Randy cluster having problems. (Updated)
Posted (June 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 am PST) by DavidUnfortunately we’re experiencing some sort of problem on the “Randy” cluster which is effecting web and mail services. Many customers have reported slowness with their web sites. Our admins are looking into this now and will update this post when we have more details. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing.
NOTE: You can determine which cluster you’re on via our control panel. When you log in with your WebID click on the “Account Status” button near the top-right. The cluster your account is on is listed as “Your Email Server”.
The “Not-so-happy-Monday-morning-fix-it-team”.
UPDATE: 8:40 PDT - Looks like there was a problem with one of our file servers (Janice). It seems that the problem has been resolved and we’re restarting the effected servers. Things should be back to normal again very soon.
UPDATE: 11:15 PDT - The admins tell me that the problem has been resolved and that all but the most stubborn servers are back to normal again. If you continue to experience any problems with web, mail or database and are on the Randy cluster please submit support requests via the normal channels.
62 Responses to “Randy cluster having problems. (Updated)”
Hey guys.
Im on janky (or so my panel says) but it’s REALLLLLLLLLLLLLY SLOW at the moment. Could it be affected by the same issues?
Cheers
Julio
looks like I’m having problems with Peso also.
JFC
Our website is on Spunky and I’m also having problems - the pages are not loading.
I have a sites on galaxie and am experiencing the same thing.
I am up and running again. Pretty quick resolution from my perspective.
Thanks.
Your happy Dreamhost subscriber
(now that I’ve posted, I do get that discount on renewal, right?)
Still not working.
Please adivse us faster in the future. My site is down since more than a couple of hours.
Another issue with a dreamhost server … is it that hard to keep these things running properly? They had a 2 year span where there hardly had any issues then the past 6 months have gone down the toilet. Whats the time frame before we start looking for more reliable services online? I love dreamhost but this is kind of ridiculous. Hire some IT Architects and test the crap out of these servers before they all fail at once.
What does High Severity mean? Does it indicate how many users are affected, how much effort/time it will take to fix, the nature of the failure (total, slow, database/email/etc only), or some mix of all these things?
I’m trying to understand how I should interpret Severity (from a customer standpoint), so I know when to panic (rather than just panicking every time, until there’s an estimate on downtime).
I’m just embarrassed to be on the “Randy Cluster”.
Yeah looks like on Randy for email…
My websites are down too though and it says they’re on Bob…
… By the way, I’m on the frisky cluster, and I have serious slowdown, which I think is only database related (file-only content loads fine).
And another thing: Instead of always explaining that “Your Email Server” is really the cluster, why not just call it that in the Account Status panel? *Steps down from soapbox*
I am on janky, my mail is not working at all, i wish this was the first time, but sadly, it is not. Please dreamhost, resolve email issues, this has been recurring and very unfun.
yep..same here. frisky cluster’s not so frisky this morning. 
trans-am.dreamhost.com is not working either
Hey all, I’m on Janky too, mail was down for about 2 hours, back up now but running slowly.
“Things should be back to normal again very soon.”
So what, exactly, is “very soon?” It’s been an hour since that was posted and I’m still down.
Up and running.
TY
sites on spunky are down as well. So what’s the ETA?
I’m not on Randy server, but I’ve been down for about an hour. Hope you guys can fix it 
Problems on mcclure…
Just found out about this.
I must of stormed tech support with over 15 emails the past 7 hours my sites are down. Sorry.
Hey, I’m on that PS thing and thought those are invincible.
Anybody else seeing a complete outage.
I mean my sites are pretty much down.
persephone.dreamhost.com seems to be down hard — not responding to any pings. Since the cluster is janky, I’ve sent this in to support… Sounds like they have their hands full today!
Hehe, my Web Server PEGASUS always go slow…
Thank god I’m on blingy! oh wait…
man, I have the worst dreamhost luck. my old sites are mail hosted on Randy, my new sites on Blingy. I guess that´s what I get for staying with dreamhost.
as usual, their status updates say nothing helpful. anyone have a clue, or get a support ticket answered (i never have)
nron
There they all were, in the conference room, ready to punch up our site and convince the boss to choose us. “They’ll be reliable,” promised the junior executive who had found us while browsing. They waited. They watched. And… well? Well, where are they? We’re waiting!
AGAIN?
This is unacceptable. It’s the second time in less than a month that this happens. Seriously, guys, what is going on with you? I’ve been with Dreamhost for 3 years, it was never like this before. You have to have some sort of backup system that you can switch to when your servers throw a fit, otherwise you’re going to end up losing customers.
@Nina: I agree. I really like the features offered by DreamHost — very tech/developer centric. The staff seems friendly, knowledgeable, responsive, informative — all things you just don’t find these days. I’m sure it’s a ton of work to run a hosting service. Nonetheless, how can they stay in business with such unreliable infrastructure? … Then again, I guess I’m still here!
Still 100% down on two of my sites, third one working fine.
Down sites return:
______________
Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
______________
Support notified. :o(
Tom
Still having problems with the spunky server. I can sort of sometimes get to the website, but it’s unreliable at best.
Website still 100% out.
We are both DreamHost PS and DreamHost Mysql PS customers. We are currently spending over $330 / month for our DreamHost server. Our sites have all been down since 8AM EST and are still down as of the writing of this comment.
I have screen-capped our resources allocation and dollar amount here:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3015/2545256079_892dcbc049_o.gif
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2158/2546081798_f0cb66a3c0_o.gif
DH is clearly having a major network and/or hardware failure today.
I’m sure the good folks at DreamHost are doing everything they can to get everyone back up and running.
Unfortunately, it does not appear as though this issue has yet been resolved.
We await further communication with patience and understanding.
Cheers,
James.
Lol at @ dreamhost customers.
spacey slooooooooooow too
Capone also seems to be down - or at least my site is. What’s the deal dreamhost peeps? It’s getting late in London and I’d like to get things sorted tonight if I can.
Janky seems to be up and running nicely now.
my emails are still down, not suprised.
Bluehost is looking better all the time,
heads up i began a transfer over to thinkhost, dont bother they were even worse than dreamhost, so despite the fact that dreamhost is totally unreliable, there are others out there that are equally amatuer.
seems we should all be having our hosting by someone who can provide 99.97 uptime, dreamhost makes absolutely no claims for uptime.
we can do better than this.
i’m migrating but it’s gonna cost me an extra Benny a month. dual array 160GB mirrored hard drives….
My site experienced really variable speed last night and is now totally unavilable. Web server is CAPONE and email server HOMIE
I can’t access my subversions…
I can access my sybversions, just now !
I don’t know if the site freewillastrology.com is on Randy or not, but it’s unresponsive…
It pings & traces ok, but doesn’t answer http
Just told my client about the reliability of dreamhost and ofcourse their knowledgable and humorous support staff. Hate to learn about this from the client when picking up a new project! I’m on dogdog and atleast half my sites are down. Help us Obi Wan!
Wow… three years of hosting with dreamhost. Today is the first day of my new project going live and the site immediately dies. I’m not yet considering switching hosts, nor will I post immature thinly veiled threats to that effect. I sure as hell hope the powers that be at dreamhost are spending as much time figuring out how you’re going to compensate users as you are trying to get these servers back up.
I also find it rather disingenuous that you’ve marked this issue as resolved when dozens of users on as many different servers are still experiencing outages. This issue is CLEARLY not resolved.
My site is STILL DOWN. What the hell, Dreamhost?
It seems the only thing keeping my sites down is the fact that my mysql server (mysql.rudeboy.org on ‘gordo’) is still non-responsive. What the hell? I have yet to get any response from my support ticket…
DAVID::The admins tell me that the problem has been resolved
Are you from India-extra-happy-support-services?
Admins TOLD you that …
Happy-India-Automatic-Translation-for-Excellent-Happy-Dreamhost-Services
zorg is still SLOW… to the point of being unusable sometimes. It could be file system related, as doing a simple ‘ls’ just now took over a minute to complete.
But the problem is INTERMITTENT… one moment it will be fine… then the next it will be SLOW again.
I notice from doing a ‘top’ that almost all the machine’s memory is in use… like only ~150 MB free out of 4 GB. And there seems to be a significant average CPU load (maybe 20+ % if I had to give a number). Not sure if these are normal things or are indicative of a problem.
I submitted a support ticket over 8 hours ago and haven’t gotten a reply yet (granted, it hasn’t been normal US business hours).
We’re on Randy cluster - and everything is running swiftly again. Thank you DH folk for working on and solving the problem. Cheers.
Inko is also down. All my sites are timing out!!!!
I’m on frisky cluster. All sites down. Expecting new status…
I don’t know what cluster I’m on (ssh to my domain puts me on ‘egon’), but webmail and all my sites are also suddenly down.
On Frisky cluster, all sites are down.
Can’t get mail, my websites are down, can’t ping my mail or web servers… Aaargh!!!!
[Tofu?]
Another in Frisky cluster here, HTTP and FTP suddenly/completely down.
spacey cluster is also down. WTFFFFFFFFFFF you guys are horrible
“coke” and “spacey” have also gone down. I haven’t been able to access my email or domains for a while now.
What’s a typical/normal load average for a server at DreamHost?
I’m seeing numbers like this on zorg (quad core, I think, if it makes a difference, and 4 GB RAM)…
[zorg]$ uptime
20:19:41 up 1 day, 10:51, 8 users, load average: 7.36, 6.79, 8.09
This particular ‘uptime’ command took like 10+ seconds to complete (it’s usually instantaneous)… and my connection is fine… I’m pinging the machine very reliably.
And you can’t reproduce this kind of slowness at will… it’s seemingly random.
Got to love how people say hardware breaking is unacceptable. It happens. It’s IT. It’s computers. They have a habit of breaking. Computers and electronic equipment of this type aren’t built to last forever, they aren’t even built to last two years! At least they have and / or are trying to fix it. Not Acceptable, would be not doing anything about it.
I still experiment trouble and slowness on my website.
Can you help me please and check-it out ?
Thank you in advance,
Yours sincereley,
Morning guys.
First off - Thanks for working on it.
Second off - Pretty please, when panel is down for people, post something here quicker. Even a quick and simple, ‘WE KNOW SHIT’S BLOWING UP! WE’RE WORKING ON IT’. It makes me feel a little more at ease.
That being said, I’m back up and happy with Dreamhost as always.
James Hatton
inhislikeness.com