Customers are mushrooms again...

carled · #1 (**permalink**) 25-07-11, 02:58 PM

Yes, once more it appears that WHUK decide that keeping their customers in the dark is the best policy. I go to update the site and I find "service not available" across the board along with Plesk down.

I go to live chat and get Justin who starts off like nothing is wrong, "ok, let me check..."
followed by "we are aware of the issues you are facing." So the whole checking thing could have been circumvented on my initial "why is plesk and my domains down" question with "oh, if you're on london.specialservers then there's a known outage that's being worked on, yes?

Anyhow, on we go with "We have update our client , we will sort it Asap" and "We cannot give you any ETA"

Why, WHUK, do you always have to be mysterious and secretive about the problems. Why not just say a hard disk crashed or a virus hit or something else went wrong rather than "we know something is wrong, but we're not telling you what it is or when it'll be fixed. Tough luck."

It's this silent treatment that really upsets customers, you know?

Whuk - Chris · #2 (**permalink**) 26-07-11, 10:33 AM

Hi Carl,

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.

We do agree that there was an issue with plesk control panel yesterday. But the time you initiated the Live chat, even we were not aware of the exact cause.
The plesk application pool kept on crashing, and the reason for Plesk application pool to crash can be memory problems, plesk config problem, application pool config problem, problem with the application of websites hosted on plesk application pool etc, that's the reason we were unable to provide you with eta, as we had to drill down to the root cause of the problem.

Also we had updated our Status Blog for this

http://whuk-status.com/london-specialservers-com-2

Later on our investigation, we found that the website's application crashed the application pool due to incorrect code/configuration. The offending account has been suspended.

I have been through chat transcript, and agree the way of conveying the message should have been more descriptive or at the least the current situation should have been explained to you.
We will take required action against this, and will make sure such incidents wont recur.

carled · #3 (**permalink**) 26-07-11, 11:21 AM

Directing me to whuk-status instead of euk-status for updates may also have been a bit more productive...

carled · #4 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 09:41 AM

For the second day in three the whole of my site & subdomains have vanished and plesk is unusable. I contact support again and get the good old "try again now" with no explanation of what went wrong. When I complain that the subdomains are slow only THEN do I get told the server is being worked on by "senior admins".

Why is this not on your own status server at Windows Shared Servers - whuk-status.com then? Answer me that? This is ridiculous and there is no excuse.

kerian · #5 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 11:05 AM

It seems that you have a shared account with them and I am sure that you'd be aware that a shared server cannot be considered too reliable to run a crucial website neither can you expect 100% uptime. Though Im not too sure about the issue you have come across, why don't you try an upgrade to a Cloud or even a VPS that offers you better resources and uptime?

I have been happily hosting my websites with them for more than an year now, and Im proud to say that there hasn't been a single issue since then. So, I'd suggest you to raise a ticket and seek help from them, I'm sure they would help you with getting things rectified.

carled · #6 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 11:08 AM

Kerian, valid points but it doesn't excuse their "we're not going to tell the customer anything" attitude. That's what I object to, not the server going down occasionally. The communication from support is largely abysmal and that's the issue.

**bastones** · #7 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 07:23 PM

Hi Carl,

I had forwarded this topic to the Support Team to look at. Have they replied to your ticket since then and/or is your problem resolved yet? Please let me know.

Regards,
Ben.

Whuk - Chris · #8 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 08:12 PM

Hi Carl,

We do understand your frustration and sincerely apologies for inconvenience.

The server is facing disk issues due to which the websites and control panel are running slow.

We tried breaking Raid but with no luck. As this disk issue isn't recoverable we are in a process of migrating the whole server on new Higher Performance Hardware.

We had updated the status blog.

london.specialservers.com - whuk-status.com

Currently we are in migration phase, backup of data and databases are being taken.

This being a shared server transferring huge amount of data is taking some time, also we have to make sure there isn't any data loss.

We will try our level best to complete the migration by next week. Once done we would switch IP's to new server.
you wont face any performance issues then.

carled · #9 (**permalink**) 19-08-11, 08:47 PM

The thing is Chris, you HADN'T updated the status at the time I contacted support. It was only after I complained that the status got updated and that's not right. If you have a status page then the SECOND you are aware of an issue or start work, you should update it, even if it's to say "there may be some performance issues with x, we're just taking a look at it now..." and that way we feel informed and are a lot less likely to get severely cross!

**James** · #10 (**permalink**) 20-08-11, 07:14 PM

Hi Carl,

We should have updated the status page right away. It's utmost important to keep the status page updated, so that all the clients are well aware of the issue. I assure you that henceforth if any such thing happens the status page will be updated instantly.

carled · #11 (**permalink**) 21-08-11, 10:05 AM

Thanks James, that's brilliant to hear.

Oh. Slight problem. 11am Sunday morning I try and do something with my sites. No response. Oh, then I get a glimpse of one site for a few seconds... then it goes again.

No worries, I think to myself, "http://whuk-status.com/category/windows-shared-servers" will be updated with any news, James told me so!

Nothing. Not a bean. Not a word.

I contact Pete in tech support. Oh yeah, he says, backup is running on that server we're about to migrate it.

Pah, nothing to notify anyone about there, is there. I mean, it's only the whole server running super slow and failing to serve sites up, nothing there to get excited about and put a small note on the server status page or anything, right?

**bastones** · #12 (**permalink**) 21-08-11, 10:22 AM

Hello Carl,

I have forwarded this thread onto the Windows Support Team explaining they have not updated the WHUK-Status website in regards to the backup that is occurring on the server they're about to migrate. I am sorry that the status page was not updated but I presume because it was just a backup they are proceeding with they didn't feel the need to update the WUK-Status website at the time. But I understand you want to be kept up to date in regards to this ongoing problem. Again, I have forwarded this thread to the Windows Support Team to check this thread and respond.

I am really sorry for the inconvenience caused due to this ongoing problem.

Update: The status page has now been updated in regards to the backup script that is running the server, and it's confirming this is the reason for the slow loading of websites and the control panel. I am sorry it wasn't updated beforehand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by carled

Thanks James, that's brilliant to hear.

Oh. Slight problem. 11am Sunday morning I try and do something with my sites. No response. Oh, then I get a glimpse of one site for a few seconds... then it goes again.

No worries, I think to myself, "http://whuk-status.com/category/windows-shared-servers" will be updated with any news, James told me so!

Nothing. Not a bean. Not a word.

I contact Pete in tech support. Oh yeah, he says, backup is running on that server we're about to migrate it.

Pah, nothing to notify anyone about there, is there. I mean, it's only the whole server running super slow and failing to serve sites up, nothing there to get excited about and put a small note on the server status page or anything, right?

carled · #13 (**permalink**) 22-08-11, 07:56 AM

...and we get the same problem this morning. Status still shows "backup" from yesterday. In conversation with Alastair due to unresponsive server again and I eventually get told:

Alastair M: Carl, Server is in migration process
Alastair M: So you will face some latency issue

Oh right. Again, not worth updating the status page then...?

Whuk - Chris · #14 (**permalink**) 22-08-11, 07:05 PM

HI Carl,

This being a shared server, there is a huge amount of data that we have to backup. The RAID issue slowed down the Read/Write speed of disk, due to which backup process is taking some time to complete.

This is the reason we were unable to provide you with the eta for completion of backup task.

As soon as the backup up process completes the status page will be updated.