I'm concerned about reliability

[russell]

For years, almost ten years, I've been an enormous FQ advocate. I encourage all my clients to use FQ services (and all but one have) and I do this on the basis that my personal experience with FQ has been that they are reliable. That rock solid reliable was worth paying a few dollars more.

That said, in the four days there have been two outages. Some of my sites are still down now. Speaking only about my personal sites, one of them is really taking off. These outages make me and the site look amateurish. My clients see these outages and they reflect back on me.

I very much appreciate the status blog. At least I can give updates and sounds reasonably informed but I would like to know what the problem has been? Will this be an ongoing issue or just very bad luck?

After almost a decade of flawless service, two stumbles in a short period of time has me asking questions. I look forward to any response FQ staff can post that will help me understand more about what's going on.

Thank you.

[kennylucius]

I, too, am concerned about this. The new status blog feels like a step taken in preparation for a bad time. Compared to other hosts, the FQ technical team is wonderfully open and honest about things--but I can't help being suspicious about the coincidence.

Are there growing pains a-comin'?

[Snarpy]

Originally Posted by kennylucius

I, too, am concerned about this. The new status blog feels like a step taken in preparation for a bad time. Compared to other hosts, the FQ technical team is wonderfully open and honest about things--but I can't help being suspicious about the coincidence.

Are there growing pains a-comin'?

It is absolutely clear that the status blog was implemented purely through client demand. FQ plans very carefully for any growth and I am confident there will be no "growing pains" that may come when a host bites off more than it can chew.

P.S. This post has info that might help you.

[kitchin]

Have to agree that's FUD about the new status blog. No offense, it's just the first word that came to mind! People wanted the status blog and FQ put it up.

I'm mainly worried that shared hosting, and the web in general, is besieged by malicious traffic. The last outage was rouge user script. This one is a router? But the level of traffic is probably higher than any system could have handled ten years ago? Just a guess.

[russell]

Thanks but that actually does not address the issue at all. It's just the text of the status blog post. Which, while helpful, isn't meaningful because I'm still seeing problems with email on a number of different servers.

For instance, when I access this page, I see that everything has 100% uptime on it. Well, whatever the cause is, it has not been up for 100% of the time.

As I said, my concern is that in my experience, this is UNusual. I want to know what has changed. That's all. Just saying such and such router is being power cycled doesn't tell me much.

[Joseph]

Originally Posted by russell

For instance, when I access this page, I see that everything has 100% uptime on it. Well, whatever the cause is, it has not been up for 100% of the time.

The reason for that is that the page you reference has to be updated manually, it's not generated automatically or in real time. So we generally do not update that page until we are sure everything is back to normal, as that's the only time we can assess exactly how much downtime there was, and generate a new percentage. It would be a frivolous exercise to spend time updating that page during an outage, rather than responding to client emails and of course fixing the problem. Once the problem is solved and everything is back to normal, we are able to review, and update the necessary percentages accurately.

I also would just like to reiterate what a few others have said, in that the Status Blog was implemented solely due to client requests for such a page, and should not be considered an "ominous sign" of any kind.

We also acknowledge that some of you are still experiencing problems, and rest assured that we are still working to solve all of the problems to the best of our ability.

[kitchin]

Yeah that's a good point. More info would be good.

[kennylucius]

FUD is a pretty accurate description, though I'm not doing it with a purpose. I'm just naturally curious about coincidences. I'm a Cold War kid.

It still feels like a preparatory step (note the emphasis).

It would feel pretty good if it were such a step. The recent availability of PHP5 got me to wondering about how FQ planned to handle the extra strain caused by more and more clients upgrading over time. Now the routers are being upgraded rather suddenly. I would feel better about the recent outages if I thought they were not unexpected.

If there was a preexisting knowledge of the need to upgrade the routers, then the status page may not have been merely a response to client requests. It may have been a good, reasoned move.

[kennylucius]

Okay, I hadn't read Joseph's post before I posted my explanation. Sorry to hear that the router problems came out of nowhere.

I didn't mean to sound ominous.

[russell]

Normally, I wouldn't have time to post in this forum. I'm busy working. That said, what I'm mostly doing right now is watching the email access blink and on off like a morse code signaller on PCP. And fielding calls from clients asking if there is email is working. Yes it is. Ten minutes later, no it's not.

I look like an idiot here and frankly, if I told them their email would be working intermittently for the rest of the day and then be down intermittently throughout the this evening, I'd get an earful.

A long time ago a friend once told me that the art of cooking was learning to fix your mistakes. And someone even wiser said that we're all human. We all make mistakes. We all have accidents. Sometimes they're not even our fault. But how we handle those instances is what really defines our character.