Down Time... Not too bad

[casbboy]

Alright, this fits into the top 3 'hiccups' that powweb has encountered. But I can't really complain too much. The servers were hit by a virus, and they had it cleaned and up and running by the end of the day.

Of course, like a lot of other sites, my site will take a ding for today. Just a weekend re-coup I guess.

Next point.... if you lost $400+ dollars today... why are you still using a shared hosting solution?? Shared hosting obviously has some weeknesses. If you are making that much, get a dedicated server [with management]...

But, hopefully powweb will give their firewall a kick in the @ss...

Now, like a parent. "lets not make this a habit!"

Ryan

*I always worry about Powweb quality as they offer a TON for web hosting at the price. People will load up the servers.

[Mangus]

I Totally agree with you casbboy... In addition, if you are making 400 dollars a day, maybe you are willing to pay for a price premium... why powweb does not offer this as a value added service? (like for example, a better service level, like being hosted in the same place that powweb's home page is..) If they offer it maybe there are people there making 400 a day that will pay...

[IanS]

I Totally agree with you casbboy... In addition, if you are making 400 dollars a day, maybe you are willing to pay for a price premium... why powweb does not offer this as a value added service? (like for example, a better service level, like being hosted in the same place that powweb's home page is..) If they offer it maybe there are people there making 400 a day that will pay...I like the idea of a 'One level' plan. Everyone gets the same service (good or bad) not according to if they can pay. If you want to pay premium prices then there are plenty of other hosting companies out there. But before you switch, see if their premium service matches the 'One level' service here. Check carefully that they offer e-mail, chat room, one-to-one chat, and telephone support to those that need it. Then see if they offer forums like this.

I've not hunted around for a while to find out, but my money is on Powweb still being the only hosting company that does ALL of these and does them well ALL of the time (well almost all).

[stevel]

The servers were hit by a virus, and they had it cleaned and up and running by the end of the day.
I wanted to make sure that everyone understood that PowWeb's servers were NOT infected by a virus, and it wasn't a virus that attacked the servers. It was a deliberate, coordinated attack of one or more web sites hosted by PowWeb, and the unexpected failure of the hardware firewall to contain the threat. In the two and a half years I've been here, I have never once seen a case where any kind of rogue software invaded PowWeb's servers.

[Roy]

Sorry, it was bad - it was really bad! In my three years with PowWeb, Friday 7 Jan 05, was most certainly the worst day ever. I hope and pray that there is never a repeat of such.

[stevel]

Yesterday's outage was nothing compared to space being offline for a week back in 2002. That was before all of the infrastructure changes that have been made here. Reliability of the service has been improving continuously and is, overall, excellent. Yes, there are glitches here and there, and I know that PowWeb is taking steps to avoid the sort of problems that cropped up yesterday, but I think a sense of perspective is needed, especially when one looks at how little we pay for hosting here.

[NMS]

stevel I think you are refering to when powweb changed their physical location .. & even that move was worth!

[stevel]

No, I am not referring to the datacenter move. In September 2002, the server that was "space" was failing, and PowWeb kept trying to fix it. They did eventually fix it by, if I recall, replacing the server, but it took at least six days. I had two sites on space at that time so I remember it all too well.

The datacenter move affected just about everything, but was over in a few hours.

[casbboy]

You are right! I mis-read, the dos attack wasn't a virus.

So let me get this straight:

members of powweb's hosting solution paid for hosting just to intentionally run software to hurt powweb?

Ryan

[IanS]

You are right! I mis-read, the dos attack wasn't a virus.

So let me get this straight:

members of powweb's hosting solution paid for hosting just to intentionally run software to hurt powweb?

RyanI think you've got that wrong.
Or maybe it was tongue in cheek :eek:

People from OUTSIDE of Powweb would be the people (nasty people :() that were doing the Denial of Service (DOS) attack. Probably via a virus around the internet, but certainly NOT from Withing Powweb or their hardware. It is likely it was an attack on a particular site for some misguided reason.

The expensive firewall system they have installed and they expected to prevent outages from such an attack failed. That is an issue that is beyond Powweb and has been escalated to the manufacturers/suppliers of the firewall system.

I base my information on that provided here (http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?t=45158)

It is worthwhile to subscribe to the announcement and outages forums so that you receive information on happenings at Powweb. Sometimes the information is not as timely as I'd like, but it is official, authorative and accurate.

[redhunter]

I Totally agree with you casbboy... In addition, if you are making 400 dollars a day, maybe you are willing to pay for a price premium... why powweb does not offer this as a value added service? (like for example, a better service level, like being hosted in the same place that powweb's home page is..) If they offer it maybe there are people there making 400 a day that will pay...

If powweb provided diversified services they would not be able to provide any service at the current price. Their business model is classic - do one thing, do it well, and avoid options like the plague. To misquote Henry Ford: "You can have any color you want, as long as it's black". You want a custom car? Buy a Dusenberg.

Frankly, having worked in the managed hosting business and seen what goes on behind the curtain, as it were, you can pay an awful lot more than Powweb prices and not get the reliability and response that Powweb has. No service is perfect. In spite of the recent problems, Powweb is still excellent value IMHO, particularly as they have a track record of fixing things. Stuff happens, but they do invest in the wherewithal to fix it. These problems will pass. If not, I will change my opinion.

Al