Re: metacard.com hosting service fiasco redux
on 4/4/02 5:32 AM, Scott Raney at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > ... have taken several precautions to make sure we don't get caught > out like this again. The most significant of these is to move DNS > hosting back to our local servers. We had done this for most of the > time since we first registered the domain, but transfered the domain > records to Jumpline when we became the target of various DNS-based > attacks on our local servers and decided that we couldn't be trusted > to keep up with the patches required to maintain a secure network. For those who aren't in a position to do this, I strong recommend EasyDNS (there are some other similar services - these happen to be the ones we started using - because the person researching liked the soothing colours of the web site! - and they've proven an excellent choice). You might think of it as "pobox for web sites". They don't do anything except DNS, so they're pretty good at it and there's no reason they should go bust. They're exceptionally strong on customer service - but mostly you shouldn't need it. You get an easy to use, but complete, web control panel to set DNS parameters on your domain (and up to 100 sub-domains), and options like URL forwarding and mail spool. There is documentation to help explain all the options. In most cases they can initialise it with the current settings from your ISP, so switching over is usually painless. The service is cheap and works great. Most of our sites are hosted by third party ISPs, and since in seven years we've never found one that was competent, I started sleeping a lot easier when I finally got DNS on all our domains moved over to EasyDNS. If the ISP goes down or suffers an outage for more than a few hours, I can quickly repoint the site to a temporary or backup site on one of our own servers. When our mail server ran out of disk space last weekend, EasyDNS took up the strain (you can set their spool server as a secondary, and it will keep mail for up to five days). And when I have a fight with an ISP, I know that the most I can lose is the cost of my current contract - I don't rely on their cooperation, or competence, to move the site. Enough promotion: suffice it to say that if you have at least one domain that you care about, and don't run your own DNS (or do, but would like a backup) then unless you love and respect your ISP, I really recommend an extra $20/year to keep the DNS out of their hands. (No connection with the company except as a very happy customer.) Ben Rubinstein | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600 http://www.cogapp.com| Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866 ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
RE: metacard.com hosting service fiasco redux
Scott, I completely sympatize with your cause... I've had this from GSM (mobile/cell phone), database engines, in particular our current disk suppliers (whose name I'll keep secret) who supplies us with over 2 TB's of filesystem space forgot to mention one bug - took us over a year to find it, but should it happen, we have a multi-million dollar catastrophy in our hands (im exagerating the real situation, but in reality it would be lots worse (read multi-million cata per hour!)... The "error" can happen any time, can be caused by anyone, we can't warn about it (because someone might want to be funny). We are still waiting for a fix... Let's not mention previous "well paid" MS tech support who never had an answer but always blame for the other product on the system... The key is market choice they'll supply if we demand, otherwise, there's always a shark looking for feeding elsewhere! I use www.olm.net to host my now-nuked site, and exept a couple quality nuances, never had a problem, delay, or lack of service. I get periodic announcements of service updates, and it always works. System speed is adequate, nt or unix, and best seeming mb/$ deal back in 2000 when i started. Their tech support is fast and serious about their business. Avoid ValueWeb. They never answered our emails. cheers Xa > So, the take home messages are: > 1) Avoid Jumpline.com > 2) Avoid any company using Sphera or Alabanza software or services > 3) Never trust a single company with responsibility for your domain > 4) Whether you have good or bad experience with a company, take the >time to post about it on some review site(s). In most areas there >are just way too many choices out there and the only way to have >any confidence that you're not going to choose wrong is to get some >independent information about them. I think of it as the >cyber-equivalent of the right to vote, and it's your cyber-civic >duty to exercise this right. > > Hope some of you can benefit from this war story. > Regards, > Scott > > > Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com > MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that... > > ___ > metacard mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard > ___ metacard mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/metacard
metacard.com hosting service fiasco redux
Looks like the new WWW/FTP servers are humming along fine and we've officially terminated our relationship with our former hosting service, so it's time for the promised recap of what happened to www.metacard.com and ftp.metacard.com a few weeks ago. We had been using Jumpline.com to host these servers for many years and had been relatively satisfied with them. We would have been completely satisfied except that their tech support was slow, meaning it usually took days to get a response, and that we often ran over their free bandwidth limits. But we were completely caught off guard by their recent "upgrade" and the terrible disruption it caused to us and to many of our customers. To be fair, they did send out a note a few weeks before the "upgrade", but it was extremely vague about what was actually going to change and leaving me at least with the impression that it would just be a management console change and maybe an OS upgrade. Unfortunately the changes they had planned was far more extensive than that, and basically involved shutting down their old servers and restoring old backups to completely different servers. After the "upgrade", the only thing left working was basic HTTP service. Email was no longer redirected to our local servers, none of the CGI programs worked, and there was no anonymous FTP service at all. The problem with the email was that they didn't update the DNS records on the new server. The problem with the CGI was that the new OS was a hacked up "virtual host" product (called Sphera) that lacked key libraries the Linux MetaCard engine requires and there was no way to install them. Similarly anonymous FTP support was totally lacking from this new platform. They even botched the file transfer, putting up an old version of our WWW site and (apparently) losing all of the files in our FTP directory. But the worst part was that Jumpline tech support responsiveness dropped off a cliff because a large number of other Jumpline customers were having the same problems. To be fair, part of the problem was that they were forced to transfer all their customers to the new servers all at once when their previous provider (Alabanza) cut them off. Their part of the story can be seen at http://upgrade.jumpline.com/upgrade_information.phtml, but what that page conveniently neglects to mention is that there is no way that anonymous FTP and CGI was going to work on the new servers and they *had* to know about this, yet specifically avoided warning any of their customers about it. This rises above the level of mere incompetence and should probably considered outright fraudulent business practices. It could also have been a company-destroying mistake, because now all the buzz on the review sites (some of which was contributed by yours truly) is to avoid jumpline.com at all costs, and I've received several spam emails from alternate hosting services recently specifically comparing their services with Jumpline, which I take to be a sign that the sharks are circling... We're very satisfied so far with our new hosting service, aletia.com, but have taken several precautions to make sure we don't get caught out like this again. The most significant of these is to move DNS hosting back to our local servers. We had done this for most of the time since we first registered the domain, but transfered the domain records to Jumpline when we became the target of various DNS-based attacks on our local servers and decided that we couldn't be trusted to keep up with the patches required to maintain a secure network. But the "bind" name server is finally getting stable enough that you don't have to patch it every month, and now that we've seen what the alternative is, we can justify the effort to keep up with the security bulletins. And if something happens to the new hosting service, we can run everything from our local servers. Actually we could run everything from here most of the time anyway, it's just that our SDSL line is not up to the demands imposed by large numbers of people downloading new beta and final releases. And if the local link goes down (any anyone familiar with the history and current financial state of the companies in the DSL business should be expecting this), everything (including DNS) is mirrored up at the new hosting service, just in case. So, the take home messages are: 1) Avoid Jumpline.com 2) Avoid any company using Sphera or Alabanza software or services 3) Never trust a single company with responsibility for your domain 4) Whether you have good or bad experience with a company, take the time to post about it on some review site(s). In most areas there are just way too many choices out there and the only way to have any confidence that you're not going to choose wrong is to get some independent information about them. I think of it as the cyber-equivalent of the right to vote, and it's your cyber-civic duty to exercise this right. Hope some of you ca
