For those we lost, We will not forget 09/11/2001 “Our God given unalienable rights are given to us all as individuals. They tell us what me may do for ourselves, and they are the embodiment of liberty. The so-called rights that government gives to some of us are parcelled out to select groups as classes. They tell us what one class of people may require another to do for them, and they are the very essence of slavery.”
— Perri Nelson, February 9, 2010

A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh?

 

Site outages


Published Sun, Jun 29 2008 9:25 AM

Sometimes the best laid plans of mice…

I've been having some problems with my hosting provider. It seems that from time to time the server where my site is hosted has problems. When this happens, you may be seeing a screen that looks a bit like this...

Col1=hello ... Col2=there == Col1=hello111 ... Col2=there111 == Col1=hello222 ... Col2=there222 == Col1=hello333 ... Col2=there333 == Col1=hello444 ... Col2=there444 == done...
Error #1500

The page you requested is temporarily unavailable. Please try again.

If you are the owner of the site and you feel you are seeing this page in error,
email Support@Brinkster.com.
0.03125

Occasionally an ASP error will occur instead (I don't even use ASP on my site). It doesn't matter which of my domains you try to reach either. They all give the same results. It's rather frustrating and it has happened five times now in the last two months that I'm aware of. The site outages last anywhere from a half an hour to several hours. Customer support doesn't seem to be able to deal with the issue, it requires an admin.

I understand. It's displaying a behavior I have seen before but only and admin has been able to correct. One will be in within the hour. I have been attempting to correct this myself but the server is not responding.

If you actually try to go to a specific post, you might see something like this instead...

Server Error in '/' Application.

The resource cannot be found.

Description: HTTP 404. The resource you are looking for (or one of its dependencies) could have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please review the following URL and make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Requested Url: /2008/6/27/1182.aspx
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2407; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2407

I see similar errors from the APIs I use on the site to post content or to get the feeds. This morning's outage lasted at least two hours. Brinkster's support FAQ answer for the "1500 error" is as follows

here are 3 main causes for this error message.
1. Your site has been stopped due to a billing issue. To have this resolved, please contact Brinkster support.
2. This can also be because your site is causing issues on your server. If this is the case, you were sent an email concerning the specific problem. You will need to resolve the issue and contact support to have your site restarted.
3. Or it simply means that your domain is not associated to your site correctly. Brinskter Support can correct this, as well.

Well, as to issue number one, my account is current. It's due for renewal next month and will end up costing me $276.00 for the next 12 months of service, and an additional $8.95 apiece for my two extra domain names, but I'm not due to be billed until the 26th of July.

As to issue number two, my site's code hasn't changed significantly in the last several months. I have made minor changes, but nothing that should be causing server issues. I don't use a lot of bandwidth, and I'm well under my quotas for space. Besides, Brinkster hasn't sent me any such email.

As to the third issue, I think it's fair to assume that's not actually the case. The site has been working in the past (and if you're reading this now, it's working now). The first time this issue came up, that was what the support operator told me was the problem. The second time it was something else entirely.

Anyway, this time, I was told that it's issues with the server itself. "It can get a little congested at times." So, they suggested a server transfer. Everything is going into the works for that. Hopefully this time the issue will be fixed for good. Otherwise I'm seriously considering changing my hosting provider. Suggestions for a new provider are welcomed. I need at least the following capabilities to be comparable to the ones Brinkster provides...

  • 500gb of web space.
  • 6,000gb of monthly traffic
  • 2,000 email accounts with 2gb storage each.
  • ASP.NET v3.5, PHP, Classic ASP
  • 250mb MS SQL Server DB
  • Windows or Linux OS
  • FTP Access

More details on the package I'm using currently are here. If I decide to switch hosting providers, I'd like something comparable, for a comparable price.

In the meantime, I hope that the server transfer will fix the problems.


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