Pure Evil - Another Day... Another Outage

[Evil Avatar]

Those of you who got a lot of work done today while at work may have noticed that we were down again last night and this morning.

At 9:00 AM I called tech support and told them we were down and they said they would reboot us within an hour, but it took till around 1:00 PM (and two more phone calls) before it really happened.

Since the server stays up for about 12 hours after a reboot, I'm having problems making our host understand that there really is a problem with the server that they need to fix, so I'm kind of expecting to be down again tomorrow morning for a few hours.

That will make it into a long weekend for me - trying to fight with tech support between work hours - but, come Monday I can really start badgering them on a regular basis until we get this issue fixed.

Thanks for sticking it out!

[Taco]

Who are you?

[mille.mots]

Being a reformed conslutant and once again a captured IT employee, I feel for you. ;) The ironic thing is that Network Solutions ranks your hosting provider as number one for traffic. Perhaps that's part of the problem, though. ;)

[Evil Avatar]

Being a reformed conslutant and once again a captured IT employee, I feel for you. ;) The ironic thing is that Network Solutions ranks your hosting provider as number one for traffic. Perhaps that's part of the problem, though. ;)

It is kind of weird. When we ran into a problem with the server earlier in the year, they responded right away and had a new hard drive swapped out within 24 hours of figuring out there was a problem.

This time, I have opened up several tickets, called a bunch of times and send them a dozen E-mails and it honestly doesn't sound like anyone has done anything except the once-a-day reboots.

Weird.

[mille.mots]

Not really weird at all...it's cheaper for them to walk over and power cycle the machine than it is to do any real troubleshooting. Do a cost-benefit analysis and you'll see that losing a single customer has less impact on the bottom line than replacing a failing component (in some cases an entire server). They just ignore the ones that complain until they leave, and then keep soaking the clueless and those too timid to stand up to 'the man.'

:eek:

Or, maybe I'm just cynical. :D

[TheKeck]

Luckily work was busy for me today. Otherwise, I might have cried.

[mille.mots]

It was Friday, I don't do work on Fridays (less chance of breaking things, leading to working Saturdays<G>), so the lack of EvAv had me flummoxed. For a while, I was all paranoid, thinking management was blocking access and tracking my attempts to load it. Oddly, that didn't stop me from trying. ;)

[NoName]

My department had "team building" today, which brought me out of the office. No internet for me today!

Then I went and watched Serenity. Wow, it's been awhile since I've seen a good movie in the theaters.

[Taco]

Indeed. The hard drive probably had either some kind of alert sent via page or a bright orange light saying "Fix me bitches!!!" on the chassis. The current problem doesn't have a fix me light so they just keep rebooting it, without feeling the pressure you do to fix it.

/IT consultant as well ;) Though I don't have the luxury to be so distanced from my clients.

[Taco]

Not really weird at all...it's cheaper for them to walk over and power cycle the machine than it is to do any real troubleshooting. Do a cost-benefit analysis and you'll see that losing a single customer has less impact on the bottom line than replacing a failing component (in some cases an entire server). They just ignore the ones that complain until they leave, and then keep soaking the clueless and those too timid to stand up to 'the man.'

Of course you need to take bad word of mouth into account, especially in a business where a good amount of customers have a giant soap box to stand on 24 hours a day.

[Everlost_MI]

Not really weird at all...it's cheaper for them to walk over and power cycle the machine than it is to do any real troubleshooting. Do a cost-benefit analysis and you'll see that losing a single customer has less impact on the bottom line than replacing a failing component (in some cases an entire server). They just ignore the ones that complain until they leave, and then keep soaking the clueless and those too timid to stand up to 'the man.'

:eek:

Or, maybe I'm just cynical. :D

Or just realistic?

[mille.mots]

Or just realistic?

Oh, you think you know me so well, mon frere. Wait, you do! :D

(begin encoded message: ext-nay iday-Fray is-ay a o-nay o-gay or-fay us-ay :( :end encoded message)

[mille.mots]

Of course you need to take bad word of mouth into account, especially in a business where a good amount of customers have a giant soap box to stand on 24 hours a day.

Ah, yes (/me stroking chin), but the soapbox is only available as long as the server is up (/me raises one eybrow). Unless the customer moves to another soapbox, of course. ;)

Good point about the word-of-mouth, though.

[Magnanimous Gnome]

I was seriously about to cry.

*hugs Evil Avatar*

(the site, not the guy) :p