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If you go back in time and watch threads during almost ALL web hosting outages, the #1 COMPLAINT is always lack of communication with users. PLEASE, web hostin

by dpcan 17y ago

If you go back in time and watch threads during almost ALL web hosting outages, the #1 COMPLAINT is always lack of communication with users. PLEASE, web hosting companies, get the point, we want constant communications, even if you have nothing new to report. WE are smart too, let us know what you're trying, what's working, what's not, maybe your USERS can help you fix the problem.

benofsky 17y ago
This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly. What I find amazing here is that the Linode representative hasn't even said sorry in the first post they made and hasn't in the second post either, crazy.
- dpcan 17y ago
  I agree. I love Slicehost, and I really love how they haven't changed in terms of customer service since they joined up with Rackspace.
  - cmelbye 17y ago
    I've never tried Slicehost before, but I've actually had really good results with Rackspace's "fanatical" support. Slicehost's support could have only gotten better! ;-)
- chrischen 17y ago
  Slicehost seems to cost more. EDIT: Wait? Does Slicehost not cost more? Please, correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I'm seeing you get less RAM, Bandwidth, and Space for the same price. Btw, I use Slicehost, and just recently they had problems with my server. Otherwise they're flawless though. Great support too.
  - bham 17y ago
    ... and does not have bandwidth pooling, does it?
    - tlrobinson 17y ago
      Slicehost does: http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/9/17/bandwidth-pooling-for-everyone http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/9/17/bandwidth-poolin...
      - bham 17y ago
        Oh, I missed that. Great.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Not sure why this is downmodded; but Slicehost is more expensive than Linode. Both have good service and web interfaces, but Linode gives you more RAM for less cash. They are down today, I guess, but that is to be expected for something you pay $20 a month for.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly." Um, ok, here's some counter-anecdotal info: My company at the time had an account on Slicehost, and every so often our instance would just go offline. No word from anyone, just dead. After some e-mail, we learned that there was some concern of malicious activity, so the image was shutdown. Now, if Slicehost was getting complaints, and were planning on shutting down the instance, why couldn't they give some warning so some action could be taken. Or even say something right after shutting down a suspicious instance? Instead, we were left wondering why our site was not up. I never figured out just how the instance was supposedly compromised, and eventually left Slicehost for eApps. Nowadays I use Linode, or The Planet. I know a few people who swear by Slicehost, but not everyone has a rosey exeperience.
thaumaturgy 17y ago
I've been on the other side of this wall, though not for anything near this large of a service. A lot of shops run with minimal staff, because -- let's face it -- cost is a very large factor of competition in the hosting industry. Then a problem occurs, and if it were an easy problem to solve, they'd just solve it straight off and then do damage control in PR. Or, the problem is more like this one, and it requires some hard and fast thinking on the part of the staff that are available. If you're one of those staff, the last thing you want to do is distract yourself by logging in to a forum every twenty minutes, or checking email, or writing status updates every thirty minutes. You instead feel incredible pressure to get the problem fixed immediately, meaning you don't even stop for a bathroom break if you can help it. As a sysadmin, you'll also justify your decisions by saying that telling the users what's going on won't really change anything; it's not like they're assisting you in troubleshooting. Even if they're intelligent, they still aren't familiar with the specific systems and network topology and other good stuff involved in your operations, so you'll probably spend a lot more time answering their suggestions than you would if you just got in and figured it out yourself. Though as a user, that kind of attitude is extremely frustrating.
- dpcan 17y ago
  You have an excellent point because I too host websites for hundreds of people and have been in the middle of a disaster. It's hard to keep updating a blog, but I got around to it about every hour regardless. Usually it just said what I was working on and that nothing had changed. Two sentences, but everyone knew what was going on. I also changed my outgoing voice mail recording which helped a ton. Most people didn't even leave messages. It's REALLY hard, but well worth it in the end because you get praise for your communication instead of hate mail for abandoning your customers.
  - yrb 17y ago
    Things just really don't work on human time/relationship scales anymore, especially when it comes to internet services. Communications can move in milliseconds now, diagnosing and fixing complex issues is still on the order of hours/years/lifetimes! It doesn't help that your customers often know about issues you are having before you do. So say ~30min to get notified of an issue (Which is not unrealistic for a non obvious issue that isn't something you actively monitor) - Quick 10min investigation to assess what the scale of the issue is, another 3-5min to post a couple notifications, and that is the better part of a hour gone, and you haven't even got around to trying to come up with a fix.
Maxious 17y ago
My ISP Internode always says when they expect the next status update to be. Usually there's a deadline of 2-3 hours between updates and recently there was a period of 72 hours with several cascading issues ( http://advisories.internode.on.net/item/6611/ http://advisories.internode.on.net/item/6611/ ). There were status updates all the way through and staff communicating with users out-of-band to discover the extent of the issues so they could resolve them.

by dpcan 17y ago

benofsky 17y ago

This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly. What I find amazing here is that the Linode representative hasn't even said sorry in the first post they made and hasn't in the second post either, crazy.

dpcan 17y ago
I agree. I love Slicehost, and I really love how they haven't changed in terms of customer service since they joined up with Rackspace.
- cmelbye 17y ago
  I've never tried Slicehost before, but I've actually had really good results with Rackspace's "fanatical" support. Slicehost's support could have only gotten better! ;-)
chrischen 17y ago
Slicehost seems to cost more. EDIT: Wait? Does Slicehost not cost more? Please, correct me if I'm wrong. But from what I'm seeing you get less RAM, Bandwidth, and Space for the same price. Btw, I use Slicehost, and just recently they had problems with my server. Otherwise they're flawless though. Great support too.
- bham 17y ago
  ... and does not have bandwidth pooling, does it?
  - tlrobinson 17y ago
    Slicehost does: http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/9/17/bandwidth-pooling-for-everyone http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2008/9/17/bandwidth-poolin...
    - bham 17y ago
      Oh, I missed that. Great.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Not sure why this is downmodded; but Slicehost is more expensive than Linode. Both have good service and web interfaces, but Linode gives you more RAM for less cash. They are down today, I guess, but that is to be expected for something you pay $20 a month for.
jamesbritt 17y ago
"This is why Slicehost rock, they always communicate brilliantly." Um, ok, here's some counter-anecdotal info: My company at the time had an account on Slicehost, and every so often our instance would just go offline. No word from anyone, just dead. After some e-mail, we learned that there was some concern of malicious activity, so the image was shutdown. Now, if Slicehost was getting complaints, and were planning on shutting down the instance, why couldn't they give some warning so some action could be taken. Or even say something right after shutting down a suspicious instance? Instead, we were left wondering why our site was not up. I never figured out just how the instance was supposedly compromised, and eventually left Slicehost for eApps. Nowadays I use Linode, or The Planet. I know a few people who swear by Slicehost, but not everyone has a rosey exeperience.

thaumaturgy 17y ago

I've been on the other side of this wall, though not for anything near this large of a service. A lot of shops run with minimal staff, because -- let's face it -- cost is a very large factor of competition in the hosting industry. Then a problem occurs, and if it were an easy problem to solve, they'd just solve it straight off and then do damage control in PR. Or, the problem is more like this one, and it requires some hard and fast thinking on the part of the staff that are available. If you're one of those staff, the last thing you want to do is distract yourself by logging in to a forum every twenty minutes, or checking email, or writing status updates every thirty minutes. You instead feel incredible pressure to get the problem fixed immediately, meaning you don't even stop for a bathroom break if you can help it. As a sysadmin, you'll also justify your decisions by saying that telling the users what's going on won't really change anything; it's not like they're assisting you in troubleshooting. Even if they're intelligent, they still aren't familiar with the specific systems and network topology and other good stuff involved in your operations, so you'll probably spend a lot more time answering their suggestions than you would if you just got in and figured it out yourself. Though as a user, that kind of attitude is extremely frustrating.

dpcan 17y ago
You have an excellent point because I too host websites for hundreds of people and have been in the middle of a disaster. It's hard to keep updating a blog, but I got around to it about every hour regardless. Usually it just said what I was working on and that nothing had changed. Two sentences, but everyone knew what was going on. I also changed my outgoing voice mail recording which helped a ton. Most people didn't even leave messages. It's REALLY hard, but well worth it in the end because you get praise for your communication instead of hate mail for abandoning your customers.
- yrb 17y ago
  Things just really don't work on human time/relationship scales anymore, especially when it comes to internet services. Communications can move in milliseconds now, diagnosing and fixing complex issues is still on the order of hours/years/lifetimes! It doesn't help that your customers often know about issues you are having before you do. So say ~30min to get notified of an issue (Which is not unrealistic for a non obvious issue that isn't something you actively monitor) - Quick 10min investigation to assess what the scale of the issue is, another 3-5min to post a couple notifications, and that is the better part of a hour gone, and you haven't even got around to trying to come up with a fix.

Maxious 17y ago

My ISP Internode always says when they expect the next status update to be. Usually there's a deadline of 2-3 hours between updates and recently there was a period of 72 hours with several cascading issues ( http://advisories.internode.on.net/item/6611/ http://advisories.internode.on.net/item/6611/ ). There were status updates all the way through and staff communicating with users out-of-band to discover the extent of the issues so they could resolve them.