What do you do when your server(s) goes down?

[Duane]

What do you do when your server(s) goes down?
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How do you communicate to your customer that you have a server problem or they have a domain problem?
1) Send out an all customer E-Mail
2) Post a notice at the Help Desk Page / Support Forum
3) Place a phone call to all of your customers.
4) Wait for the customer to:
....A) E-Mail / IM
....B) Phone / Fax
....D) Help Desk/Ticket
....E) Support Forum
5) Nothing
6) Combination of the above (please list).

What happens if your ONLY server goes down?
Do you have an "other website/e-mail server" for that purpose?

Do you maintain an "alternate web site" that your customer can reach?
Does your alternate web site "kick-in" when your main site is down?

Can you route your nameservers to site 1 then to site 2 if site 1 is down?

Do you provde any alternate way for your customers to communicate to their customers that they are having problems on their web site and that their host is working on the problem?

WOW - such questions. :yikes: THANKS

[tranz]

Well, since we only provide dedicated servers I can tell you what we do from there.
We monitor all the servers that we have for our clients, even the unmanaged ones. We do this for the reason is that I would rather be proactive and not reactive when an issue comes up.

We have had a good run in the servers that we purchase for our clients. Each client gets a new one so there is very little downtime. When something does happen as the CTO I am alerted to something going on before the clients most of the time.

It all depends on what happens really. Once I find out what the issue is I start to work backwards to find out how to get it resolved. If a drive has failed I'll put in the recovery cd made for that server, reboot it and the data is written back to the server from the last incremental backup. If it isnt an issue with a server but the data center has connectivity issues, thats found out pretty quick, what they are doing about it etc. From there I will call clients that have asked to be called if something goes down. I will and let them know whats going on and how its being resolved.

In the 2+ years we have been around I have had to make those calls but about 3 times in total.

[Robert]

I strip off all my clothes and run nekkid around the mall screaming "The World is Ending! The World is Ending!". Then I realize that it's just my DSL is down, so I put my clothes back and make my 1 phone call to my parents for bail money.

[Duane]

I strip off all my clothes and run nekkid around the mall screaming "The World is Ending! The World is Ending!". Then I realize that it's just my DSL is down, so I put my clothes back and make my 1 phone call to my parents for bail money. :jailed: :rofl:
As a parent I have told my kids - "I do not accept collect calls from jail." :wiggum:

[Duane]

In the 2+ years we have been around I have had to make those calls but about 3 times in total. That's good. I just went through an 8 hour outage and my host has never said one word about it. They have not answered my e-mails nor tickets. :confused:

[tranz]

That's good. I just went through an 8 hour outage and my host has never said one word about it. They have not answered my e-mails nor tickets. :confused:

Bummer, wanna move? LOL "wink,wink"

[Duane]

Bummer, wanna move? LOL "wink,wink" :pimp: LOL

Hmmm maybe......But I have a REALLY good deal going.
It's a small reseller account (1gig storage, 10gig bandwidth) but it is FREE. :banana:
No strings attached - no banners - no advertising etc. by the host. :dchick2:

[tranz]

well, since it's free then they feel that they dont need to answer you, lol

[Duane]

well, since it's free then they feel that they dont need to answer you, lol
But the professional thing to do is ... ... ... communicate ... ... ... communicate ... ... ... communicate

<sigh> I guess I need to post a request over at the resllers requests forum.

[doctor]

But the professional thing to do is ... ... ... communicate ... ... ... communicate ... ... ... communicate

<sigh> I guess I need to post a request over at the resllers requests forum.You don't have a professional relationship. You have a charity situation. Charities usually communicate to generate donations. Have you donated recently? :) Maybe they are trimming their mailing lists.

[Duane]

You don't have a professional relationship. You have a charity situation. Charities usually communicate to generate donations. Have you donated recently? :) Maybe they are trimming their mailing lists.
Charities? - Nope - they gave the account away in a contest and I won.
At best it is a "trial" offer and they hope I'll upgrade it - IF they prove to be a good host I will, but right now it looks like I will be shopping around as I grow.

[Duane]

Thanks to all who replied. :wave:

[usawebhosting]

I strip off all my clothes and run nekkid around the mall screaming "The World is Ending! The World is Ending!". Then I realize that it's just my DSL is down, so I put my clothes back and make my 1 phone call to my parents for bail money.

lol your a nut lol here is my lol for the day..

[GordonH]

We put a note on the front of the helpdesk.

I don't email every customer because in my experience only about 10% will notice and it makes the service appear unreliable if you are sending out notifications like this.

I have some evidence to back this up.
We use Tucows for domain registration and get all their system outage messages.
At one point there were so many for their email service it did put me off signing up to use it.

[RaDay]

Well I will give you my perspective as a dedicated customer.

If I notice the server is gone down...I do several things to make sure I don't look like a complete idiot....If the domain isn't working, I check SSH, and finally try to ping the IP.

If I confirm all that is down....I send a nice e-mail to my host letting them know its down....Some hosts I have respond in a matter of minutes...so respond in a matter of days. I can tell you that as a customer, having the whole server down is prob the worst kind of situation, at least if something was broke, I could be in SSH tinkering with things....but take my server away, and after my clients start chewing on my legs, I come to you :P

[beley]

We don't send out official notices unless we're planning an upgrade and know there will be an outage. In these cases, we'll send out notices to the affected clients letting them know we will be upgrading hardware and the server will be down at some point between XX:XX and XX:XX on this date.

For outages that are not planned, we just stand by the phones. We've only had one incident in the past year and the server wasn't down, just a couple of services on it. We quickly got control of the situation and had everything under control in a few hours. Apache was up the whole time so most customers never even noticed an outage at all.

Still, we have contingency plans in case something really bad happens. I think planning for the worst is just part of life. I have techs on call that, although very expensive, can get to work immediately even on holidays or in the middle of the night. We also have 3 different monitoring services (one in-house on a server, one through the server co. and a third-party monitoring) that will page us if any critical services go down or the load spikes.

[hosterschill]

If my server goes down, i just sit there and look at it and the tears run down my face, nah im just playing. most hosts host there site on a different server then there clients that way if the clients go down there still up. Well maybe not most hosts but i know alot that do that.

[n2972s]

I don't email every customer because in my experience only about 10% will notice and it makes the service appear unreliable if you are sending out notifications like this.

Isn't that the truth I belive it may be less than 10% depending on how long it is.

If it is short less than 15 minutes answer the questions directly through helpdesk or on the phone. If it get too long though it probably would be best to let people know via posted message somewhere.

[ThinkSupport]

Isn't that the truth I belive it may be less than 10% depending on how long it is.

If it is short less than 15 minutes answer the questions directly through helpdesk or on the phone. If it get too long though it probably would be best to let people know via posted message somewhere.


I really agree with you, clients should be informed if the down time is more.

[littleswebhost]

Email all my clients immediately!

It's not like you can hide it, and if you could, you still shouldn't. It looks much better when you let your clients know whats going on and how long you expect it to be that way.

[kev888]

I have an IM list of clients who are almost instantly informed in the case of a problem. If it's an extended down/problem, Most clients would get an email telling how they will be compensated and an easy "english" explination of what happened and usually what we've done to make sure it doesn't happen again.

[billiam2003]

I find that the clients that will notice like to subscribe to the notices that I send out regarding service issues or outages and it does make it a lot easier when there are no emails and such and they just read the updates when stuff happens. Makes it much nicer than having to tell many people at different times what is going on. They all get the email and they know to expect an email for info. Its rather nice.

[RAMCS-ltd]

When we have something down we try to notify customers by yelling out the office window. They usually don't hear us but it's a good thing. Our choice of words is not the best when issues arise.

Actually we tried the email route but after the customers used their domain emails for emergencies they never got notified until the server came back. We suggested an off-site email but they say it's just too complicated to have to check it all the time.

[Duane]

When we have something down we try to notify customers by yelling out the office window. They usually don't hear us but it's a good thing. Our choice of words is not the best when issues arise.
...
I don't even open the window - that's a good idea - I'll try that next time. :wavey:

[pengi]

I strip off all my clothes and run nekkid around the mall screaming "The World is Ending! The World is Ending!". Then I realize that it's just my DSL is down, so I put my clothes back and make my 1 phone call to my parents for bail money.


We just freak out and fix it. Lucky, we only had one issue since the server has been up, and all were notified within an hour of the issue. Afew of our clients are also personal friends (friends before customers), so one in a blue moon, we expect the house line to ring before the business line. :)

We do also use email/IM/phone to contact anyone if there were an upgrade (extra downtime) going on, thats never been the case so far though. We have been lucky, no reason to run around "nekkid".

[mlhosting]

I sacrifice a goat of course.

Anybody want hosting?

[vividkey]

Luckily we haven't had the joy of that happening yet; however, off the server we keep our client's emails and phone numbers on file so that we can give them a courtesy call to let them know if something happens, offer them a small percentage off for the month if its requested, and we have our two technical support guys work on it.

[Sesran]

What do you do when your server(s) goes down?
:yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes:

[shawon]

Upto now, there was two time my server went down for a long time, i directly called the DC to fix that. and they did so. :)

Kind Regards

[richardvan1]

We have a 24/7 live help phone line

[Connor]

I personally do anything and everything to keep my servers up. But if they went down (knock on wood) I would communicate if the clients come to me asking... That way I don't put out a bad image about myself.