New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
Season 1: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/16698/fliphost-net-down/p1
@Spirit thanks, long time no see
How have you been?
Sounds very good! Thanks for doing this for your customers :-)
Just a small tip: make sure it doesn't run right after the cron job that sends an invoice payment reminder, as it will generate this "1-minute overdue" assumption. As soon as I get an invoice payment reminder (which happens about once or twice a year, while I get invoices on a daily basis) I pay it. Maybe a 12-hour window between the first payment reminder and shutdown would be good to accommodate time zones. I'm not saying you should keep the server running for 12 more hours, rather send the e-mail 12 hours earlier :-)
Again, just friendly advice.
Or simply, send the invoice payment reminder one day before the invoice is due.
From some providers, I get an invoice 14 days before due, and another reminder 7 days before due. And usually I pay it after receiving it, except if I have a problem with my CC or Paypal
Or that, but I assumed that must have already happened.
At the last day, the reminder should be every 1 hour with some annoying picture.
30-60 minutes.
So I think its good on @incero to come back for feedback on soft shutdown time - not always easy to do - especially here
. 4 minutes isn't much of a grace period - I'm with @william on 30-60 minutes (unless that adds high cost to the provider - before everyone chimes in, only @incero really knows the answer to that).
Appreciated @fliphost and @concerto49's approach even if some others didn't - its clear to me at least that they "get it" and as they've said, they're making some changes as a result.
Once @incero has his answer on shutdown time, this thread should really die IMHO.
Well, 30 min I never saw, but it might be the case for super sized nodes.
The issue here with corruption I think it happened because the server was shutting down and all changes were flushed to disk including tables in memory and the reset came at the worst time possible. A direct reset would have made it much better in this case, probably, due to less disk access and incomplete writes...
Yes, an incident report will be sent out later once full investigation of the situation has been performed, we've fixed everything and we can prepare plans on future improvements.
Here is a revolutionary and enlightening idea: how about cutting access to the switch first, and give the poor sap who didn't pay his bill a few more days to come up with the money? Maybe I'm too old or seen too much in my life, but I tend to walk away and not do business with places that offer knee jerk reactions instead of reasonable and plausible solutions. And I am not talking only about data centers and web hosting in general, but other businesses as well, including car dealerships and what not. I was in a situation where someone owed me allot of money and only through patience and a kind word was I able to recover all of it. And when I owe money to someone I expect the same from them, because at the end of the day I want to pay.
So back to the topic at hand, offering a few minutes time between a warning and a shutdown and what have you is all bullshit. Because in this business, especially during the slow periods, you loose your customers and make a bad reputation for yourself. I see here a man who's personality bleeds through his business, who makes a point in letting his customers know that "he means business". Unfortunately data centers are about a dime a dozen in the US.
When I got started in the hosting business I've let my pride get the better of me, and I was punished for it. This is the kind of business where customers expect to be treated with kindness, empathy, compassion and diplomacy even when they are in the wrong - they simply don't care, they just want to be pampered. So if pride is more important to you then maybe you're in the wrong business. It's like they say about marriage for example: "do you want to be right, or happy"? In web hosting it's like this: "do you want to have customers or do you want to be a smart-ass"?
If I would have been in the OP's shoes I would have left this one alone, never posted it. It's a waste of time, energy and draws negative attention and publicity.
Just my two cents of course - or the perspective of a third party neutral observer.
This is true for almost all services sector.
You either automate everything and have a self-service shop or you are prepared to listen and help.
In this business you need to talk to the customer, even the ones with a simple VPS, it is not possible to automate everything, even though some people never need to open a ticket or call.
This is the same issue with the corner shop and the big hypermarkets, both can do business and turn a profit, but the smaller you are, the more you need friends instead of customers.
@incero Is there a reason why you are shutting down the servers rather than just turning off the switch port?
Here's a question for all of you. Why shouldn't @incero turn off the nodes once the invoice becomes overdue? Invoices are generated for payment usually about 1-2 weeks BEFORE they're actually due. That's 1-2 weeks to pay the invoice. If you don't get around to paying it in that period of time, the value you place in your server being online clearly isn't very high. Why should companies be forced to keep someone's server online when they haven't paid for it? I understand the whole Data Corruption thing, but if you paid the invoice in the first place, you wouldn't have that issue! This reminds me of people complaining "That a-hole Cop gave me a speeding ticket when I was going 20 over right in front of him". If you pay the invoice on time, you won't have your servers shut off. It's that simple.
Sorry but just want to share what I think about this post.
Here people are trying to solve personal issues.
Diluting value of LET.
Some of us are getting entertained also, but it is pointless.
The flaw in your logic is this, yes they do have the right to shut down the servers, just as the police officer has the right to give you a ticket.
However, is it "kind, and thoughtful" if that police pulls you over for going over the speed limit, and then charges you with the massive penalty, and then the officer proceeds to find as much as he possible can to give you a larger and larger ticket. i.e. giving you a DUI test, Drug Test, searching your car, looking for every violation possible.
Just as the police officer went too far, incero did the same by being impatient and shutting down the servers now when they could have done many less intrusive functions that could have sent the same message.
I'm not fully sure what happened, but I think a simple phone call would have sufficed on incero's part to get the bill payed.
Mun
I think this is expecting a bit much. They can't call every customer every time they have a late payment, otherwise they would have to hire probably several people to call people all the time.
If this is a service that you require, perhaps they could have a "call me when I pay my bill late" option as an additional monthly fee.
From what I can tell this isn't a common thing for fliphost/cloudshard and hasn't been happening often with them. I have had a VPS in dallas for over a year, so they aren't new clients, so Im not sure if that phone call would have been too expensive out outlandish.
Mun
Edit: nevermind...
Regardless of all the opinions here or for how long this issue will be beaten to death, at the end of the day everyone conducts business as they see fit and customers vote with their wallet.
@marcm your graphical signature is a little annoying btw.
@incero Suppose a customer is having financial problem and contacted you that the payment would be late, would you give him some slack?
A couple of months ago I've got a heart attack and it's been hard for me. I ask several providers here at LET & vpsBoard that I have a service with to spare me some slack and they generously did.
I believe it is about communication
Yes I do get help from friends here at LET & vpsBoard.
To be honest, @Incero already gives 36 hours from expiration to shutdown. So why shouldn't they just disconnect network and send the graceful shutdown command upon expiration and forcibly shutdown upon the 36th hour, and a power on to PXE for DBAN after 120 hours? Quite frankly, I think such a solution would be the best of both worlds. Customer sees shit break, but the data's still there for 5 days after expiration, with little chance of corruption. Quite frankly, I love Incero's model of business. Y'all are just used to leniency to death.