More DreamHost central database maintenance
Posted (March 8th, 2007 at 2:23 pm PST) by DreamHostWe will be performing more maintenance on the dreamhost central database beginning Monday, March 12 2007 at 22:00:00 PDT. Downtime window is 6 hours, expected downtime within that window is 4 hours. This will take the following services offline:
DreamHost Webpanel
DreamHost-provided Webmail
All other mail services will remain online, including pop3, imap, and smtp, only the DreamHost webmail install will be offline. Customer sites and databases will also function as normal.
148 Responses to “More DreamHost central database maintenance”
NOT AGAIN PLEASE
i hope i can see my site comming back as before
Yes i agree since outtages almost 6 months ago DH hasnt been the same i will be moving my sites elsewhere… as an outtage everyonce in a while is acceptable but weekly is not!
Hmmm:
“All other mail services will remain online, including pop3, imap, and smtp, only the DreamHost webmail install will be offline. Customer sites and databases will also function as normal.”
My site isn’t coming up.
WHERE IS MY WEBMAIL ^#$% @($*&
You CAN NOT keep doing this
Wow. Just wow. The reading comprehension skills of my fellow commenters is embarrasing.
“All other mail services will remain online, including pop3, imap, and smtp, only the DreamHost webmail install will be offline. Customer sites and databases will also function as normal.”
My site isn’t coming up either and this ‘downtime’ hasn’t even supposedly started yet. >__>
If the downtime is scheduled for March 12, why is my panel inaccessible today? Hmm.
Based on the story you just read, answer the following questions using a #2 pencil and the quiz book you have been supplied with:
1.) Is this Dreamhost maintenance scheduled or unscheduled?
2.) Which services will be unavailable?
3.) Does it occur during normal business hours anywhere in the US?
4.) Will your POP3 service go down or will you be able to access it?
5.) Compare and contrast outages from the previous week with this one. Is it better or worse? Why? Write a short essay defending your position.
If you finish before time is called, hand your finished quiz book forward to the teacher and sit quietly until the testing period has ended.
Chris, that is the best reply i have ever seen. I am sick and tired of people complaining that this or that is wrong. You pay nothing. If there is a problem, report it, dont bitch here.
If you are all so worried about your email. Do what I did, don’t use DH for it. Either manage your own, or amazingly enough, have you heard about Gmail for your Domain?
It’s free, and hey, it is reliable. Stop your bitching, DH gives you ways to offsite your email.
Tom
Dear Christopher,
Some additions to your little quiz:
1.) b) Does scheduling something make it 100% ok no matter how inconvenient it may be?
c) Is it reasonable for a company to ‘schedule’ downtime over and over again, no matter how much time this takes?
3.) b) Are there other countries on earth?
c) Do people in those countries buy services from Dreamhost?
d) For extra credit, do people in Australia usually surf the web during US business hours?
5.) b) If I cut your leg off one week, and then only cut off your arm the next week, is it ok that I cut your arm off, even though you are angry about your leg?
Extra credit questions:
6.) You are running a web hosting company through which many small businesses operate commercial sites. You do not have enough server capacity to support your current load with redundancy. What do you do?
A. Nothing, no one customer is big enough to do anything about it if there’s a failure.
B. Nothing, making a profit is more important than offering a quality service.
C. Nothing, I love making my customers angry.
D. Nothing, I am unfamiliar with IT engineering and do not see the problem.
7.) You are a *$&#wit lurking on a support forum for a web hosting company. Other people are obviously upset about problems with the company. What do you do?
A. Make sarcastic remarks because you are an angry, bitter human being.
B. Try to be helpful.
C. Try to be sympathetic.
D. Shut up because you have nothing helpful to say.
fuck you dreamhost.
Theoretically, a “complaint” can help Dreamhost to improve its services. If one is unable to login to the panel, is there a better place.
Yes, we can all vote with our feet, and at some point I probably will. But 20 seconds of complaining will make me feel a lot better today than 6 hours of migration work.
Constructive criticism is all I’m giving.
I have already lodged a complaint that there is no alternative way to report issues when the panel is down. 4-6 hours of downtime is a bit long period to go without being able to report issues (I don’t think DHStatus could survive under the load of all the complaints).
BUT – to all of you people complaining about having the downtime:
What would you prefer? Planned downtime of 4-6 hours or multiple unplanned outages of unspecified duration and no reliable way to submit requests at any time that may occur?
If you don’t have time to move your email to gmail, consider using an IMAP client instead of the webclient. It kinda sucks anyway.
Pat – Thanks for your valuable input. (pause, pauuuuse, continued pause) NAAHT!
We are in Venezuela. We can use the webmail but can view the website. Anybody can try to open
Please answer.
Thanks
I can’t say I like getting angry messages from users of my site confused as to why my sites always down.
I mean, no offense to you people that ENJOY downtime, but I’m so tired of all the downtime of my site. I’d rather have old features than a site with totally newawsomecooltasticfantastic features that doesn’t work ever.
Patrick Bateman said, supposedly regarding Christoper: “You are a *$&#wit lurking on a support forum for a web hosting company.”
This explains quite a lot, really. One can hardly expect a person who doesn’t know, or can’t appreciate, the difference between the comment section of a blog from established “support forums” to understand much of what he reads. Bu then again, Patrick *is* all about “drama” (see his site). 
Of course, DH *does* have support forums, Patrick (http://discussion.dreamhost.com); you should drop in sometime so you will be able to tell the difference between such a venue and a blog.
Oh, I’m sorry. Next time I’ve got problems because my email’s down AGAIN I will make sure to word my comments about the situation perfectly to avoid offending some anonymous guy on some website.
Seriously, what kind of person hangs around a place like this correcting other people’s grammar and choice of words? If you guys don’t have an issue relating to the (continual) downtime, why are you here?
No problem, Patrick! No offense taken; those of us who stop in here to see status reports are pretty much used to such gaffes – happens all the time, so there’s no need to worry about it 
For the record though, I had no problem with your grammar at all, or your “choice of words”, and I don’t “hang around” here; I use it as it was intended to be used by checking periodically for announcements that might impact me or my clients’ sites.
You obviously missed the whole point of my post, just as you missed the “point” of the blog entry you commented on. The blog entry was informing you of a scheduled maintenance operation that *does not* impact your ability to use your email (only the “webmail” interface), and the point of my comment was to point out to you that there *are* “support forums” available for you if you need help figuring out how to handle your mail without the webmail interface being available for a few hours. Oh well. [wink]
As for my being “acerbic” about it; you set that tone with your response to Christopher. However, if you can’t “take it” with the same sense of humor with which you “dish it out”, I can understand why it might not be “fun” for you, and I sincerely apologize for having ruffled your feathers. PAX
One of my sites was down all day, and just came back about a half hour ago. Kind of disappointing! I’m sticking with DH though, I hope they sort out what’s plaguing them lately.
Honestly do you really need to check your panel or webmail every hour of the day. As other have mentioned move your email to google. As for the panel, go read a book and take a nap.
Let’s see now, you are warned in advance that the control panel will be down during a certain timeframe, but do you prepare to do all your site management ahead of time? No, you’d rather whine when it happens, rather than hope and trust that performance will be improved because of that maintenance.
And are you folks going to tell me that you’d rather get your email in a Web client than with Outlook, Windows Mail, Apple Mail, Entourage, Opera, Thunderbird, etc? Sigh.
And if you do have to upload something to your site, there’s always an FTP client, or perhaps Adobe GoLive or Dreamweaver.
Peace,
Gene
javier: Your site looks and performs great from the western US.
Pat – sorry I was a bit of a dick there but you have to admit that the people that post here (note, that includes myself) have absolutely NO IDEA how to address the topic actually posted by DH. Your post, while obviously intended to make fun of Chris was actually semi-entertaining and I respect attempts at humor while trying to get a serious point across.
A note saying that “On the 12th…” has absolutely NO BEARING on the fact that someone’s site isn’t available right now. Despite the “feel good rush” of bitching about it here, it doesn’t really help in getting it back up. Requests like javier’s are not as frustrating because we can do something for him.
It’s nice to be informed of scheduled downtime but given DHs’ recent performance I’d double that downtime estimate and expect other services to be effected as well.
I haven’t noticed any problems with my site during these recent “issues.”
Dreamhost beats the tail off my last host … the service doesn’t even compare.
that’s it. I am packing. 6 hrs?????? with webmail and half the stuff down again. and for sure something will go wrong. Sure it is in the middle of the night here but how about Europe?
Based on the history since I moved here a month ago, 4-6 hours of scheduled loss of panel and webmail could likely turn out to 12-24 hrs total loss of all email functionality and website uptime. I really hope this wont be the case, but not really surprising to see the amount of skepticism here in light of recent events. Good luck DH, I hope it all goes smoothly as planned.
Patrick,
a support forum
Wrong. This isn’t a support forum. That would be
http://discussion.dreamhost.com/wwwthreads.pl
I must say, if there is a positive to DH downtime, it is certainly coming on here and reading this stuff. Ahaha, you commenters crack me up. SURELY you don’t spend all day on the webpanel? What do you do? I am lucky to go there 3-4 times a week, I actually have a site to run instead of change settings just for the sake of changing them.
I want to complain about the numerous outageous that seem to have over taken DH during the last 5 months… Give me a minute… I’ll come up wth something…
I just finished complaining about the all-too-frequent webmail outages, and here it is again. ‘Nuff said.
@demonsurfer: When they took the centralized services offline earlier this week, it was down EXACTLY when they said it would, and it was up 3 HOURS BEFORE they said it would be! What more could you ask for? I admit they had some issues with the scheduled power outage in their datacenter that are mostly fixed now (my sites have all been up on the baht server continuously since the restart), but that doesn’t mean they’re going to take a longer time than they said to fix it. Maybe the reason they didn’t update the panel during the fallout was because maybe they had a few hundred servers to get back online as quickly as possible for paying customers.
@nick: Cry me a river. *grabs canoe and paddle*. Seriously, I only check webmail from work. I use an imap client most of the time. You should too. Then you might actually plan your site mainenance ahead of time, do it after the panel comes back up, or just STFU. WIth those two issues resolved, you are looking at zero impact from the downtime. What a glorious day!
@Van: No services will be “effected”. However, if any services other than webmail and panel are affected, they will be unrelated.
@Everyone Else: Personally, I have not had a problem accessing any aspect of my websites, nor any problems accessing webmail or the panel, since the Monday after the power outage. I may be on a different server than you (baht), or a different mail cluster (randy), but we all go through the same systems for panel and webmail. These systems have not been down.
My website got slower.
A quick factual point:
Non-US customers may not realise that Daylight Saving Time comes into effect this weekend in the USA, so next week the servers will be seven hours behind GMT, not eight.
Thus the outage is 05.00 – 11.00 GMT on Tuesday 13 March.
Cool my site was only down 6 times yesterday.
Good note Richard. Bad timing for those in Europe and Asia but it’s gotta happen sometime.
Half my sites still down, the rest still slow. Off to file another ticket … to bad, been happy with Dreamhost until this point.
@ Matt : thanks for your response, although you should note that although you may have had minimal issues as scheduled, not everyone was as fortunate. I am on different servers than you for both website and email. I don’t think people would be on here complaining about loss of service beyond what was scheduled if they didn’t actually experience a loss of service.. at least I hope they wouldn’t.
@demonsurfer: It could just be that I don’t notice any outages, because I have the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality about my settings. Thus, I’ve only been to the panel a few times since the power outage – once to create a database for Mint, and once to vote in suggestions. I may have missed any webmail outages, because I generally only open webmail between 10 and 11 MST (-0700) – normal US business hours – or between 5 and 8 MST on Tuesdays – again, normal business hours on the Pacific coast. Somehow, I don’t think being on a different mail cluster or a different webserver would impact that, because all (6?) panel servers are completely separate, as are the webmail installations.
Of course, I could just be a lucky bastard.
To Dreamhost and their Apologists:
Perhaps people would be less irritated with outages and explanations if we weren’t constantly innundated with wise-ass shit from Dreamhost. The “oopsie” apologies, the corny photos, the glib, half-assed newsletters — these are irksome when a service you PAID FOR is not working. No one expects perfection, and I certainly am glad that Dreamhost’s employees are having such a good time, but when your shit goes down, it pisses you off to feel like people are cackling and goofing around in the background.
Let’s get a little more professional, guys.
This is not the related place to write it, but is the earthlink problem back on? My email is bouncing again…
Dreamhost have never been wise-ass, glib, etc on this status page and that includes comments by dallas and josh etc. However they have always been glib and wise-ass in their news letters (since 2000 in my case) and this is reflected in the blog too.
They are professional when it matters (on this status page for instance) and loads more fun where it doesn’t.
Plus happy employees with a GSOH are usually better workers. This matters when it is the middle of the night and you have thousnads of machines to get working.
Go DH. Thanks for the Advance Notice again.
Best Blog on the web this!
They have always been glib and wise-ass on their other blog and on the front page of the main site. BTW, I am not unhappy with my service, I am just giving you some reasons people get pissed.
Bottom line: Act like a pro, get treated like one. Act like a goof off, get treated like one. ‘Nuff said.
I am unable to log into panel.dreamhost.com
@dave, the panel is up and running fine. what error are you getting? does removing your dreamhost.com and panel.dreamhost.com cookies help?
Personally, I quite enjoy being able to come here and see EXACTLY what’s wrong with the DreamHost systems. Even if it doesn’t work, I at least know they’ve recognized the fact that there IS a problem, and it’s being fixed.
I like the sense of humor, too. Just because you have a sense of humor doesn’t mean you aren’t professional. DreamHost has been in business longer than Google; if there were serious problems with the sense of humor, they would have died by now. Instead, they’ve become the 19th largest provider of DNS services on the internet, with over 350,000 domains under their control. That’s quite impressive.
port 443 is down on my site. why?
I switched from another host just today to dreamhost, because their server was always down. now, i come to this!
It’s OK, I forgive you, but I hope this isn’t regularly. 
*sigh*
The handful of times I go to tinker with my sites always seems to match the downtime.
Atleast I’m not stupid enough to put important stuff(mainly cuz I dont have anything that is) on my $7 a month webhosting account.
Maybe I’m just used to big companies giving their customers the finger(*cough* my isp *cough* phone company *cough* airlines *cough* banks *cough*) that a few offenses like this still doesnt make me mad. Atleast they explain it, and atleast their features kick ass when they work. Still, come on DH, I hope these issues don’t continue for too much longer.
Can’t we all just get along?
Webmail is down? Oh noes! There are other methods of getting email people!
My webmail is down, but my email is still arriving on my Outlook and Crackberry just fine.
It is not just mail and the panel that are down, so are my sites. Again.
That’s good, Superdave. On my main DH e-mail address I haven’t been able to get e-mail since the 8th, and this is the 13th – I only stopped by to see if the support folks have done more than access my DH mail server (randy) using a different OS, method, and mail client, then respond to me (yesterday) that they didn’t see a problem. Sorry, three independent machines have the exact same problem with that mail account here, including one that hasn’t even been turned on for 4 months other than to verify this problem.
Hope there is someone at least looking at my reply to their “test” – so far all I had received before the panel went down was one of the automated “it’s close to 24 hours but we haven’t forgotten” messages.
Maybe I should move my important stuff to gmail. *sigh*
Tomas
Tomas: Are you trying to get your email from the Webmail panel or via an email client on your computer? If so, which ones?
Peace,
Gene
When exactly is the panel due to be back up, does anyone know?
And right as I said that, it started working!
And right as I said that, it started working!
Thanks Bro
Wow. Just wow. The reading comprehension skills of my fellow commenters is embarrasing.
wmwebtr ödüllü seo yarışması thanks..
Thank you for the link! It definitely is an interesting paper, and I hope more researchers look into how such a system came about now that we have more details on how it works.
This article is good . Thanks…
Thanks for it…
very special thanks
thanks
very special thanks
yes all right
I am unable to log into panel.dreamhost.com
[link title="Makara,Eğlence,Fıkra,Fıkralar,Komedi,Komik"]www.makara-eglence.blogspot.com[/link]
thank youu very good
very goooood
thank youuu
thank you mf
Half my sites still down, the rest still slow http://www.tahminciyiz.com
Very Good Site. I am happy to be a customer of you.
Wow. Just wow. The reading comprehension skills of my fellow commenters is embarrasing.
Half my sites still down, the rest still slow http://www.illegal-crew.org
My website got slower.
They have always been glib and wise-ass on their other blog and on the front page of the main site. BTW, I am not unhappy with my service, I am just giving you some reasons people get pissed.
Bottom line: Act like a pro, get treated like one. Act like a goof off, get treated like one. ‘Nuff said.
Yes i agree since outtages almost 6 months ago DH hasnt been the same i will be moving my sites elsewhere… as an outtage everyonce in a while is acceptable but weekly is not!
my site was only down 6 times yesterday!
This is not the related place to write it, but is the earthlink problem back on? My email is bouncing again…
thank you.
They have always been glib and wise-ass on their other blog and on the front page of the main site. BTW, I am not unhappy with my service, I am just giving you some reasons people get pissed.
dreamhost is the best
I am unable to log into panel.dreamhost.com
i cannot use pop3 at the moment.
thanks
Eglence
dreamhost can be better
thanks
thanks
thanks
thanks
thanks
Thx. Very Good
Thanks Great
website got slower.
Thanks Great Thank you
I switched from another host just today to dreamhost, because their server was always down. now, i come to this!
It’s OK, I forgive you, but I hope this isn’t regularly.
http://www.tehlikeli.org http://www.sskbagkur.net malimusavir muhasebe gerekli evraklar ölü resimler
Thank you very much …
I am unable to log into panel.dreamhost.com
Thanks for information
It’s OK, I forgive you, but I hope this isn’t regularly.
It’s OK, I forgive you, but I hope this isn’t regularly.It’s OK, I forgive you, but I hope this isn’t regularly.
http://bilgininadresi.egitimodasi.org/ BilgininAdresi Bilginin Tek Kaynağı
yes!
Can’t we all just get along?
Webmail is down? Oh noes! There are other methods of getting email people!
My webmail is down, but my email is still arriving on my Outlook and Crackberry just fine.
cep telefonu,markaları,özellikleri
lazer kesim cnc kesim plazma kesim
tenk you man
thank you
Personally, I quite enjoy being able to come here and see EXACTLY what’s wrong with the DreamHost systems. Even if it doesn’t work, I at least know they’ve recognized the fact that there IS a problem, and it’s being fixed.
Thanks very.
thanks
Thanks very
thank you for sharing
gegegehgrhrbhvggv
thanks.
thank you for sharing
thanks
thanks
very nice.thanks
thank thanks.
He
thank youu
very nice.thanks
thank thanks.
thanks share.
thanks you, http://www.payidarulke.com/feeds.php
OMG Gratz
Since the outage that happen i’ve never seen my website and your servers healthy and open with out any lag