Possible downtime!

[Wolfie]

Hopefully this will provide better service (read this thread for more information please).

[Wolfie]

During the time period of 08/07/2003 to 08/15/2003 there is the possibility of downtime.  During this time period, the site will be getting transferred FROM one server to another server, DNS entries will be updated and the new location will be tested.  I forsee very few problems, however, it is possible for them to occur.  Once I am certain that things will work, I will turn off the forums on this server and enable the forums on the new server.  During the time period for DNS updating, I will provide the IP address of the new server for those that are not redirected immediately.

 

Why the move?

Globat.Com provided a nice offer of 300mb(storage)/30gb(bandwidth) per month for roughly $100/yr.  However, they failed to mention that they reboot their server software every 30 mins, which results in roughly 1min downtime every 30 mins (2mins/hr, or 48mins/day).  Usually the downtime is more than 1min every 30mins, so to say that the site was down for 1hr/day would not be an exaggeration.  30days/month, I'm losing 1day/month on the site. 1 year = 12 days of service that I did not get that I paid for.  This is outrageous, and despite numerous calls and attempts at pointing out the flaw in their logic for the reboots (for new configurations to take effect), they never budged.  Therefore, their stupidity has caused me to leave at the 1 yr anniversay mark.

 

Hopefully, the new hosting company, tera-byte.com, will provide better/more reliable service.

 

We shall see.

 

For those interested in further details of the server rebooting issue.  The server software that globat is using apparently must be rebooted for changes to take affect.  It's understandable to want to have these changes kick in as soon as possible, but the rate they decided on is ridiculous.  Yes, they could change to a new server-software and get rid of the problem (and they said they were going to do that soon.  Is 6 months, with no change, too soon to have expected the change?  Not in my opinion).  But anyway, let's do some simple math here.

 

Let's say that exactly 1 minute is lost for every reboot...

Every 30 mins means 2mins/hour, 48mins/day

Every 60 mins means 1min/hour, 24mins/day <--time cut in half already!

Every 120mins means ½min/hour, 12mins/day <--getting VERY reasonable here!

Every 180mins means 1/3min/hour, 8mins/day <--notice savings is not getting much better

Every 240mins means ¼min/hour, 6mins/day <--obviously what I would pick lol

 

Ok so even in the business world, 4 hours to wait for changes to take affect is actually not unreasonable.  In fact, it's rather good.  So if businesses are relying on globat to host their sites, then 4 hours is good turnover time for configurations to take affect.  Mind you, if they want to UPDATE their site ie html/php/etc, then that is something they can do themselves.

 

So, by their switching it FROM every 30mins to every 240mins (or even every 120mins(2hrs)) the amount of downtime per day becomes very reasonable for the reasons they do it -vs- reliable uptime of the sites.

 

After taking a course about servers and server reliability, downtime for a site should be no more than 5mins/year..  Thats for rebooting the server itself (ie the actual computer, not the software).  Even at 1 min/day downtime for software rebooting, that is 365mins/year, which is 73x the downtime right there.  Ok so at 6mins/day (which I think would be reasonable given the reasons the *must* reboot), 6 x 365 = 2,190mins/year.  That is 438x the acceptable downtime!

 

Don't even get me to do the math for the amount of downtime they are insisting on the site going through.  AND GET THIS.  There are occassions (I'm sure more often than not) that the server does not successfuly reboot the site, so for 30mins, the site is non-responsive, until the next software-reboot.

 

All in all, and with this not being the only problem that I have had to deal with, it should be obvious that Globat.Com is not the company to use for site hosting.  Rest assured that I will be discouraging people FROM ever using Globat.Com - EVER.  I do intend to make sure that Globat.Com sees this message, and I want them to pay particular attention to this part.  If they EVER want me to change my opinion and to encourage people to join Globat, then they must give me 1 full year of free service (including paid domain name) and the site must not be down for more than 30mins/month average.  Anything less than this, and it'll just be me continuing on with my current plan - to shout as loudly as possible for people to run away FROM Globat.Com for hosting services.