Vortech Support Status suggestion

[jetzkr8]

I believe Vortech support has imporved a great deal, especially with the availability of OPManager. To stretch this service farther I porpose the following be considered.

Everytime there is an outage, the forums have become the de-facto medium of communication. While this method is good for time being, it does cause problems of it's own. The other consideration is that there are many resellers, who need to reply and answer to respective customers should some of the services experience disruptions.

I have seen how RSS and XML feeds can be used to effectively communicate with end-users. Consider the existing scenario: If there is an outage, a reseller has to become aware and post suitable messages on his own website or even dispatch email notifications (something even Vortech does not do...at times). It would make life a lot easier, for automations sake, that outages and their corresponding status is reported using XML feeds, enabling one to simply plug information right into their websites.

I know that I could simply configure an XML message to appear anywhere on my site, especially with the Cerberus support site I have set up for my customers. Having generic status messages updated from time to time will simplify Vortechs handling and save lots of bandwidth for everyone. Resellers get generic messages posted right onto their support pages in real-time without having to do anything.

Right now, I have urls for OPManager (which refreshes continuously) displayed on my browser all the time. Each refresh consumes bandwidth for unnecessary images etc. I also dot his for the vortech Support Forums - monitoring the ttile forums list to monitor any new updates. This page I refresh manually, again for sake of keeping tab on status of services

The availability of XML feed based status messages will also open up another level of automation in that sophisticated handling scripts that email customers everytime an outage is encountered. Of course, the reseller has full control to enable these automations reports and to customize to own requirements.

With such XML, my support page could instantly display generic messages saying for instance nt26 and nt7 is down temporarily and the problem is being looked into. The generic messages avoid references to hsphere or Vortech and can be understood by reseller's clients. This way, much-much queries in all directions become reduced. All customers want to know is that their problem is being looked into and when to expect resotration.

I believe XML and RSS feeds is the efficient way to report server status messages in realtime.

[Brangwyn]

ATEOTD the uptime here is pretty good you really don't need to be checking things every 5 minutes to see if somethings broken, your customers will tell you quick enough when theres a problem and a fair percentage of the time they'll notice before opManager or Vortech does, they're the best problem indicator I know of

XML Status feeds etc I agree would be a nice to have purely to enable something to be shown on our own sites that resembles pseudo real-time monitoring, but with Vortech providing 24x7 support I just don't personally feel like it's neccessary to be keeping tabs on things as closely as you seem to be.

$0.02

[jetzkr8]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

ATEOTD the uptime here is pretty good you really don't need to be checking things every 5 minutes to see if somethings broken, your customers will tell you quick enough when theres a problem and a fair percentage of the time they'll notice before opManager or Vortech does, they're the best problem indicator I know of ....................

Agreed, and it's not like I spend everyday doing this. Just yesterday afternoon (for me) i was left with absolutely nothing much to do and decided to poke around a bit.

I reiterate that Vortech network is a self regulating network and most issues are handled even before we get to raise tickets... so much for raising tickets. It's the kind of environment where you get to move around and visit places rather than being stuck to the Pc for any resellers.

Good job guys!

[Malcolm]

The support at Vortech is good and fast, and the servers/availability are usually fine too.

The one thing that think could be vastly improved is the automated system status page for when there _are_ problems.

I'm sure Nagios has a vast amount of information, but its not simple to track down what you want. It would be great if there was single, public, summary page to show the general status of the network/servers as a whole.

Compare these two pages
http://status.vortechhosting.com/
http://status.tucows.com/

One (tucows) shows the status of all the services offered by the provider - simple and colour coded, easy to understand with more detail available through links if needed.

The other (vortech) shows a default splash page for the software provider (Not even any Vortech branding), and no actual status information.

Any comments? Anyone else feel this would be useful?

Vortech - is there a summary page any where that I've missed.....

Thanks!

We are working to write our own Monitor system and some othe custome stuff for our self, but we might be able to do something better then the pre-made stuff out there.
We have a new Tech Mr. T that is great with FreeBSD, C, routing and other things. I think he will bring some great ideas to the table once he gets in the grove of things and how everything works.

[generic]

I pity you fools...

[mresell]

This is old. Has been discussed and software changed several times. Not meant to be VT branded. You can customize what you want from xml.

[Malcolm]

I'm relatively new - wasn't aware it had been discussed.
I'll check the archives.

The point still stands though - it would be a useful service to have a single summary page available.

Do you know of an existing page that shows the status of each of the servers? Or could you point me to an XML template or working example that can extract that sort of information?

Thanks,

Malcolm

[dpyers]

There's been a couple posted. I use one at http://netcapability.info/ServerStatus/default.asp

[Malcolm]

Thanks - it looks good!
Malcolm