sites down?

[Lindsey]

The BCSS website and Cactus-Mall were down most of this morning... I checked a site that checks whether a named website is down, it replied that there was a general problem after checking the URLs.
May we have an announcement about the cause of this, please?

[Lithos]

It needed switching on and off again - sometimes several billion times for the tiny little switches that make it all work. The 'on off' guy had a tea break .

[Chris43]

It seems to be the norm with many server companies that they don't automatically tell their prime customers when there is a problem. Only if a customer detects a problem and contacts them do they actually say what the issue is. I recently had a similar problem with a different server company, got just no information at all. I would be surprised if Tony was aware until after the event, unless he happened to try to get online during the outage.

[Lindsey]

Thanks for info Chris. A posting from a Mod would be good to see on this thread. Cactus-Mall must surely be a superprime customer, with this on their front page

"We have a dedicated high performance server which currently hosts 227 domains including 216 related to cacti and succulents. This portal attracts more than 100,000 vistors per month and the server more than 600,000 so this is the place to host your webpages or advertise if you want to maximise your traffic. We invite you to join us. Some of the hosted domains: "

[Phil_SK]

I'm not sure what you hope I can say! Usually, we know nothing more than you do. Today is unusual, in that Tony sent out an email through the BCSS announce service (which any BCSS members are able to join, I think), saying:

The Cactusmall server went down early this morning and was not restored until just after midday. I am sorry for all the problems this has caused apparently due to a memory problem on the server computer.

[Diane]

Aaah, a senior moment, I get a few of those....

[Bill]

I wasn't aware of the issue as we haven't had phone and internet at home for over three weeks so I am relying on very slow mobile internet. This was sent at 19:33.

Bill

[IanW]

It seems to be the norm with many server companies that they don't automatically tell their prime customers when there is a problem. Only if a customer detects a problem and contacts them do they actually say what the issue is. I recently had a similar problem with a different server company, got just no information at all. I would be surprised if Tony was aware until after the event, unless he happened to try to get online during the outage.

This is only the norm if you're using super-cheap consumer focussed my-first-website style hosts. It doesn't cost that much to get a proper business grade host that has a proper SLA that the host will adhere to in this day and age including informing you of any downtime and properly compensating you if they do breach the SLA (which with some providers basically never actually happens).

[bcss]

To correct a few erroneous comments about yesterdays outage.

The sites are continuously monitored and I did know pretty rapidly after the initial failure (soon after 8.00am). However I do have to sleep occasionally so its not 24x7. It takes a little while for me to ascertain the nature and extent of the problem. I don't initially know if it is the server, particular websites or internet connectivity. Remember the BCSS is onlu one of several hundred websites including many commercial ones on the server. This service is NOT a cheap one and does have an SLA, however compensation only kicks in after a certain length of downtime and we did not reach that extent.

I issued a fault ticket immediately I had sufficient detail to to define the problem. I had no access to the server control systems so could not fix the problems remotely. I also initiated an on-line chat with the server company technical staff. The wait time was indicated as 30 minutes to speak to a system admin. I suspect that there were insufficient staff manning the support desk as it was 2am local time. Kindly my local computer decided to reboot a couple of times throwing me out of the queue. It was eventually 11.00am (over 2 hours) before I managed to speak to somebody and after that things moved pretty quickly to resolve the problem.

These sort of problems are extremely stressful for me and create enormous amounts of extra work sorting out the subsequent problems and queries. Suzanne and I are already well over the limit of the amount of voluntary work we can cope with, so some understanding and tolerance would be welcome.

[RAYWOODBRIDGE]

Thank you Tony ( A W Mace ) I think we have all been there, waiting to tell our service provider to put the loose wire back in at their end
internet connection to a certain website ( 8th wonder of the world a few years back ) is now seen in the same way as clean drinking water and electricity as a god given right.
I for one find that the very enjoyable hobby of growing cacti is made even more enjoyable by this Forum and all the cacti websites I can go on to.

Thanks again

Ray