Transfer Assistance with Sign-up

Started by WSA, January 16, 2006, 01:31:52 PM

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WSA

Hey Jason, I was looking through your thread in the hosting section of SMF and was debating on whether to give you a try.

I am looking very hard at switching servers and need somebody who can assist me in moving my SMF forum over to the new site including the database.  Unfortunately, I'm not too skilled myself in all of the intricasies and details so that is why I am hoping to find somebody who would be able to assist me in transferring everything over.

I guess I would be looking at your starter package for right now.  I am currently with a company called doorhost.net and all in all, their service is pretty good, but they also go through EV1.  The server I am on is horrible.  The downtime is absolutely unreal and it's been going on for a few months now.  You can go to their forums and look up phantom and you will see what I mean.

Anyways, I'm not really one for changing stuff around because I can get confused pretty easily and when I get confused, bad things happen.

Since you do run an SMF forum and because I have seen pretty much nothing but excellent reviews, would it be possible to have your company help me move everything over to the new server?

I appreciate your time and thanks,
Eric
Western Slope Anglers - SMF 1.1 RC2 + Tiny Portal v0.8.6 +SMF Arcade + Xarcell's Custom WSA Fishing and Hunting Theme
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you'll never get another day's work out of him again.

Jason

I was just getting ready to reply to your PM on SMF, but this will work just as well.  :)

I can certainly help you get relocated.  If you want to post (or pm if you'd prefer) a link to your forum, that would give me an idea of what we're working with.

In regards to servers, all new accounts are installing to Cyclone.  This one is actually not with Ev1, but rather with GNAX.  If you'd prefer to be on a box with Ev1, I can make that happen, though I imagine you'll be very happy on Cyclone.

Regards,
Jason

WSA

i'll PM you in just a moment.  Thanks Jason.
Western Slope Anglers - SMF 1.1 RC2 + Tiny Portal v0.8.6 +SMF Arcade + Xarcell's Custom WSA Fishing and Hunting Theme
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you'll never get another day's work out of him again.

WSA

You have PM :D

Just an idea of what is going on with this server I am currently on.

http://doorhost.net/forum/showthread.php?p=13108#post13108
Western Slope Anglers - SMF 1.1 RC2 + Tiny Portal v0.8.6 +SMF Arcade + Xarcell's Custom WSA Fishing and Hunting Theme
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you'll never get another day's work out of him again.

Jason

That's no fun.

While it's unrealistic to think that nothing will ever go wrong, there are certainly precautions and actions you can take to lessen the odds.

Since we began using Alertra for monitoring, I've been posting all uptime stats for anyone to browse if interested: 

http://www.charlottezweb.com/forums/index.php?board=12.0

Regards,
Jason

WSA

It seems as though the server I am on now is around 80% uptime.  I know that nothing is foolproof and there is always room for something to happen but seriously, 80% uptime for the past 3 months is entirely unacceptable.
Western Slope Anglers - SMF 1.1 RC2 + Tiny Portal v0.8.6 +SMF Arcade + Xarcell's Custom WSA Fishing and Hunting Theme
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you'll never get another day's work out of him again.

Jason


PeterL

Jason, as you know, I'm currently in the process of switching over to Charlottezweb. I'm looking forward to the better situation. And, I'm also going to rely on you doing the transfer as we discussed.

I'm really responding here to the above thread about downtime and problems.

My old host, who will remain anonymous unless you PM me, was down last night for over two hours. I send emails, and posted in their support forum and finally it came back up. I had/have two sites with them.

So, in the process of my discussions with Jason here last night (Don't you ever sleep, Jason?) I decided to switch hosts if there was a reasonable refund/cancellation policy. I phoned them this morning and found out that I can cancel easily with no extra costs since my host package expires with them in the next few days.

What is interesting is that about 5 minutes after that, I got this email:
=====
Hi Peter,

The apache webserver on XXXXX stalled last night. It appeared to the
monitoring software that it was fine. We did not see the problem until we
got your email last night.

Email was not affected.

Sorry for the outage and thanks for letting us know.
=========

Isn't it interesting that this came right AFTER I called to find out about refund/cancellation policy? If they did fix things as a result of my email, why didn't they send the reply then? Why is it, I never hear from them unless I push them?

I think that is at the core of WHY I'm switching. I got fast responses from Jason and I got an attitude that indicates he cares about what he does. My old host may care, but they just don't show it. Its also interesting that when I enquired about the refund/cancellation policy, the nice lady in the billing department didn't enquire if I had a problem. She just told me the details and that was that.

So, here I am and I'm looking forward to being here.

Thanks

Peter Linka


Jason

Quote from: PeterL on January 18, 2006, 10:39:27 AM
So, in the process of my discussions with Jason here last night (Don't you ever sleep, Jason?) I decided to switch hosts if there was a reasonable refund/cancellation policy.

What's sleep?  :) 

Quote
Isn't it interesting that this came right AFTER I called to find out about refund/cancellation policy? If they did fix things as a result of my email, why didn't they send the reply then? Why is it, I never hear from them unless I push them?

I think that is at the core of WHY I'm switching. I got fast responses from Jason and I got an attitude that indicates he cares about what he does. My old host may care, but they just don't show it. Its also interesting that when I enquired about the refund/cancellation policy, the nice lady in the billing department didn't enquire if I had a problem. She just told me the details and that was that.

So, here I am and I'm looking forward to being here.

Welcome aboard! 

That's the trick about monitoring.  You can monitor the server itself or all the way down to individual services.  I believe there's a post here somewhere about it, but I had a similiar situation happen early last year where httpd was down which doesn't necessarily ring any alarms in some cases.  I'm now monitoring all servers specifically for that, so we've got that covered as well as possible. 

restino

jason,

speaking of that...

on other hosts, when we see the cpanel server status (do they all have this feature?) showing red lights for say ftp and http, etc does that mean its a problem or is that normal off and on?

i know what when i see that happen it means my crappy host (not you) also is having problems with ftp dropping me and site timing out etc. happens every day it seems.

how does it work with your site? do you also have the server status page showing 10 or more lights.

do they blink red during the day anytime?

thanks

Jason

Quote from: restino on February 18, 2006, 01:19:07 AM
on other hosts, when we see the cpanel server status (do they all have this feature?) showing red lights for say ftp and http, etc does that mean its a problem or is that normal off and on?

The ability to see the service status isn't included with all themes...for example, "Radiance" is the cpanel skin we install to now.  It doesn't include the ability to see the service status that I can find.  We can always use a plain stock cpanel skin instead and those do.  As far as what services are displayed, that's up to how the server is configured.

Quote
i know what when i see that happen it means my crappy host (not you) also is having problems with ftp dropping me and site timing out etc. happens every day it seems.

how does it work with your site? do you also have the server status page showing 10 or more lights.

do they blink red during the day anytime?

If the services pass a pre-defined resource load, they will flash yellow and then red.  It's possible you could see that happen but it's highly unlikely.  The times you *could* (again, not likely) see it would be once a week during our backups and maybe if there was an issue.  As with the rest of my monitoring, if loads get beyond normal levels, we know about it and start working towards a solution.  To answer your question, you should not see red loads ever unless there is a real problem in which case you should be confident we're working it then.  When the loads get to red, a service we have called Hawkeye will start shutting down and restarting services to protect the server.  You'd know if it got to that point.


DVR

i wonder if we are talking about the same things. you are saying we should almost never see that on your host but i see it all day long off and on at my current crappy host lol.

here is a screen shot. are you saying you dont get these red lights and if so then there is a problem?

umm how can i upload an image here?

i cut and pasted below. it doesnt show the red blinking light(s) though.

this just happens to be the current snapshot. you can see that even right now the server load at the bottom is failed. and it was just a 'any given snapshot' that was just taken to post in this message. red lights happen all the time in various categories on my crappy host. i dont know about the settings but i sure know about the FTP dopping my connection, my site timing out and very very slow responses at various times of the day. but it happens every day ive had them. its like it never stops and they dont correct anything. its terrible. lyha offering 1T storage and 2T bw is silly. they suck.

but anways, is this what you are talking about too? and do you see red lights often as well? or not just like you stated above?

is that server load too much? what should it be?

Server Status:
   
spamd   up 
named   up 
imap   up 
exim (exim-4.52-7_cpanel_smtpctl_av_rewrite_mm2_mmmtrap_exiscan_md5pass)  up 
mysql (4.0.25-standard-log)   up 
httpd (1.3.34 (Unix))   up 
pop   up 
ftpd   up 
syslogd   up 
antirelayd   up 
cpsrvd   up 
eximstats   up 
Server Load 21.07 (2 cpus)   failed
DirecTV Tivo HD DVR Receivers & Hard Drive Upgrade Kits: HR22 HR21 HR20 HR10-250 www.DVRPOWER.com

Jason

#12
That's the sign of bad server health right there.  Server loads of 21 are pretty bad.

To give you an idea, my two "full" servers right this minute have loads of 1.5 and .43.  Typically they remain right around 1 or below.  When they're running backups, they may get higher, but if I see them above 5 or so, we usually start looking into it.  You can run with loads greater than that, but I don't want mine in that situation. 

My newest server is running .09 right now  :)

So, yes.  If your are seeing lots of red lights and especially loads around 21 all the time, that server is overstocked, out-resourced, and/or misconfigured.


DVR

ok so 21 is bad lol. lypha has that all the time in and out during the day. and almost always above 5 many times during the day and min is 1.5 and over always.

what does that number mean exactly? only 1.5% of the cpu usage is being used? isnt that too little? if 5 or 20 is a problem then why does my machine work at 50% cpu and higher, sometimes 80 easy and no problem. guess it means something else.

also, so those items i listed above are shown in your cpanel for your servers as well?

and they dont get red lights at all as in almost never? or red lights are common and its a normal thing?

sorry, watching lypha's crap host just makes me think red lights are a normal thing.


DirecTV Tivo HD DVR Receivers & Hard Drive Upgrade Kits: HR22 HR21 HR20 HR10-250 www.DVRPOWER.com

Jason

The default theme, Radiance, does not offer the ability to view the service status.  However, I can put you on a default cpanel theme that will if that's what you want.

And no, you should not see red status lights on my servers. 

That number is not a percentage of cpu usage like on your pc...it's a measure of load.