Anyone else on Scheduling Downtimes?

[Theoddity]

I want to first say that I fully understand the need for downtime and emergency situations. I also appreciate the work and effort that Vortech puts into keeping up with us on all of this. I also know that this has been discussed before, but is there any way we as a Matrix community can figure out appropriate times for server maintance that work best for us? And can you guys at Vortech also work with us on that?

The problem arises for me when there is scheduled maintance moving things around, or rebuilding things during the working day. I live in Colorado and understand that there are many resellers on different timezones, but all my clients are business clients so that when anything is down, they only notice it during the day.

This discussion really comes down to perceived problems with the servers. If all the little problems occur during the day, my clients get noticeably unhappy with me no matter what I tell them "my server people" are working on or even how much sense the downtime makes to correct their problems. When it happens at night, none of my clients notice and so they think their product is stable and they think I'm great

Are there times for others that are better than some? Is this even a reasonable discussion to have given the variety of timezones and needs out there. All I know from our possibly irrational memory (and my customers) is that we have problems with email and sites on a weekly basis. Whether that's technically true or not, I can't remember, it's just the way we're perceiving it. If there is anything that can be done with our perception from the standpoint of scheduled maintenance, it would make life a whole lot easier when I don't have to worry about customers looking elsewhere for their hosting problems.

Thanks.

[admin]

Can't make ever one happy..

We have users from all over the wrold.. We pick tusedays to do all maintance. Most of the time it does not mean downtime and some times it does..

[Theoddity]

So other things like today's email downtime was emergency rather than a Tuesday maintenance? Is that generally the rule for the downtimes during the rest of the week?

[admin]

No but if its ether fix it or have you lose ever thing because a partion is filling up.. I think you would want the 30 min of downtime and not ever thing gone because the drive filled up..

We try to keep as little down time as we can but things do happen..

[Scroller]

Then I supposed that this mail server shut down was "scheduled"??? In that case, is there anyway that we can get informed in advance? What I really hope to have is a more active model of communication (like an email alert) from Matrix rather than a passive one whereby something goes down, I've to get to the forum to see if anything's been mentioned about it.

Thinking that I could get a good rest for this weekend, instead I was having everyone calling me on a Sat morning asking me about the mail server when I din know what to say.

Honestly, I'm getting really tired with the server going up and down. I'm not interested in refunds, I just want a reliable service, not so much in the sense of uptime, but more of me knowing what's happening. That's what I mean by reliable.

NT10's been going down so very regularly. My clients are complaining. It's plain simple that it's down, because they can't get any of the sites on NT10 to load when they say it's down, but you guys are saying "No, nothing's wrong with it". I really have no idea how to prove to you guys. You wanna tell me all the ISP where I am is screwed up? Hey! But I can get to sites on NT9, how do I explain that then? I sent in a ticket to enquire, and the reply I've gotten back is ... "Please include your username in all tickets you submit." Give up! I sent in a priority emergency ticket and that's all I get??? Can't you guys at least tell me "Yes we know, it will up in 30 mins ... blar blar blar ... ??? "

I've been having alot of problems with my FTP when I just started off couple of weeks back. All my clients got the same problem, but support says ... "no problem from our end" ... and again I can't prove it. Fine, I tell my clients never mind, pass me all your files, I will upload for you one by one ... *pain* ... and suddenly, since a few days ago, FTP on NT10 is no longer a problem. Passive FTP's been turned on and it's working beautifully? Strange, I was wondering, I din do anything, my clients din do anything, but it just got fixed somehow??? never mind, I suppose patience paid off.

Am I being too demanding? If I am, I'm sorry, just tell me off and I will learn to shut up.

[Theoddity]

I understand that server problems will always happen and my customers also understand that. I don't want to dump on Vortech because we're all in this together. To be constructive, is there any way there can be an email list for "resellers only" that admin can mail out when there's going to be downtime or known glitches for a few days. That way, I can post up to my site or email our customers with details ahead of time so that they can plan accordingly.

Spending a combined total of an hour this weekend with a frusterated customer (who happens to be a big customer for us and for whom email is vital) took a little bit of time to work it out. The resolution was that we would work a lot harder to keep her informed ahead of time so that they as a company could prepare accordingly. I can't fulfill that at all if I don't know when something happens. (One of the factors also is that they are the 4th people to know between HSphere, Vortech, ourselves, and if communication breaks down anywhere, the rest of the chain won't know.)

I think that knowing ahead of time for the things that can be known helps aleviate a lot of the frusteration, and lessens all our extra time spent as reseller technical support. A mail list could help a lot.

[somereseller]

Hsphere has a mass mailer included, so when something comes up, I don't think it's too much to ask to send a short mail to everybody.

Of course, when the mail server is down that won't work and we all apreciate the mention in this forum

To take care of problems as they happen is ok, but not to notify people when you are doing planned maintenance is veeeery bad practice. It's not enough to say tuesday is the day.

What I don't get is that we do receive an email occasionaly. Why not do it everytime?

[admin]

We do try to send one out for long downtimes. But if its only going to be 5 to 20 sec. of downtime we do not. At least not yet..

Yes HS does have a mass mailer in it and we plan to start using this a lot more. ( Unless it has to do with the mail server going nuts.. )

We are trying to see if Psoft can make it were we email all of you from one list. Right now we have to do it on 7 lists and takes some time with the number of users we have under each plan.

So I am trying to them to make it where we can mass mail more then plan at a time..