Friday, May 23rd, 2008
Last night around 8PM, I heard the surge protectors/battery backups that we have for the computers beep. It’s the first time I heard that since we have been here. I am pretty used to it because they are rather sensitive. Any power fluctuation causes them to beep. It is comforting.
I didn’t think anything of it. Then, a little while later, I tried to access some websites that I have on one of my servers. I couldn’t get on. I tried again a little while later and still couldn’t get on. I asked Laura if she was able to get to the sites and she said no. She told me that she was working on one of them when she couldn’t get to it anymore. I figured the hosting company’s monitoring “red light” would’ve gone off by now and the server would be brought back on line by them. Nothing. I decided to submit a support ticket.
The hosting company responded to the support ticket informing me that they could access the server and all the sites just fine. I then called my sister down in Chapel Hill, NC to see if she could log on to the sites. She could access them just fine too. The strange thing is that I was able to see all the websites on my other server like nothing was wrong.
I responded to the hosting company ticket and let them know that I could not access the servers from only my location, but it seems like the rest of the world was looking at the sites without issue. I felt so left out. They asked me for my IP address so they could check the firewall. That was fine. Then, they asked me to do a traceroute to the server. I did that and the connection timed out at the server. Then, they did a traceroute from the server back to me, and the connection was timing out at my location.
This was all getting kind of odd. They asked that I power cycle the modem. I did and the problem was solved. I was able to access the server again.
What I find puzzling is that I was only blocked from one server in the world…mine. How did this happen. After thinking for a while, I remember right at the moment of the power hiccup, the issue began. Could being on a website at the time of a power surge (or failure) make your modem block you from the website (server) you were looking at?
Related posts
Posted in Computers, Internet | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
If there is one thing I have learned from doing this business thing all these years, it is to work with the best companies out there. The problem is, they are kind of a pain in the tush to find. You are bound to get involved with the wrong companies here and there. I sure did.
Today was another day spent transferring two of my websites over to my new hosting company. By the way, this is called website migration. It’s not the most difficult thing in the world to do, but it can take some time if the site is large. At this point in my life, I am very good at it.
I woke up this morning and decided to optimize a few databases that were left on one particular server of mine. One database was rather large…I mean huge. It was a little over 750MB. That’s pretty big. When I began my process, the page hung…the database was too big. This, in turn, took the MySQL server off line. I called support at the wickedly horrible web hosting company (the one I have been moving away from) and couldn’t get through, twice. Then, I called a third time and got through to the Philippines. I swear I have nothing again the Philippines, but I vow to never knowingly do business with a company who uses them for customer support. They are all very nice people. The issue lies with the company not giving these customer support people any authority to do anything on their own. If they are just going to be working the telephone and passing the issues through to the real support department, why not just use the real support department to start off with? I have a real feeling many of these companies are actually losing money by outsourcing their support. That support is enough to drive even the most regular person nuts.
This morning, when the server (yes, the entire server) went down and I finally got through, I explained the problem. I told the girl to reboot the machine. She continued to troubleshoot by reading off her little card. I tried to tell her again just to reboot the machine, when she put me on hold. I waited for about ten minutes when I realized that the same scenario from a few months ago was actually happening again. I decided to hang up the phone and just transfer the sites over to the real hosting company. That, my friend, was the best investment I have ever made. It saved my sanity and saved my hair.
Well, the transfer process is almost complete. The DNS of both sites still has to resolve, but things are looking up. One of the only issues left to deal with is the data loss. I was forced to use my own database backups…one from January 2 and one from December 16. So, if you placed any ads on any of my websites in the past two weeks, please re-register and replace your ads. My apologies.
Here is one word of wisdom for you if you are in this line of business - no matter how much your website hosting company tells you they do backups, backup your databases and files yourself to your own computer. The last time this happened with this company, I was informed that they had no database backup. Nope, they just didn’t and I suppose I would have to travel to the Philippines to argue about it.
Related posts
Posted in Business, Computers, Internet, Websites | 1 Comment »
