Database server odie, hardware troubles.
Posted (October 7th, 2006 at 8:23 am PST) by mikehThe database server ‘odie’, is having hardware issues which have impacted its stability. Those of you who have recently signed up, and are having recurring database troubles, this is more than likely the cause. We’re in the process of migrating everyone’s data to a different server, and will update this post once it has completed.
Update Sat Oct 7 10:06:31 PDT 2006: All databases have been migrated from ‘odie’ onto a new server called ‘ren’.
103 Responses to “Database server odie, hardware troubles.”
Wish there was some way of notifying all the customer that this is going to affect them. It makes on panic only to find out that some kind of upgrade is going on.
thanks,
neha
Re-opened support ticket, wordpress is still unable to connect to the database.
*NOTE* The ticket has been verified, so I guess that it is still a problem.
Hope you guys solve it soon.
I’m on this DB server, and have been very annoyed by this issue - thinking of leaving. Glad to know what’s going on, and hoping this gets resolved fast.
Been signed up around 24 hours… and nothing but trouble this far..
Hope that this is not how things work here on dreamhost every day….
Guys …. you have a hardware server failure on average once a day … do you think maybe its time to invest in decent equipments?
Yes I agree with Johan. Client passed me info to upgrade their site. Now development time is wasted because of this. Ever since I’ve worked with Dreahost, nothing but wasted time. Really frustrating and hope this gets fixed soon.
Thanks for looking into this, DH! I filed a support ticket last night (the rest of you should do the same if you have issues). Got a response within an hour, and my site was back up.
Not sure which DB server I’m on but all my sites are down this morning.
Lionel has been down also for almost 24 hours. I’d like to at least be able to get a dump of my database so I can work on stuff locally.
Bernie,
Have you filed support tickets?
My site is back up again, YAY!
Sticks and stones may break my bones but downtime kills my traffic…
Server lionel is also hs for almost 24 hours please verify 
lionel is not down. looking back through the last couple weeks it hasn’t been down during that period either. anonymous, please submit a support request so that someone can help you with the specifics of your account.
S Jain, I don’t think you have a clear idea of the size of our datacenter.
Is leann.jake.dreamhost.com down?? Cant connect to mysql databases on there… I submitted a support request
I submitted a support request too for lionel , same problem : Cant connect to mysql
(mysql_connect(): Lost connection to MySQL server during query)
John and pinzuta I have spoken with the techs that are looking into your support queries. They should be contacting you shortly.
Yay. Lionel is working again!
I just signed up about a week ago and so far the server uptime had been far worse than I have ever experienced. Unless things change… I’m going to half to move my hosting. Plus when the server is up the domains come up real slow.
Am not happy with it so far.. I guess i have to move again
Hear, hear.
As someone who used to resell web hosting for a supposedly top-tier company with 3-seperate data centers… I second that.
For the record… I second M. And Elira, the grass is always greener…
“Even if a server exploded every day, that would average out to be a problem with each server about every 3 years”
To use the same logic this guy used in posting: He said “See how that sounds a little different than saying there’s a hardware failure every day?” Umm. No, I don’t. In using that same logic. let’s say there are 1000 cars on the road at any given time: Let’s assume the price of a car is so outrageous you can’t afford the car, insurance, maintenance and road use taxes. Let’s say the only cars available anywhere are provided by a rental company (there are many companies, but you have one in particular that you are paying) and they only break down once every 3 years. Could you live with that? Probably so. Your boss would probably understand ok too. Now on the other hand, let’s say you’re one of the unlucky ones who has one of these fine rental cars but it breaks down and stays that way for a week, a month or longer. Could you live with that? Would you be satisfied?
1 failure each day isn’t so bad if EACH server took turns, I think anyone could handle that. When it’s the same servers that are breaking every day, however, it’s a different ballgame.
Fact is for the last month, my sites have been down more than they’ve been up. This past week I’ve had SQL server failures, switch failures, webserver failures, packet losses, server crashes, hardware failures, etc. and Dreamhost keeps us all on the same piece of junk server.
Wouldn’t it be the RIGHT thing to do if they moved everyone to a WORKING server then tried to iron out whatever problems they had? After they get it fixed..fine…move me back, but for crying out loud, give us some relief
Dreamhost have a heck of a lot of servers. Like it is said above. If one failed everyday. That would still mean that the server you are on would only break down every 3 years. I have been with dreamhost for a few months now and haven’t had more tha 12 hours downtime since i signed up, including the very bad patch of time, a few weeks back.
Yes, wowsers, but on average it’s fair.
Gotta love it…..it figures that M***n wouldn’t get the analogy considering his previous few posts. The analogy wasn’t to failed cars, the analogy was to SERVICE and RESPONSIBILITY. Let’s put it differently still: Most people can probably afford a good server with lots of storage. What we can’t afford is an internet backbone. Since we rent space on a server from a hosting company, it is EXPECTED that when there is a problem, it gets resolved. It is NOT expected that you would substitute a piece of junk with another piece of junk. Your previous “hurrah for Dreamhost” post started with bashing the guy who asked a queston about providing decent equipment. Perhaps it’s time to provide some decent equipment?
See how different that sounds when you put it in a relative perspective?
The comment of “1,000 bigger” really shows he knows his stuff! I’m really not sure where your host with 1 server is located, but if you’re paying them, you’re getting ripped off.
Let’s see if I can explain it for the simple minded: I rent a server, shared or otherwise from DH. I pay my money each month with no headaches because DH expects it. If DH had to wait 4, 5, 6 days for me to pay, I already know what would happen and you do too. No pay = No site.
I’ve been down more than 20 times since March, although this has been the longest period of down time (basically all week..up and down). Since I keep my end of the bargain, I expect them to keep theirs. The “Downtime” regardless of whether I “accept it” or not is not due to a “shared server” situation. It’s due to hardware failure.
Redundancy or not. When the SAME server keeps failing over and over, there is more than a “hardware issue” here. There is a “customer service” issue at hand. Unfortunately, someone doesn’t “get it” or they would have moved the customers who have had problems for the last month to a new server.
As far as your arrogant claims that someone “WILL” have downtime. Unfortunately, you’re either ignorant of the facts of life, or you’ve never been anywhere but DH. I came from a previous host that I had for 4 years and NEVER had downtime. I came to dreamhost only because they allowed me to host unlimited domains on the same account…no more 22 usernames/passwords to remember for access.
Since my previous host has now begun to allow the same thing, I gave them a call tonight and found out something: They have redundant switches, routers and critical systems. They also have spare servers. Guess what else? They guarantee 99.9% uptime AND move their customers to a new server if one fails. The result? 99.9% uptime. The cost for a “SHARED” account? $1 more per month than I’m paying now. Guess what I’m doing? Using the rest of this weekend to move back.
‘boo hoo’… I’m sure going to miss idiots like M***n
Since the migration, queries are running at very respectable speed. I thank you for rectifying the situation.
However, this UK morning the webserver has failed (no shell or FTP) and sites are completley unreachable. And the strangest thing is, I have had no response from support and you know these guys are normally on the ball. Anyone else?
Yeah, this may sound like an employee wrote it, but I’m a customer.
What I really love about dreamhost - despite the need for this site (dreamhoststatus.com) and the necessity of displaying their issues for all (even competitors) to see - is that they continue to have a sense of humor about things. It’s not that they aren’t trying to do a good job or that they don’t take it seriously, it’s that they try to do their best around the adversity with a smile.
They know you can’t make every customer happy. They also know that with a 97 day return policy you are TOTALLY covered (and so are they) that you will be getting value from their services. If not, find someone else. There are hundreds if not thousands of companies out there that would gladly serve your pages. Some good, some bad - but are you wiling to take that chance?
I have got to say that given everything I’ve seen, I’ve been VERY lucky to not be on an affected server. My email’s had issues once in a while but my site and DB have been very solid. I’ve always had capactity for what I needed to do (though my needs are tiny compared to other sites). But when I’ve needed it, it’s been there. That’s what I asked for when I signed up.
And for DH staff to be as transparent as they are and still have a sense of humor about things is priceless.
The Empire does NOT provide hosting. They also don’t laugh.
I know DreamHost “down-to-earth” characteristics makes you feel good about who you are dealing with, however I’ve been with them for over a year now, and it begins to look *unprofessional*. It was cute at first with the Newsletters and fun support responses, but with all the downtime they’ve had lately, it makes DH look like they’re being run by a bunch of amateurs. I think they have one of the best admin panels i have ever seen at a hosting company. Maybe these guys are programmers and not hardware techs.
I have enjoyed my time at DH, but I too feel like it’s time to move on. I’ve been experiencing issues like this since the beginning of this year, and to tell you the truth, it’s bad for business. I can’t have emails failing, websites down, and stuff malfunctioning. I think it’s ironic they even have to have DreamHostStatus.com. Who is down so much that they have a blog about it and probably post on it more times than Woot changes products? My guess is that they’re hosting it somewhere else because if it was on their own servers, it would go down everytime they needed to post something to it. And if it was on their own servers and is so reliable, how come they don’t offer their customers such reliability and uptime.
This is the first problem that has impacted my site in over a year. So all yall who just joined up, know that things are usuly quite solid.
Is the support staff off for the holiday tomorrow?
I have two tickets still unanswered. One is almost 2 hours old the other is reaching 20 hours. Neither of which have anything to do with this downed server.
Don’t mistake being laid-back for unprofessional. Nothing can replace honesty.
How would you feel if you dealt with a company that seemed unbelievably professional (you’re picturing them all wearing suits & Rolexes), then find out it’s actually a 13 year old kid on a reseller account that’s paid with his mommy’s credit card? There are plenty of those hosts out there. Anyone that reads through WHT can figure that out.
I’m glad DH doesn’t try to put out the phony businessman-in-a-suit image if that’s not who they are. And most of the hosts that do put on the professional image are mostly way smaller than DH, yet some of them still feel that owning a hosting business somehow makes them more important to their customers.
Or better yet, how about the hosts that focus on overall image, because they’re only attention is to sellout to a larger host once they actually have a few clients? I never worry about DH selling out.
you know what really bothers me?
is that people expect everything to be perfect. ever heard of murphy’s law?
I’ve been with dreamhost for a year and the only time i’ve ever had a problem, downtime or anything else related was with the massive power outage last year. Yes, I understand that downtime hurts a lot of websites but saying that it makes you want to change hosts doesnt solve anything - you’ll have more downtime that way than you will if you just wait it out. Like someone said, hosts have downtime all the time, not all of them publicize it. Dreamhost does in an effort to avoid confusion.
I don’t know, maybe that was just a rant. I just can’t stand to read anymore “I’m Leaving”s…if you hate webhosting that much, dont run a website - no matter where you go, you’ll have issues.
@Brian:
Name: dreamhoststatus.com
Address: 66.201.54.111
Fiber Internet Center FIBERNOC (NET-66-201-32-0-1)
66.201.32.0 - 66.201.63.255
New Dream Network, LLC DREAMHOST-BLK2 (NET-66-201-54-64-1)
66.201.54.64 - 66.201.54.127
Cerritos is experiencing high loads :
top - 18:01:37 up 9 days, 14:06, 3 users, load average: 22.37, 20.19, 16.49
Simple fact: Commodity hardware doesn’t fail once per year. I have a Linux machine sitting here running on PIII 350 that’s been up for 8 years except for manual reboots (It’s on a 3 hour APC backup and we haven’t lost power for that long in 8 years ). It sees fairly heavy use as it’s the house MP3 and video server that I also use for code development - we use it every day.
I take that back … I did replace the hard drive 4 years ago … and it’s probably due again given the mean fail time on an IDE drive.
skinner is down!!!!!!!!!?!?!?!
Sites are down (again) for over two hours. Nothing on dreamhoststatus.com (again). Support tickets not being responded to (again).
Why are you taking the time to delete non-abusive comments from this page when our support tickets are still unanswered and our sites are still down?
Personally, DH have been great for me. I’ve been with them for several months now and had 2-3 days down time and real quality personal and fast support.
Am I just lucky?
I was thinking of signing on. I am not planning on making a living off of my web site, but just to supplement here and there. I have spent countless hours building it over the last 6 weeks. Will I be frustrated with DH?
I’ve been a Dreamhost subscriber for several months now. For $25 a year in hosting, I do not expect 100% uptime. I’ve been more than happy with the value of the service. Do the math. $25 for a year of hosting with more space and bandwidth you will probably ever need, and some downtime .. or $150+ hosting for perhaps a few GB of space and a couple hundred of transfer bandwidth?
If anyone uses dreamhost to run their business, they are an idiot. If my living depended on a website, I’d spend a tad more than $25. There are far more reliable services out there, but they will be far more expesnive.
Also personally I’ve had almost no downtime. One time I wanted to add some images to my gallery but the database server was down. Went and had sex with the wife, by the time I was done all was working well again.
If you don’t like Dreamhost, that’s cool. Some people like Pepsi, some like Coke, others will buy the PS3, then some will buy the Wii. Different strokes for different folks. Nobody will ever make 100% of the population happy.
Signed up on Saturday, and still don’t have access to email or a website. I am planning on running my business via hosting through dreamhost, and as a prior post stated…I feel like an idiot. Received an email from support that said all would be well in a few hours. We are going on a day and all is very far from well. I want my old host back.
500 read timeout at shocktart server
“If anyone uses dreamhost to run their business, they are an idiot. If my living depended on a website, I’d spend a tad more than $25.”
You mean like the people spending $70/mo for the DH “Strickly Business” package? THey’re not getting any better performance.
I guess someone should have mentioned that you get $25/yr hosting performance for $840/yr.
I been with Dreamhost for 3 years and always had great service.
“You mean like the people spending $70/mo for the DH “Strickly Business” package? THey’re not getting any better performance.”
It’s the EXACT same shared hosting plan with a few more features, on the same servers as the cheapest plans. What part of that did you think would make one more reliable than the other?
Hey, here’s a great idea… offer DH $500/month for the same hosting plan you have. That should make it more reliable.
Still down.. Its been down the whole day so far and last night. Is this getting resolved soon? I dont know, regardless of $25/yr or $500/yr its the service you are providing and you choose to provide the service. I dont expect 100% uptime, but I also dont expect 24hr periods of downtime.
24 hours later and my sites are still down. I have however had 3 (three) emails from support telling me there is no problem at all. I guess my users in the US, Canada, England, France, Spain, Hong Kong and Thailand who can’t see the sites must all be doing something wrong?
Could someone at DH remind me why my package is called “strictly business”, please?
As our friends from France say: “Merde happens”.
I spent 29 years in the music business, dealing with guitars and their strings, amps, stomp pedals and their successor, the big honkin’ Bradshaw effects rack, wires, wires, wires and much more. Even rock stars, traditionally the most unstable and likely-to-break thing on the stage. I got news for you guys, try as you might, no matter how hard you work on maintaing your gear, no matter how new and shiny it is, things break. Especially at the worst possible moment.
Then the rock stars scream at you something like “Yer’ destroying my life and my career!!!”
It never speeds up the repair cycle. Never.
Maybe that’s why I just don’t get exercised about a little downtime: Merde happens.
@Mike
So what ARE you doing with your hosting? I wonder how many people purchase hosting not intending to at least TRY to make a little money. What’s the point of a hosting company if your target audience is not business owners. I would think a hosting company would want their customers making money off their websites, so they would continue hosting through them and potentially buy more hosting through them. So, lets see, if DH is for people that aren’t running a business, that rules out ALL freelancers (photographers, designers, artists, programmers, etc.), support forums, e-stores, search engines, gaming groups, corporate sites, resellers, news sites… pretty much anyone that might’ve even possibly had a chance of even thinking about making a dollar on the web. And that leaves us with: … well, i guess that leaves us with bloggers, which explains why you spend so much time posting on DH status page…
I’m not trying to start anything Mike. I’ve had dreamhost for a few years now. I know they’re capable of providing excellent service. I just think they’re downtime is catching up with them. It wouldn’t be so bad if it only happened once in a while, but it seems like DH has hit a real run of bad luck… It seems to be one thing after another.
Also, @ M, after actually doing some research about other hosting companies, there are several that post their downtime and server issues on the web. It’s known as PR. And there’s never such a thing called bad PR. Even the negative PR is good PR.
Wow, reading about all the problems with DreamHost is very scary because we thought this would be our answer for our professional hosting / database site.
Just starting off we can’t really afford many of the other companies offering hosting, at least that’s what we thought before we read this thread. Now it seems DreamHost will cost us more in lost business/sales from downtime and headaches/problems than perhaps a more expensive host.
When you’re in business one of the most important things is dependability. Customers must be able to reach you and your site at all times. Emails, Web pages, and Database access all need to be reliable or you will certainly loose many customers and you will also look very unprofessional and untrustworthy to them. Even the ones that may stick with you.
Reading all the problems with DreamHost is very disturbing and saddening to us.
Can anyone recommend reasonably priced, reliable alternatives ?
We still may give DreamHost a chance and hope we get lucky and get put on a good reliable server, but after reading so many horror stories we’re scared to even try DH.
Thanks for your time and honesty in sharing your problems.
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“You mean like the people spending $70/mo for the DH “Strickly Business” package? THey’re not getting any better performance.”
It’s the EXACT same shared hosting plan with a few more features, on the same servers as the cheapest plans. What part of that did you think would make one more reliable than the other?
Hey, here’s a great idea… offer DH $500/month for the same hosting plan you have. That should make it more reliable.”
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I’m on this DB server, and have been very annoyed by this issue - thinking of leaving. Glad to know what’s going on, and hoping this gets resolved fast.
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