Re: [cobalt-users] cobaltracks down time report

[Alfredo <alfredo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Subject: [cobalt-users] cobaltracks down time report
> Reply-To: cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> this is a copy of my server moniter for today and the month of november at
> cobalt racks...
>
> keep in mind on occasion the ping would not work but the web was ok
> General Statistics

snipped

> Date & Time This Report was Generated Fri, Dec 1, 2000 at 18:10:40
> Timeframe Last month
> Total Downtime For the Tracked Period 63 hours 20 minutes 42 seconds

First off, Hirsh, the above line with the total downtime would have 
been sufficient for me to get your point. Instead, I had to wade 
through a very long set of records and, when you're reading this list 
in digest, that can be a less than pleasant experience. I DO 
appreciate you being concrete, of course, but...well... LOL

Anyway, it's clear you're very frustrated and with good reason and 
it's clear that people here have been badly hurt by this situation -- 
some are now facing major business problems as a result. It's a 
horror story for sure. I feel for you.

This looks like a company that did three things:

1 -- grew faster than it was ready to do

2 -- offered fees that encouraged that growth but didn't allow for a 
rapid development of its staffing and other structural stuff (maybe 
because the fees were too low and didn't provide enough seed capital)

3 -- didn't structure itself to deal with major crisis situations and 
insulate its clients from those situations -- lack of experience, 
seems to me

It also looks like a company that is fighting to stay alive right now 
and that's not a good place for people who depend on it for their 
livelihoods to be. Painful situation for all of you! :(

Lessons to be learned? (last thing you guys want to hear but maybe we 
can all learn a bit from this one)

1 -- THE BIG ONE. Technical support. Whatever you're doing -- 
colocation or dedication -- you have to have people next to your 
machine all the time and they have to be accessible and 
knowledgeable. You need at least extended business hour tech support 
for ANY question you have and emergency 24/7 support for when your 
machine is down.

Guys, if you don't have that, you are playing with fire and fate and 
the Raq is not a machine that does fire and fate real well. Great 
server, in my opinion, but when you go past the GUI capabilities (as 
most of us have to), you sometimes need to hold the thing's hand a 
bit and you aren't near that hand!

I would say that the FIRST thing to check is tech support before 
price or anything else and if you have to pay extra for it, pay extra 
for it. Because YOUR clients pay YOU and they don't want to know 
anything. They want their web sites on line all the time or a quick 
fix when those sites are down.

Truth be told, all this discount Internet stuff is getting out of 
hand. Too much risk, in my opinion.

2 -- Yeah, you DO get what you pay for. If you're hosting, charge the 
money you need to get a solid situation for your server and the 
people will pay it and they'll come to you as word gets around that 
you're stable and efficient. All you need is one bad week and, 
speaking from experience, the price you charge means NOTHING for 
anyone.

3 -- If you have been hurt by down times from a provider and you lost 
business, ask the provider to please email ALL your clients and take 
responsibility for the problem and ask them to not blame YOU. They 
can identify themselves as your "base service provider" or something 
and you won't look like a "renter". The lost clients probably won't 
come back to you but maybe they won't bad mouth you all over the 
place and this will help keep your current clients. A responsible 
service provider should do this for you, especially if they want to 
keep your business and such an email will be more effective than the 
"excuse" you're going to have to email out.

4 -- If they are willing to do the above, I would give them a few 
days to get the act together and then make moves to other places if 
you have to. Right now, it's going to be hell for everyone to be 
moving all these web sites on servers that are unstable and getting 
dns record changes acknowledged from a provider who can't even answer 
a phone -- in some cases, you may actually NEED their ack on a dns 
change but at the very least, you don't want some techie Nacking your 
request because he/she sees an outstanding balance on your payment 
records or something. I don't think these folks are in the best place 
to be efficient and cooperative with site flight.

I'm not telling people what to do. I don't know your business 
situation. I'm just posing a caveat from an "outside" place that may 
be a bit "cooler" than where you are and based on a whole lot of 
years of experience doing this stuff.

Other than offering my sympathies, it's about all I can do.

Alfredo


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