Power outage 7/16

[cmakynen]

Anyone else been down already 1/2 hour+ with "Unforseen Power Failure" as the reason o nthe server status page?
I have domains on 2 separate servers - one is down, one is up... naturally my hobby is on the one up, but my business is on the one down:mad:

[Imageman]

cmakynen - I'm in exactly the same boat,and I'm not happy about it! Oh, and my mail is down too, as well as email Internet access through RoundCube- IM

[Jack Shappa]

I'm going on well over an hour with the same error. This is unacceptable! Where is the battery backup for the server rack?

[cmakynen]

Well - got an email from hostmonster explaining the situation:

"Due to a catastrophic power failure, some HostMonster servers are currently without power. <mydomain>.com is currently hosted on one of these servers. Rocky Mountain Power is working to replace hardware as quickly as possible. The current ETA from Rocky Mountain Power is 7:30pm MST. This outage is affecting most of Orem, Utah making it a top priority.

The outage occurred approximately 5pm MST. We were able to prevent data loss as the server you are on was safely shut down under backup power. We apologize for any inconvenience and will have your service restored as quickly as possible.

Hostmonster Support"

5pm MST might be a bit off - my POP mail from this domain went dead about 5:31 my time, so things must have started shutting down prior to 4:30 MST (maybe controlled down as UPS systems ran out of gas or battery).

[Jack Shappa]

I was told a similar story from chat support though not quite as clearly. He simply said battery backup was used to prevent data loss. I live out here in Utah and Rocky Mountain Power is NOTORIOUS for outages. I would think a hosting company would have hard core battery backup for these situations, like enough to keep them going for a few hours in the event of an outage, not just enough to "save and power down". That's bush league.

[r2b2]

You pay for what you get - if you want to be guaranteed that your server won't go down during times like this then you should purchase a dedicated server that comes with such a guarantee.

If your business relies on hosting then this would be a good option...

[cmakynen]

Indeed r2b2. I signed up with hostmonster for some hobby type stuff, and when the time came I thought it was okay enough to run a little business site on. But "you get what you pay for" is certainly a valid point - probably not kosher to ask on this hostmonster-sponsored forums, but do you have any recommendations for a dedicated host?

[r2b2]

Hostmonster don't have dedicated hosting I don't think so I can't see any harm in asking... having said that, I don't know of any of the top of my head as I haven't surveyed the landscape recently.

Maybe someone else will have some ideas?

[Jack Shappa]

rb, that's a bit of a cop-out. I've used and continue to use several different shared hosting places for myself and clients, and I can tell you there are places in this exact same price range who have the infrastructure to keep things running properly in a power outage. it is NOT unreasonable to expect that WHATSOEVER. I had no idea until now Hostmonster could not. A shame.

[cmakynen]

Tonights power outage wouldn't bother me so much if I had not had multiple shortterm failures (1/2 hour here, 15 minutes there) of partial server outages (ie http down but ftp accessible) over the past two months. I think there are some fairly chronic problem on this particular server and the other (my hobby) server, and maybe even all of them.

[cmakynen]

Ah good, it lives again - looks like it at least my one server came back online about 8:20 MST.:) Hope the rest of you are up and running too.

[shadmego]

rb, that's a bit of a cop-out. I've used and continue to use several different shared hosting places for myself and clients, and I can tell you there are places in this exact same price range who have the infrastructure to keep things running properly in a power outage. it is NOT unreasonable to expect that WHATSOEVER. I had no idea until now Hostmonster could not. A shame.

It seems to me there is more going on than this. I don't think his response was a cop-out at all. It's exactly what I would say.

I would also note that not ALL of HM servers went down during this time. I had no idea this happened until I read this thread. My site(s) were all up and I never heard from any of my clients that their site was down either. With such a catastrophic power outage that seems to have affected the whole area, I would think that if HM didn't have proper backup power, that ALL of their sites would go down after a graceful power down. Since this didn't happen, don't you think that at least some, if not most, servers would have proper backup power solutions?

I know it doesn't sound good for those that went through this downtime, but maybe HM is in the process of putting all their servers on sustained backup power solutions and got caught with their pants down.

~regards

[alligosh]

Hostmonster servers are actually housed in several buildings, which is why this only effected a few racks worth of servers.

We do have backup power, but when a transformer blows, they sometimes make you shut down everything while they replace it.

Sorry for the outage; we kept it as short as we could.

-Steve

[griff671]

Thank you very much, Steve!

I, for one, greatly appreciate the service and support I get from Hostmonster. The fact that you took the time out of your busy day to provide a response in this user to user forum is not lost on me (even if you don't come back and see this post for a while, heh, heh).

Thanks again, and Best Regards,

Griff
(Dedicated HM fan)