Because, they’re not all hosted on the same server. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the main sites have somewhat more redundancy than the normal customer servers either, and that’s just to be expected…

> Or if they had some sort of redundancy maybe?

.. but redundancy costs money. Heaps and heaps of money. Which would have to be passed on to you.

> So basically - you get nothing for what you pay for, and are lucky the service works AT ALL.

Because, _not_ having a clause like that would open up to incredible amounts of liability, so there’s no way you’ll get hosting anywhere that doesn’t have it.

> Before this I was running a server at my old place, and we kept the same hardware for 11 YEARS, and so far we have only had to replace an ethernet card. We could run the whole company on that one server! And it still runs Win 95!

You ran a _server_ on _Win95_? For a _company_? _Still_? Yeah, I’m sure Dreamhost should take your advice. Either way, the fact that your box didn’t die within 11 years proves absolutely nothing. Now, try to run a few thousand servers for 11 years, and see how many of them die, and I might accept your numbers. I’ve had somewhere around ten computers through the years, and I’ve also have many hardware failures, including a handful of dead harddrives, a bunch of dead fans, a couple of fried PSUs and a motherboard that suddenly caught fire.

> So if dreamhost just buys really good hardware that will last a while, then downtimes would be a lot less, and it would be cheaper because you don’t just have to replace crappy stuff all the time. Think aboot it.

Uh-huh. All hardware fails, sooner or later, and old hardware is generally much less reliable than new. Old junk is also generally less power efficient, and gives less computing capacity in the same space, which is a big deal for a data center. I doubt the servers Dreamhost purchases is “crappy” (I’m guessing they are fairly run-of-the-mill 1U servers). Having high-level redundancy in this system would of course be a good thing, and shouldn’t really be too hard to implement seeing as the shared storage is already there, but generally, going for the highest-end servers with built-in redundancy doesn’t make for affordable hosting, trust me on this.

Well anyway, I’ve only been with dreamhost for a couple of weeks, but these are my stats for the server burns, as sampled every three minutes by another server, only counting the fails that did not trigger simultaneously with failures at other servers, to reduce the risk that the failure occured at the sampling server and not at Dreamhost:

Server Uptime*: 99.94% (4 fails out of 6531)
Service Uptime**: 99.48% (30 fails out of 6531 - 99.65% [including 7 of these] completed, but exceeded the time limit)

* responds to a ping test, where five pings are done a second apart, without loss
** is able to run a simple test that connects to a remote database and performs and acts on a simple query, within three seconds

For $pennies a day with virtually unlimited bandwidth and disk space, that’s really not bad..

Most of the sites hosted here don’t go down. When you have 1,000 servers, it’s impossible to keep every site up at all times.

Jacob: That’s correct… all hosts cover their butts in the TOS. The whiners here know that, but they’re running out of stuff to whine about, so they’d rather grasp at nothing than shut up.

The other person posting as M: Way to spam your website under a fake name, instead of backing up one of your own posts with it. That’s just spamming. By the way, your spam site is up, so what are you whining about? Hopefully, DH will can you for spamming it here, to avoid others on your mail server from getting blacklisted.

Go Daddy expressly disclaims all warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Services are provided on an “As Is” and “As Available” basis. Go Daddy makes no warranty that its services will meet your requirements, or that the services will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error free, or that defects will be corrected. Go Daddy does not warrant, nor make any representations regarding the use, or results of, any of the services it provides, in terms of their correctness, accuracy, reliability, or otherwise.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the disclaimer of implied warranties, in which event that foregoing disclaimer may not apply to You.

From hosting.com TOS:

11.1. USE OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS IS AT CUSTOMER’S SOLE RISK. NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, RESELLERS THIRD PARTY INFORMATION PROVIDERS, MERCHANTS LICENSERS OR THE LIKE, MAKE ANY WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, THAT THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS WILL NOT BE INTERRUPTED OR BE ERROR FREE; NOR DO THEY MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MIGHT BE OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS OR AS TO THE ACCURACY, OR RELIABILITY OF ANY INFORMATION SERVICE OR MERCHANDISE CONTAINED OR PROVIDED THROUGH THE COMPANY’S SERVICE, UNLESS OTHERWISE EXPRESSLY STATED IN THIS AGREEMENT. THIS INCLUDES LOSS OF DATA, WHETHER RESULTING FROM DELAYS, ON DELIVERIES, WRONG DELIVERY, AND ANY AND ALL SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS CAUSED BY THE COMPANY AND ITS EMPLOYEES OR OTHER CAUSES.

From rackspace.com TOS:

(a) RACKSPACE DOES NOT WARRANT OR REPRESENT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR COMPLETELY SECURE. CUSTOMER ACKNOWLEDGES THAT THERE ARE RISKS INHERENT IN INTERNET CONNECTIVITY THAT COULD RESULT IN THE LOSS OF CUSTOMER’S PRIVACY, CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION, AND PROPERTY.

I’m seeing a pattern here.

Of course, everyone has their own complaints, and I’m not going to force my opinion on anyone or flame them for not taking it.

Then again, when you somehow manage to get huge ammounts of webspace for a small price a month. I dunno. I’d get pretty patient.

Whatev. Redundant post. Probably made myself look like an idiot. Shutting up now. OMGWTFLOLBBQORLYNOWAIYARLY.

I have always been impressed with the service, the incredible range of options and control I have via the “Panel”, and — of course — the amazing price.

The last month or so, though, has just been terrible. It’s really starting to get me upset. Every other time I turn around I find that my dozen or so sites are “down” for one reason or another. Either the database isn’t responding or the webserver is unavailable or they’re so slow as to be worthless.

I submit support requests and by the time a tech replies everything has returned to normal so the tech just says, “Everything looks fine to me; don’t know what to tell you.” It’s seriously ridiculous.

I don’t know what to do. I have been with Dreamhost for so long and been so happy. It would really hurt me to have to spend time to find a new host and transfer everything. I’m so upset about this.

What really stinks is that I am in the internet business. It’s what I’ve done for a living for the last decade and a half. I can sympathize *and* empathize with the issues they’re having. But at what point do you give up?

I stopped whining and checked my sofa and there it was. 37 cents and a peppermint candy.

That’s service.

Maybe they reserve this for people who dont act like petulant/demanding children?