Does anyone else find this outage odd..?

[Jaga]

Box441:

2008-07-16 16:34:06: Unforseen Power Failure. Service will be restored as soon as possible

I'm a systems administrator and tier 3 support rep by trade. I've worked in larger data centers with dozens of blades per rack, network attached storage and/or storge frames (EMC, HP), climate controlled environments, all monitored by a NoC (Network Operations Center) 24/7.

So this message that I'm seeing on some shared BlueHost space I have, strikes me as rather peculiar. Power failure on a shared box, that *should* be in a data center with redundant systems throughout?

Doesn't pass the smell test for me. Anyone else have theories or possible reasons for something like this happening? I just happen to be at the end of my rope with this particular 8-proc box, as I normally get less than 95% uptime (that's 22 min downtime per day or more) . It spikes CPU use all the time (>25%) causing slow or undeliverable web content, restarts core services like HTTPd and IMAP all the time, etc.

[vicb]

I agree, very odd, and rather annoying. I'm fairly new with bluehost, only a few weeks, I hope this isn't a regular occurrence.

[Early Out]

Sounds like the "curse of the new box" phenomenon that I've observed here. The newest users always get put on the newest server. That server hasn't been properly debugged, it's overloaded with new customers trying to upload all kinds of stuff, installing scripts, creating databases, and so on. They're making mistakes, and doing things that really tax the available resources. So, for the first few weeks, being on that box is a royal pain. Once things settle down, you can go for many, many months without seeing any issues at all, but for a new customer, it's a discouraging introduction.

[Jaga]

You might think that was the case here Early, except I've been on this box now since I started development for it's primary domain. That's nearly two months, and I know I wasn't the first person on it. I know because I asked when they moved me, and they indicated they had just under 100 other accounts on it at the time.

So two months and shakedown time, and it's still acting up on a daily basis. Not to mention, I've been pretty diligent in reporting issues with the box via both tickets and calls to tech support, so it's not like they (Bluehost) are clueless about it.

Not to mention - how much different can a "new box" be from one that is a year old? 8 procs vs 4? More RAM? Different drivers on the RAID disk subsystem? There are very few changes in 1 generation of hardware that could impact Apache, in my estimation. So that means that new boxes shouldn't be prone to issues, only to the activity of users. And if users are the continuing issue for this box, that's easy to fix for BH.

I just don't see the logic in it honestly. You assign the box as a recurring problem to a group of techs (tier 2/3) and have them research all the incoming tickets and reports, then let them poke around it and look at logs.

P.S. I've been with Bluehost for years now. This is the first sign of significant trouble, but to be honest I didn't really utilize my space prior to now. If this is status quo, then I probably should start looking for a new host. There is no way in hell I can launch an active site with this kind of downtime and page load times.

[vicb]

So its been an hour + of nothing, which is really frustrating. It's hard to develop applications that depend on the server when the server isnt even running. :(

[justin1278]

I wonder what's going on... This is the second issue I have had just today, first server load was heavy (not sure from what..) meaning >30, and now this. I've had the server load issues almost every day, it's beginning to get frusterating.

Literally, the past month, I have had more issues with bluehost than I have the past few years...

[Viceroy]

I had been with bluehost for about 5 years and I never had any major problems with them. Costumer service was great too.. . UNTIL recently.

When my site first went down, I went to live chat talking to one of their representative. I told him that there was a problem with my site. All the files was gone! It looked as if someone reseted my account. He assured me that was not the case and said someone who had my password must of requested it.

I asked him to check the logs, but he said there was none. I assured him no one had my password since I do not download anything online. I asked him again to look in to it. He said all he can do is restore my account and the last backup was a week old. Then he accused me of requesting go reset my own account and then I had changed my mind. I was so angry with him! He said if I don't want the week old backup there nothing he can do for me and that it was my own fault.

So, I went to my cpanel to take a look what was going on since I my FTP showed all files was deleted, I noticed the home directory said /home2/ when normally it was just /home/.

I asked him again, why was that, he said it's just like that and not all directory are /home/. I told him mine was /home/ for many years and he just said he can't help me and was about to end the chat. When I refreshed the cpanel files started to show up little by little and I asked him about it.

He asked me to hold on and guess what? He apologized and said they was moving my site to a different sever (this current one that is down) that since our conversation was so long, he must had missed something. What the hell was that all about??!?!?!?!! We both knew he didn't even bother checking what was going on with my account.

The second I was about to copy the entire conversation, the chat refreshed it self and all that was said was gone! I didn't even know they had such an option!!


After 5 years of great service.. . they are now overwhelmed by all the new customers and are not able to support their growth. I don't know what exactly is going on with bluehost, but clearly it's time to move on.


PS: forgot to add that since the moved me to this server been going down every 10 hours or so, I know this because i'm working on my sites 15 hours a day.

[Early Out]

This is now turning into one of those pointless, "Gee, my site goes down sometimes, too" threads. There's no help being requested here, and since this is not a BH support site, there's no help available. If you have a problem with the service BH is providing, you need to take it up with BH, or go to another host. Trading "ain't it awful" stories here is of no value.

Thread closed.