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What is the accepted notification time that a provider should give
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What is the accepted notification time that a provider should give

craigbcraigb Member
edited June 2013 in General

Received an email from @vpsnodebox a short time ago with subject line "In 60 minutes we will shut down node kvme5w1 for upgrades". Seems its a brief outage to improve availability of their RAID based on the description. So I appreciate practices differ - just struck me as short notice for what is described as an upgrade (rather than a fix). Made me curious what other LEB providers and users consider reasonable notification for scheduled upgrades.

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Comments

  • PhoenixVPSPhoenixVPS Member
    edited October 2012

    1) If you had any kind of problem with this you should have opened a support ticket. We reply pretty fast.

    2) How exactly is this a fix?

  • PatrickPatrick Member
    edited October 2012

    It would depend on severity of the issue and how quickly it would need to be fixed. Hardware upgrades I personally would schedule with the DC and give a few days notice to clients but everyone's different

    Thanked by 1craigb
  • @vpsnodebox I don't have a "problem" with it nor did I claim it was a "fix". I stated I was surprised by it and it made me curious what is "normal" in the LEB world...

  • I'm guessing "normal" in the LEB world is not to worry bout performance abuse, and just let the customers suffer in the long run... and just perform the maintenance when you "get around to it".

  • Nick_ANick_A Member, Top Host, Host Rep

    For upgrades, generally a day or two at least. For fixes, it depends on the magnitude of the problem.

    Thanked by 1craigb
  • PhoenixVPSPhoenixVPS Member
    edited October 2012

    @craigb Resources have been heavily abused lately and we are making the proper emergency maintenance upgrades to ensure that all of our customers can benefit from the best possible reliability performance.

    @craigb said: I don't have a "problem" with it

    If you wouldn't have had a problem with it you wouldn't have started this thread, but instead submitted a ticket and asked us to postpone it. This is is an upgrade that causes an extremely short amount of downtime and it has to be done as soon as possible, but it is no different than having to perform a kernel upgrade for instance to fix a security vulnerability.

    @craigb said: nor did I claim it was a "fix"

    Your words: "just struck me as short notice for what is described as an upgrade (rather than a fix)"

    We like to be proactive and keep our customers happy. If you are not pleased with our services please submit a support ticket and I will be more than happy to provide you with a full refund.

    One more thing: you are not even located on node kvme5w1.

    Thank you,
    Marc

  • @vpsnodebox not sure what kind of day you're having but your reply seems unnecessarily defensive (and somewhat accusative). You're now stating "we are making proper emergency maintenance upgrade" - which wasn't mentioned in the email or your blog post. If that had been communicated in the email I wouldn't be scratching my head wondering 'is this normal for LEBs?'

  • @vpsnodebox One more thing: you are not even located on node kvme5w1.

    OK, I did check in the service detail page for my account after I received the email but couldn't see the node anywhere so took it that your email meant I was.

  • eastoncheastonch Member
    edited October 2012

    @vpsnodebox I have to agree with @craigb -- You seem awfully defensive.

    This, to my eyes, does not appear to me some form of dig, or attack at yourselves, nor does it outline a problem. He was just querying the general notice period of providers, not directly you, but using his recent e-mail from you as an example.

    @vpsnodebox said: Your words: "just struck me as short notice for what is described as an upgrade (rather than a fix)"

    Yes; in this grammar I would suggest he was trying to implicate that you're "upgrading" not "fixing", an upgrade could be postponed, or given much more of a notice, a fix could be taken as "severe, need now!" or "it can wait, but deffo soon!".

    @CraigB if you log into solusvm it should tell you your node under the VM details.

  • ChiefChief Member
    edited October 2012

    @vpsnodebox you have successfully turned what was a thread where @craigb was just curious what was standard for LEB providers in general nonspecific to you or your service whereby you were merely an opening example, now in to a thread completely about you focused on you and your services. Piece of PR wizardry right there for all the wrong reasons.

    /back on topic...

    @craigb if it's planned upgrades generally you expect a few days, some even give a months notice for example if it's a huge planned expansion or network upgrade. They're not the sort of things they do at the last minute. I would say the LEB providers in this area aren't much different to your larger more expensive providers, there may be a few exceptions to this but on average they're about the same as any other provider.

    Also keep in mind, just because a provider has a single LEB plan doesn't make them exclusively LEB. It may simply be their cheapest plan, or plan on special fell in to that bracket so if their other plans are of significant pricing I would expect their service and notifications to be as per normal across the board.

    Thanked by 3craigb fan eastonch
  • @Chief My intention was not to turn this thread into something about my company, but we where specifically named so of course I had to respond. @craigb is not affected by this since his VPS is on a different node. This is something that could have been probably postponed, but I did not want to drag my feet with it. We will make such announcement in a timely fashion from now on.

  • @vpsnodebox I'll open a ticket about seeing what node I'm on as I checked again in the service detail page and can't see it where I'd normally look for it.

    /me ducks

  • @craigb That is something that could be improved (knowing which worker/node you're on). Will probably look into making that standard information for the customers.

    PS: in case there's confusion, yes I'm from IonVz.com but I've migrated most of my customers from there to VPSNodeBox where I am on staff as the "managed support". Will be continuing IonVz as a management/consultant front soon as I get some time to update it. Just been swamped, and while I'm busy with migration and configuration for the managed customers, the rest of the staff is tracking down any abusers of the recent promotion (seems like any time there's a new promo some of the abusers like to come out of the woodworks and test our limits a bit, fortunately they haven't gotten the better of us yet.)

    Thanked by 1craigb
  • @vpsnodebox said: 1) If you had any kind of problem with this you should have opened a support ticket. We reply pretty fast.

    I'm not sure. Opening a ticket in reply to a 60 minute notice? Wouldn't be the first thing I would think of. I would think "what the fuck?!?". If I would have customers on that VPS and the provider would send such a notice, they would need a lot of credit in order for me not to leave them ASAP and demand a refund.

    A 60 minute notice is completely unacceptable. Unless of course if it's a very urgent fix for an extremely unstable node (which I don't think this is).

  • @craigb I have replied to your ticket with your node name.

    We had to replace a RAID-10 controller in kvme5w1 and unfortunately there was no BBU on hand (it's on our announcement list) to perform this upgrade at the same time. And while not all of our nodes have BBUs yet, we are slowly working towards installing them. The advantage of having a BBU installed is that we can enable caching which in turn gives a nice performance boost to I/O. Normally we would have made the announcement in time but seeing how a couple of abusers where making the life hard for the rest of the users on that node we decided to proceed now.

    @Chief I appreciate your comments and I would not expect any less of me or my staff than to provide the best possible service to all of our customers. The price point that we sell our services at has nothing to do with the quality of the services that we provide. We do not prioritize customers based on the amount of money that they paid for our services but by the urgency of their problem. Thank you again for having us here and I apologize if I have upset anyone as that was not my intention.

  • @vpsnodebox said: The advantage of having a BBU installed is that we can enable caching which in turn gives a nice performance boost to I/O.

    This is only true for LSI cards, 3ware and Adaptec allow you to enable caching even without the BBU installed.

  • @miTgiB LSI does as well but I don't want to risk the integrity of anyone's data. I'd rather be safe than sorry, even if it means that I will get a couple of lashes every now and then ;) Thanks for the info do, I appreciate it.

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    @vpsnodebox said: Normally we would have made the announcement in time but seeing how a couple of abusers where making the life hard for the rest of the users on that node we decided to proceed now.

    Suspend the abusers, announce an important hardware upgrade 48 hours ahead, problem solved?

    I don't check my email every 60 minutes, I would imagine others don't either.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @vpsnodebox said: @craigb is not affected by this since his VPS is on a different node

    Then he should have not received the email, but i am nit-picking now.
    60 min notice is a little, even 24 hours is, however, I bet that someone at the other end of the world would have to wake up at 3 AM to be there and make sure everything restarts OK.
    Not that I suggest to anyone they can depend on a LEB with their life so much that can't lose any heartbeat.
    M

  • @craigb said: Made me curious what other LEB providers and users consider reasonable notification for scheduled upgrades.

    Trying to get back on topic, I had an email from QuadraNet about an upgrade I've sat on for a week, for maint they will preform next Monday, that I sent to customers as a tweet a few hours ago, I will post it to my announcements page over the weekend, as well as email all users on the LA nodes. Notifying users is a tricky thing, no matter how much info you provide, someone will think up something to ask, and then you also run the risk of info overload and they just ignore the notice, but put in a ticket asking why they are down during the window. You really can't win on this, so a few days on something you can control is probably a best for most.

    Thanked by 1craigb
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited October 2012

    It's relative. If you know your clients and roughly know what they do (you can't always, but sometimes you can), then shorter notice might be appropriate. I like to say about 48 hours but it's situational. I think the last time I gave about 72 hours.

  • Like @Chief said, and I believe he is right, I do not want to turn this thread into an issue about my business (VPS Node Box). We, like every other provider here, are on this forum at @Chief's pleasure. That is abundantly clear and always has been, and I can personally appreciate the effort that he and his staff is putting into keeping all of this together while keeping the contents at very high standards.

    Instead of answering each question and concern separately that was addressed directly to me and my business, I'd like to address all of them in the same comment.

    @craigb I have issued a full refund for your first payment to compensate you for any concerns that our email may have caused you even do you where not affected in any way by the work that we have performed on node kvme5w1 since your VPS is located on another node. I believe that this way you are not bound by anything and have plenty of time to think if you want to stay with us for the long run or not. The upgrade on that took no longer than a reboot and no one on that node was affected by it. We shut down every VPS on that node properly and then once the node was back up we booted each VPS by hand and made sure it was running like it was supposed to. This is how it should be done.
    As for your original question, the answer is extremely simple: For any upgrade that will cause a serious amount of downtime you should give enough notice ahead of time to the affected customers so that the bulk of them can prepare. Like @miTgiB said, it is extremely hard to reach everyone because many customers ignore emails. I think that one of the best things that could be done would be to notify customers by SMS, Twitter and / or Facebook messages since these are the mediums that most people pay attention to.

    @mpkossen While I agree that a 60 minutes notice is short, I believe that I have chosen my wording wrong. We wanted to enable caching on that node as soon as possible, but we didn't want to do it without a BBU. Data integrity comes first, before anything else. We have a couple of abusers on that node, and the most common reaction would have been to suspend them but we decided to increase performance. If we had used the words "emergency reboot" it would have been probably much better. We use the services of fellow LEB providers like RamNode or ChicagoVPS for our DNS network. One morning at 4AM I have received an email from @Nick_A at RamNode with the following text:

    Hello,

    Unfortunately we have to perform an emergency reboot of node AtlantaSSDVZ2. Your VPSs should be back online shortly. If you have any questions or concerns, please open a support ticket.
    Thanks,
    Nick
    [email protected]

    It is one of the nodes where we have one of our DNS servers. Did I get worried or upset? No, because I know that as a fellow provider he is a competent professional and he knows what he is doing. Installing a BBU on a RAID-10 controller takes about as much time as a reboot. I wanted to let the customers know exactly what we where doing. Maybe I should have kept the email shorter, to the point and used the word "emergency" in it.

    @joepie91 That is exactly what we are doing, I just hope that when we send out notices some of them won't start threads here hoping to get attention. I believe that warning them first would be a good idea, and then suspend them if they fail to comply. Some people tend to get really nasty, while others will work with you to make things right. It depends on the person. As far as announcing important hardware upgrades: I agree, significant upgrades that can cause a couple of hours of downtime yes, but something that was absolutely necessary, well, I guess the wording in that email was wrong. I should have kept it simple like @Nick_A did, because said upgrade took as long as a reboot.

    @Maounique While I have been using Linux on the desktop and server since the mid 90's, and have used many of the major premium VPS providers I can tell you that most LEB providers are some of the most dependable hosting providers that you will ever come across, and while most of them have small staffs they are some of the most courteous, knowledgeable and well behaved people that I have ever met. ChicagoVPS was extremely responsive to any tickets, and @Nick_A from RamNode is just awesome to deal with. You know what you get with some of the major VPS providers? Answers like "we do not provide support" for the most basic questions, with this one big provider that I don't want to name I had a VPS (not a cheap one mind you) that if my life would have depended on it I would have been dead. I was always down or locked up at the wrong time, never mind that it was rebooted at least every few days.

    @miTgiB in regards to your last comment: public relations and keeping everyone informed is tough, in they so choose to, customers can play sometimes dumb even if you did everything you could to make them happy.

    @jarland I know our customers and who is on the node in question. Over the past couple of days I have been talking to them and they voiced their concerns over I/O abusers. Instead of sitting back and risking upsetting customers that just want to go about their business and use their VPS servers properly, I decided to take action. The next step is to serve notices and deal with the abusers. All of this being said, this upgrade happened extremely fast and no one was affected by it.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    Yeah, I agree. But you got me wrong, I dont say ppl should not put their life on a LEB because they are cheap, far from it, but because usually there is no redundancy unless you make it from more LEBs, few have HA of any kind and worst from my point of view, I do not have control over it.
    It is not that I dont trust LEB ppl here and I know how the big boys treat customers, most wont even sell to me, this is why I am such a fan of LEB/LET, they do all they can to provide good and cheap service.
    However:
    1. Nobody should have their life online, no matter on which servers;
    2. I dont trust anything I dont have full control over with sensitive info or nuclear plants depending on it.
    Only if there is a big DC, with automated monitoring of best grade, good staff, triple redundant HA, power, AC AND replication offsite (preferably in another country) on a similar setup I might sleep well.
    TL;DR
    Small providers offer better quality than big for the same price and treat customers better.
    I was just saying ppl should not depend on remote computers on which even the providers often have not much control.
    M

  • @Maounique Considering what I have seen over the years I don't feel comfortable anymore with dealing with big companies, and not just when it comes to hosting, but everything. Unfortunately I have to for some things, but when I find a small business to replace the services of a big company I go for it. You wonder why? Because big companies tend to abuse customers whenever they can lock them into one of their products or services. They don't fear complaints, forum posts and bad mouthing because they have PR people and lawyers and if they can't shut you up one way, they will gag you.

    Thanked by 1Maounique
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    Same here, I think you are preaching to the choir :)
    M

  • @vpsnodebox said: used the word "emergency" in it.

    hmm...

  • yeah...

  • TazTaz Member

    @vpsnodebox My vps is working fine with you guys. Feel the love.

    Best of luck funding my account. If you do, I will pay double this month ;)

  • @Taz_NinjaHawk Thanks for your support. Privacy is your right :) We treat all customers the same so don't hesitate to ask for help if you need it.

    I wish you the best in your new endeavor!

  • TazTaz Member

    No privacy on fake info and prepaid cards ;)

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