The Villages 4 Rent Website Outage...  Status 

As of 2-23-09 it had been a month since the website had been repaired by 1and1 Hosting Company.

During the month interval we have had a number of e-mails to/from 1and1 regarding the outage, all in differing measures of crippled English.. 

Unfortunately we were not able to get a coherent answer as to the cause of the failure or remedies they put in place to prevent a reoccurrence.

Here is the final (almost cogent) response we received from the Support group. 

After reading it, we think you will agree that it is a waste of time to pursue the questions further.

This begs the question.. should we switch to a different host?

It's not a simple choice. 

We would need to select a new hosting company and hope they were better. 

Then we would have to shut down the our website while the changeover took place and then we would need to get the website debugged and running again on the new host. 

Basically, it's a disaster recovery scenario that we don't want to pursue.

 

 

10:45pm 1-23-09  Website Is Operational

9:30pm 1-23-09 The website began to become operational, certain URL's working, others coming on line minute by minute

10:45pm Our preliminary inspection indicated that the website is operating properly

Going forward, we will be verifying that all functions and subscriber files are intact.

Additionally we will do a "post mortem" with the web hosting company to determine if we need to make changes in our contract with the host or if we will research other hosting companies.

Our sincere thanks to you our subscribers for your patience in this matter.

Don Crosby

 

The following e-mail was sent to all of our subscribers at about 10:00am on 1-23-09 to clarify what has happened to our website.

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TheVillages4Rent.com Website Off-Line Report  1
 
To All Subscribers
 
On Wednesday morning (1-21-09) at 10:30am our TheVillages4Rent.com Website became unavailable for viewing.
 
At 10:35am I called our website hosting company, www.1and1.com , and instituted a trouble ticket.
 
Short time unavailability of websites is very common so I saw no need to write during the first day of the outage. During the second day of the outage we were told by the web hosting company that the website would be operational before the end of the day.
 
Today at 10:35am begins "day 3" and I need to contact you and let you know we are doing as much as we can.
 
I have called the company repeatedly (see log below) and have been kept abreast of their attempts to remedy the problem. They assured me that our website is in tact, but they just can't send it out.
 
At this time, Friday morning, I can report the "first ray of hope" in that I am now seeing the "1and1.com 404 Error Page", which tells me that requests for our website are getting into the 1and1 web system.
 
Hopefully I will be able to report to you soon that things are working again.
 
We have used http://www.1and1.com/ as our web hosting company for the last 3 years and they have been reliable. When they did have an outage they were candid with us as to their efforts to get going and have basically done a good job for us. They too are disappointed in their performance in this instance, please read their e-mail to me which is shown as an image below.
 
We will continue to work with 1and1 to resolve this outage.
 
Best regards,
 
Don
 
Don and Marilyn Crosby, www.TheVillages4Rent.com
2128 Sansores Street
The Villages, Fl. 32159
352-751-2941
 
Log of calls to 1and1 webhost:
 
1-21-09
10:35am.. I called webhosting company, spoke with Mark. Mark told me the "connection server" failed and he generated bug ticket 120267448
 
1:50pm...  I called webhosting company, spoke with Sai, she told me the the "administrators" were currently working on the problem.
 
6:47pm...  I called webhosting company, spoke to Jordan, he told ne that more than 100 cutomers (webmasters) were reporting the same problem as I had. He has re-marked my bug ticket to "highest priority"
 
1-22-09
7:00am...  We have called the webhosting company again this morning but have not been able to get a "person" on the line. We will continue to work this problem.
 
7:54am... We called the webhosting company and spoke with Yuri, he told me they are working on the server problem and he also re-escilated our case to hi priority. Additionally, he issued another case number to it also at hi-priority.
 
12:07pm... We called the webhosting company and spoke with John. John told me it is a wide spread problem with many many customer websites involved. He also said that the "admins" were re-loading the files to the servers and hoped to be running by the end of the day. That is different information than I was given in my first call, but they may know more about the problem now than they did 25+ hours ago.
 
6:00pm... We spoke with Rob at the webhosting company and he said that they were hopeful of having the problem solved within the next 6 hours.
 
1-23-09
6:45am... we spoke to Pete at the webhosting company. I mentioned that I was now seeing a "404 Error Page" and Pete verified that it was the 1and1 webhosting error page, so at this point the "connection server" at 1and1 is recognizing the request for our website. I have been told throughout these telecons that the problem is in the connection server, not in the server computer where out website files reside, so the fact that the 404 page is showing is progress. I expect an e-mail from 1and1 regarding this problem and will pass it along to all our customers when it arrives.

12:34pm Contact = Jeff, 

  • Techs are changing the memory in the "connection server".
  • It may take a few more hours. 
  • Our website files are "fine" in the webserver, it's only that they need to be connected to by the "connection server". 

3:27pm Contact = Sheena, 

  • The "connection server" is now working.
  • Techs are reloading all website files onto the website server (contradicts info provided in the last call) 
  • "Admins" have sent and e-mail at 10:00am today (1-23-09) saying all should be fixed within 24+17 hours (I make that 4:00am Sunday morning)
  • I asked that Sheena forward that e-mail to me so I can share with my customers, she agreed to do that.

9:07pm Contact = Michelle, 

  • The screen shown below appeared at about 9:00pm.
  • Michelle told me this means that some of the websites on our server are now operational.
  • "Admins" are still loading the backup files for other websites
  • Michelle expects that the loading will be completed within 24 more hours

 

 
E-Mail Response from 1and1 webhost below: