Absolutely Horrible Response Times

[Mike Bell]

My sites still respond dog slow... blah. I've come to accept the fact I need to go back to dedicated hosting if I want good response.

[ixie02]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

My sites still respond dog slow... blah. I've come to accept the fact I need to go back to dedicated hosting if I want good response.

Ditto!

[antic]

We like stable products

So do we. Don't mean to be a troll, but I've had a site going up and down for months due to connection issues between web and mssql server, and now it's down again. Nobody at support can tell me why, after many exchanges over hot support tickets.

Excuse the intrusion, but I just had to vent. Carry on people.

[obj]

I agree with mdallarosa that it is absolutely urgent that we get some information about Vortech. This is being discussed in the public forum and should probably be moved to the private section to avoid unneccessary damage. My experience with support for small fixes has been generally good. However, the performance issues of late need to be addressed.

[Brangwyn]

NT47 is a complete dog at the moment too .. I've lost about 4 customers who were unfortunate enough to be on that server in the last few weeks.

[mdallarosa]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

NT47 is a complete dog at the moment too .. I've lost about 4 customers who were unfortunate enough to be on that server in the last few weeks.

Sorry to hear this. It is really bad. It seems we are playing the russian roulette when a server is assigned to an account.

[jmbeach]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

NT47 is a complete dog at the moment too .. I've lost about 4 customers who were unfortunate enough to be on that server in the last few weeks.

Yeah, I've seen the writing on the wall with all servers NT45 and up that my customers have been stuck on. I've been on 45, 49, 51... all seemed to suffer from the same issue... slow load times, even when they were finally able to connect. Now I only have one more site to move, but all the others have been moved. I never got a good response as to why that was. I can only guess that they all fed off the same crappy switch or something, or that they all lived in a rack that had some bad juju.

[SRW]

Originally Posted by jmbeach

Yeah, I've seen the writing on the wall with all servers NT45 and up that my customers have been stuck on. I've been on 45, 49, 51... all seemed to suffer from the same issue... slow load times, even when they were finally able to connect. Now I only have one more site to move, but all the others have been moved. I never got a good response as to why that was. I can only guess that they all fed off the same crappy switch or something, or that they all lived in a rack that had some bad juju.

You can add NT48 to that list of crappy servers......
My site status monitoring program basically mailbombs me since pages regularly takes 20-40 seconds to load on NT48....
SRW

[antic]

Well I've just had an important client's site moved to a new server. Unfortunately it's been botched and the domain has been displaying the HSphere default login screen now for several hours. So, not only was my client complaining about an unreliable service, they're now furious that the site has disappeared completely. Thanks Vortech.

[ED] The problem was that, after the move, they left the HSphere "login.html" and "index.html" files in the root folder, so... yeah, the site was displaying the good old HSphere hello for hours before the client noticed and called me. All Vortech had to do is ensure the folders were identical. That's all.. not very hard to achieve. Or at least noticed the site wasn't behaving the same as the original and let me know so I can investigate. Obviously that's not in the procedures manual.

But at the very least, a simple email to me, to say the move is done and please check it (and let me know what the new server is, which I had to find out myself) should be part of the overall process. Apparently not.
</vent>

[ED2] I added a ticket to the job, outlining the above - that I found the problem and fixed it, and explained that they should check their work and contact the client after the move is done. Know what the ticket response was? "The site is coming up fine for me." As if my concerns were unread or completely ignored. Not even a "sorry about the oversight". Way to make a client feel noticed, well done.

[dvanburen]

Originally Posted by antic

Well I've just had an important client's site moved to a new server. Unfortunately it's been botched and the domain has been displaying the HSphere default login screen now for several hours. So, not only was my client complaining about an unreliable service, they're now furious that the site has disappeared completely. Thanks Vortech.

[ED] The problem was that, after the move, they left the HSphere "login.html" and "index.html" files in the root folder, so... yeah, the site was displaying the good old HSphere hello for hours before the client noticed and called me. All Vortech had to do is ensure the folders were identical. That's all.. not very hard to achieve. Or at least noticed the site wasn't behaving the same as the original and let me know so I can investigate. Obviously that's not in the procedures manual.

But at the very least, a simple email to me, to say the move is done and please check it (and let me know what the new server is, which I had to find out myself) should be part of the overall process. Apparently not.
</vent>

[ED2] I added a ticket to the job, outlining the above - that I found the problem and fixed it, and explained that they should check their work and contact the client after the move is done. Know what the ticket response was? "The site is coming up fine for me." As if my concerns were unread or completely ignored. Not even a "sorry about the oversight". Way to make a client feel noticed, well done.

Moves are completely automated once started. We do not even get a notification when they are complete. As for the default pages, when a domain is moved it is first recreated on the target server then the content is moved. Hsphere isn't smart enough to remove the default content so it just drops your content over the default. The only time this is an issue is if you do not have your default index file set properly, then it will load the index.html before any other index file. You can set your index file in the web options for the domain.

[antic]

Thanks for the post-mortem. But if this had been explained at the beginning, there wouldn't have been a problem, would there? That's the difference between a service and "service".

Originally Posted by dvanburen

Moves are completely automated once started. We do not even get a notification when they are complete. As for the default pages, when a domain is moved it is first recreated on the target server then the content is moved. Hsphere isn't smart enough to remove the default content so it just drops your content over the default. The only time this is an issue is if you do not have your default index file set properly, then it will load the index.html before any other index file. You can set your index file in the web options for the domain.

[dvanburen]

Originally Posted by antic

Thanks for the post-mortem. But if this had been explained at the beginning, there wouldn't have been a problem, would there? That's the difference between a service and "service".

It's assumed that index pages are set properly. Server moves are not routine and are certainly not recommended for reasons which you yourself have experienced. That said, I will see if we can revise the pre-defined reply yo include this warning, though it is of little use unless it is set before the transfer is started.

[antic]

Originally Posted by dvanburen

It's assumed that index pages are set properly. Server moves are not routine and are certainly not recommended for reasons which you yourself have experienced. That said, I will see if we can revise the pre-defined reply yo include this warning, though it is of little use unless it is set before the transfer is started.

Thanks. Yes the CMS on that site was a bit unusual, so the index.html that HSphere created overrode the usual site behaviour. But if there was a support ticket response just to say "it's done please check it", that would help a lot. Perhaps with a link to a "site move info" page, which points out that site files are copied over the top of a normal HSPhere setup, which means files like index.html, login.html and the CP & CGI-BIN folders will reappear. That's important, as login.html, CP & CGI-BIN folders should be deleted on most production sites to avoid hacking/fiddling. If it's an ASP or PHP site, then index.html should be removed too. It's just a "procedures" thing that would help, but then I'm obsessive about stuff like that.

Anyway I didn't mean to hijack this thread, other people here have more pressing concerns to respond to.

[joaquimponte]

i'm also experiencing horrible response times on unix 8 and unix28. I've got 2 clients asking me why sometimes their sites are so slow. I hope that vortech is aware of those problems...

[joaquimponte]

Originally Posted by joaquimponte

i'm also experiencing horrible response times on unix 8 and unix28. I've got 2 clients asking me why sometimes their sites are so slow. I hope that vortech is aware of those problems...

I've made some tests and it seems that the problem isn't really unix8 or unix28 but connections to mysql (in my case mysql8 and mysql10).

I'm got to try to use others mysql servers to see if the problem remains or not (if yes, it seems that i will need to optimize my queries...)

Joaquim.