicated hardware from the get-go to avoid hassles such as these. The only issues we've run into in the 10+ years of doing so is with hardware failures, but that happens in either situation.

 

Currently we're pleased with the support and assistance Softlayer has provided.

 

i truly believe every single service provider on the planet does this...

back in the day when bandwidth was very scare we had a isp who sold us 128k line for our internet and mail only to find out from an employee that left that the whole business (30 dial ups and 2 64k clients excluding ourselves) ran only on 1 128k link upstream to the next isp!!??

Link to comment

i truly believe every single service provider on the planet does this...

Agreed.  Add DSL/cable ISP providers to the list.  The "overbooking" practice has been around for a long time, and perfected by the airlines.  At least with the airlines if they bump you, they give you some compensation.

Link to comment

I have still not received any emails, since June 3.  I had notify turned on for this thread, but received nothing for any of the test posts, etc.  I checked my forum profile and everything looks fine, unchanged.

 

At the top to the right of the Add Poll button, does it say "Notify" or "Unnotify"?  And did just get an email for this post?

Link to comment

At the top to the right of the Add Poll button, does it say "Notify" or "Unnotify"?  And did just get an email for this post?

 

No email, and the attached pic shows unnotify status.  I've looked all over and cannot find an 'Add Poll' button.  Should I have one?

Unnotify.jpg.130c17328a1e9ee7e204666e782e0808.jpg

Link to comment

It appears there are others that *are* receiving emails.  We need to hear from others, both positive and negative reports, to better bound the problem.  I don't think I'm the only one, I think there were 2 others besides me, who were not receiving email notifications.

 

Once before, all email notifications ceased for me, and I was only able to restart them by changing the email address to another one.  Both (old and new) were fine addresses that received other email without any problems, and spam folders were empty.  I believe I changed it back to the first address, and it worked again too.  No idea what the problem was, but perhaps the re-save of profile info reset something.  So I have changed my email address again, to check this, but so far, nothing.  Need more time though ...

 

The 'Add Poll' button does not appear on posts/threads in the Announcements board, but does appear in most if not all of the other boards.

Link to comment

Since no one else is reporting trouble receiving the notification emails, I'll not mention it again, as it must be unique to me.  Tom should probably split the no-email posts to the Forum Feedback or Lounge boards.

 

I've changed my forum and wiki email addresses several times, double-checked settings (toggling them back and forth) and adjusted and saved wiki and forum profiles, checked both of my ISP's spam folders as well as my own, and I am still not receiving any emails related to UnRAID (all my other email is fine).  I did not receive an email for yesterdays wiki change nor any emails for all of the many forum threads I've clicked for notifications.  And until the time of the server migration, I used to get a lot of them.  I continue to click the Notify button, as often as I see an interesting and active thread, and I verify that it changes to 'Unnotify'.  Out of ideas ...

 

Side note:  I did find some surprising things in one of the ISP's spam folders.  With the constant back and forth battles over spam and its detection, I recommend re-checking your spam folders, as you may be surprised too at what is suddenly getting trapped, wrongly.  I suspect that most of us have found they work so well that we have stopped checking them, taking their accuracy for granted.

Link to comment

Since no one else is reporting trouble receiving the notification emails, I'll not mention it again, as it must be unique to me.  Tom should probably split the no-email posts to the Forum Feedback or Lounge boards.

 

I've changed my forum and wiki email addresses several times, double-checked settings (toggling them back and forth) and adjusted and saved wiki and forum profiles, checked both of my ISP's spam folders as well as my own, and I am still not receiving any emails related to UnRAID (all my other email is fine).  I did not receive an email for yesterdays wiki change nor any emails for all of the many forum threads I've clicked for notifications.  And until the time of the server migration, I used to get a lot of them.  I continue to click the Notify button, as often as I see an interesting and active thread, and I verify that it changes to 'Unnotify'.  Out of ideas ...

 

Side note:  I did find some surprising things in one of the ISP's spam folders.  With the constant back and forth battles over spam and its detection, I recommend re-checking your spam folders, as you may be surprised too at what is suddenly getting trapped, wrongly.  I suspect that most of us have found they work so well that we have stopped checking them, taking their accuracy for granted.

 

A troubleshooting tip: create a secondary free Gmail account and update your forum profile to point to that account. See if you start receiving emails there. If you do, then you'll know it is an issue with your ISP's email service. I use Gmail and haven't had any issues receiving notifications.

Link to comment

Since no one else is reporting trouble receiving the notification emails, I'll not mention it again, as it must be unique to me. 

 

I am not sure that it is unique to you.  I have never had any notification emails since I joined the unRAID community over a year ago, but then I've not signed up to any either until recently.  That didn't make them appear either so I have just tried changing my forum account to using a gmail email account (as suggested above).  I shall watch with interest.

 

Cheers,

 

Les.

 

Link to comment

This is a baffling problem.  At first I thought vps.net might be throttling email, since in some cases there are hundereds of users subscribed to certain topics and threads (in a couple cases, thousands(!)), and these will all go out at once.  vps.net claims they do not do this at all, but SMF has an email queue feature to limit the number of email sent in a time period, so I think I might set that up to see if it helps.  I also have checked a bunch of "spammer" databases for out IP address and keyword "lime-technology", but no hits.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.