Aquaman has drowned
Posted (January 6th, 2009 at 4:27 am PST) by SandonIt looks like Aquaman is having some problems with its raid array and is currently down. Our admins are working on the issue and more information is to come when it is known.
Update 04:51 AM PST: Aquaman is currently being moved over to completely new hardware. We currently trying to copy what we can from the old machine and restore whatever else from backups. Unfortunately this machine is very new and we don’t have many backups available.
More updates to come soon.
Update 05:20 AM PST: So far about 8 of the ~200 GB of data has been copied to the new server. So far it has not had any errors so things are looking good. At this rate we are looking at around 5-6 hours to transfer the rest of the data assuming everything goes well. More updates to come later.
Update 08:00 AM PST: About 50% of the data has been copied so far.
Update: 6:00 PM PST: All services are back online on the aquaman server and have been up for some time now. We experienced no loss in data as a result of this incident. If you are still having problems, please contact support and we will take a look!
63 Responses to “Aquaman has drowned”
YAY, it’s not just me!
According to your reply on the support ticket, that was the situation yesterday morning and you said that it is solved!
Since it’s the fourth day that this server has problems, why don’t you migrate our accounts to a new one! I am really afraid that we are going to face problems soon enough in the near future and I really can’t rely on an unstable and problematic server for my websites uptime!
OMG, again?!!??
I’ve had the hosting package three days and it’s down already. That’s pathetic.
Upgrade it while you’re down there 
heh..good thing after I just barely got my site up and customized I instantly took backups.
Man, I’ve gone away, hoping it would be sorted when I got back and I could work on my site.
Sucks.
Was starting to panic a few moments ago, ready to upload the finished site and bang nothing showing up in browser… No ping response from server… Tried both my home net and work net connection and then thought i best check on here.
Hope’s it gets sorted soon before i misplace yet another full set up….
Bad first impression for me… It’s my first time in dreamhost and my site is still down 
:( :( :(
I worked about 6 hours painstakingly transferring from my old GoDaddy account - finished for the evening around 9:00 PST last night.
I’m just crossing my fingers here hoping that you’ll be able to recover my data.
Wow. I think 3 days ago I signed up. And all 3 days this server has died in one way shape or form. I’m not going to complain because I got a great price on everything - but really it needs to get fixed sooner than later. If I had paid full boat price on this I’d be livid.
I am keeping my finger crossed. I switched from GoDaddy 3 days ago. The website worked for two days and doesn’t work today. I know tech problem happens and if it doesn’t take long to resolve, it is acceptable with me. Anyway, this is my second website that doesn’t require 100% up-time so I will hang on a little bit for now (my other website doesn’t use Dreamhost). I guess I get what I pay for? We’ll see.
@Rick
Don’t despair. I’ve been with DH for…jeez, must be going on like 5 years now? They’re simply fantastic. I can count the outages on 1 hand and they’re always super responsive / transparent on what’s going on.
It’s a shame this happened on your third day, but trust me when I tell you it’s uncommon.
Bill
Fortunately I opened this site as a personal site, but today I started looking to replace a business site that needs to stay up. Doesn’t look good for DreamHost.
“I’ve had the hosting package three days and it’s down already. That’s pathetic.”
I’ve had this hosting for six months and it hasn’t gone down. What happens happens, harden up and deal with it.
Guys, I know that all this sucks, but you have to keep in mind that the people that run Dreamhost are human. They will make mistakes. Basically, what happened to them is that they got a TON of customer all at once because of a really good deal that leaked out(I’m not sure if it was meant to leak out either). So they got a whole bunch of customers that they were not expecting.
When something like that happens, it is difficult for any business to handle. So they had to throw up a server quickly. The server obviously wasn’t ready for primetime(This was definitely a mistake, and they have owned up to it already). Just keep in mind that putting up a server to handle this kind of surge, and to do it quickly, is going to be a tough task.
They are clearly working on the issue. I think that you guys should give them a chance to handle this situation. If this starts happening regularly after they get it all back up and running stable, I will be right here complaining like crazy with the rest of you.
You guys just don’t know when to shut up, do you?
These guys are working to fix the problem, not to screw you over. You know why they crash? Because they are OVERLOADED by new customers. Granted, they should have been prepared, but cut them some slack.
Even Amazon, Play, Newegg and all the huge sites crash if there is a surge in traffic. NO SERVER can take that amount of hits without taking a big blow.
I know you guys might have important websites up, as do I, but let them get on with the work and stop moaning like babies. Just because they took a bit of your cash doesn’t mean they have to mee your “perfect” requirements.
If you were really that concerned with outtages, you should have TWO hosting packages for redundancy. n00bs.
I’ve only had the package for ONE day and the box went down. I’m not going to cry seeing as they owned up to it and they’re doing something to fix it. I am a bit upset that I didn’t get a chance to make a backup of what I had setup thus far, but shit happens.
You know, often hosting companies won’t even post a status report such as this so you’re all fortunate to at least be able to look somewhere for a quick answer rather than having to stand in a queue just to find out that they are all on coffee break.
Sit back and relax. They’ll probably be up again fairly soon.
The problem is not that DH has an outage (although, God knows, they have a lot of severe ones). The problem is that they’re not capable of keeping their customers informed.
I have two sites, using different MySQL servers - both were down yesterday at 11PM. At 11:30, they were still not up, so I alerted DH via Twitter & support tickets. I didn’t even bother with getsatisfaction.com - DH doesn’t even bother two answer anything there, even though two employees are signed up to the service.
The result: No answer on Twitter (which is really a bad idea - if you have a twitter account, use it. Otherwise it’s pointless). Not even an acknowledgment from the ticket, either. Both (fang and jarvis) are still not responding this morning.
So either they’re using Aquaman for storage purposes and DH didn’t even alert anybody till 4:30 this morning, or two more servers are down without even a mention on the status page.
So the problem - as usual with DH - is that the customers are kept in the dark. The outages, I can live it - that’s expected with hosting as low-priced as DH. The atrocious customer relations is a different thing. I could even live with that if DH owned up and said “OK, we don’t do support. At all.” That, at least, would be honest. But creating more and more feedback channels without ever handling a single one is a bit upsetting.
And of course, just after I post my angry rant fang and jarvis are back… Thanks for fixing it, DH. Please, please, please fix your customer support issues now…
I could have went with another company and had a website right now, instead I am suffering for someone else’s mistakes.
I’ve every right to be angry, so don’t say the people who are, are being ‘babies’.
So I’d be a baby if I bought a new vehicle and it broke down on the same day I bought it? I don’t have the right to complain for something that I PAY for?
I’ve never had so many problems witha webshost before, especially being a new customer for just a few days! I guess I got wait I paid for… $11 for 2 years! I hope these issues get resolved soon because I haven not been able to do any work on the site because of the downtime.
I understand hosts have problems - but to have a server on/off for 3 straight days is kind of outrageous. And again, whether we paid $2 or $200 should make no difference. We paid for hosting, that’s what we should get.
Furthermore, it’s now 11:22 AM PST (I’m in EST) and there has been no update since 8 something AM. We’re moving into the day, and a site I just moved to this host - while not mission critical because I understand low-end hosting, is down for 10 hours. Look, bottom line, 10 hours is not the same as being down for a FEW hours. This is a bit on the absurd side. I appreciate all of DH’s support outreach - but it seems hit and miss. Let’s not forget that when DH offered this it wasn’t because they wanted to give the world low-cost hosting… it’s because these customers translate into long-term customers (if HANDLED CORRECTLY).
Third day of hosting for me, too, and to be honest, actually being kept in the loop has given me quite high hopes for Dreamhost. I, like most of the people complaining I imagine, paid very little for a considerable package, and the downtime is right at the beginning - which as far as I’m concerned, is both reasonable, and the best time for it.
And all the people complaining and threatening to leave - you’re all well aware you can get a full refund, you just don’t want to because deep down, you’re happy with it.
Damn, I should of searched this before buying.
Turns out DH have a very bad reputation. And looks like people will have trouble getting refunds.
Bummer. This is my third day of DH hosting! I could really care less about my site being down, I’m sure it’s due to eleventy billion people signing up for a kick ass deal in the past few days (thanks for that, BTW!). But I’d like to work on my as-yet-incomplete site and can’t get FTP access. Oh, well…
Google DreamHost 5ucks.
Turns out they have a pretty bad reputation.
Knew it was too good to be true.
Google your mom sucks. That will get a lot of hits as well, but you have to know how to interpret that data. Do the same for any host and you will find a ton of hits. That’s just how things are, people will complain all over the Internet when a company does something they don’t like, but won’t say as much when that same company is doing something good.
Yeah. Google “ANYTHING sucks” and you’ll get a few thousand hits, minimum.
I don’t need to Google Your Mom Sucks, she just took my load right here.
I spent 2 nights to install and configure my new website.. and now i cant even access it..
HELLO DREAMSHOST WAKE UP..
Can we cut the childish bickering please? That’s not what this site is here for.
Granted, I’m not exactly sure what this site /is/ here for, considering it seems to be rarely updated and the comments never seem to be responded to by the dreamhost staff…
My DNS is still pointed to my old godaddy host (glad it’s still there), which to me seems ridiculous since it’s been almost three days since I thought I would be able to cancel that account.
Can anybody here tell me if aquaman is up/stable yet? I’m not sure how to test it myself without rerouting the DNS
@Jay try using tracert or ping on a command line if you know the servers ip address.
Anyway I’m still wondering the status of the move since it’s been quite some time now… Still can’t complain very much for the price I’ve paid… Like someone said in this “thread”: You get what you pay for.
OMFG guys come on this is absolutely ridiculous. My paid-for-4-days-now account is still completely worthless. Who the hell sets up NEW users on a server KNOWN to be fubar’d at the time of the user setup!??!?! Pull your heads out of your asses and get it together.
Godaddy is horrible, but so far, by comparison, they are stomping all over dreamhost
At this point, I would just like some sort of update or information or anything regarding how this move is going. At 8am PST (over five hours ago) they said it was 50% done…that was 3 hours after it was 4% done…so just doing the math, it should have been done at least 2 hours ago! I guess if you factor in possible issues with corrupted drives or what not, it would take longer…but still. At least tell us what is going on so we’re not just left hanging.
I’d also appreciate an update. I’ve only been with DH since yesterday, and the fileserver’s had three separate issues now. Migrate us, or get us on decent hardware, please?
I understand I registered with significant discounts, but another of these hiccups and I might as well host elsewhere.
Any update? Your last update was at 4:27 am? Thx
“Third day of hosting for me, too, and to be honest, actually being kept in the loop has given me quite high hopes for Dreamhost. I, like most of the people complaining I imagine, paid very little for a considerable package, and the downtime is right at the beginning - which as far as I’m concerned, is both reasonable, and the best time for it.
And all the people complaining and threatening to leave - you’re all well aware you can get a full refund, you just don’t want to because deep down, you’re happy with it.”
—————-
Best comment so far. Most hosts don’t really tell you anything in cases like that, lucky if you get a “problems fixed” post afterwards but at the time of the problems…nothing.
howza bout an update, fellers?
I have been with DH for over a year with another site. I have had sporadic issues with that site but they have always been really good about responses and updates. I previously had a run with no feedback from them and almost left. I stuck through it and they worked hard to help me out. But man am I afraid of a trend here. I signed up for a new site the other day and have also been unable to access it. Very frustrating. Also it is now well beyond unacceptable for no updates.
This has to be the work of an evil villain… or… global warming… =)
Still waiting on an update. Anything so far?
And, it’s now 2pm PST, how’s the other 50% of the data doing?
You can only get a refund if you used a credit card, I believe. Unless they’ve changed that recently.
As for the people saying you get what you paid for? I dunno about that. I’m getting zip so far, and I certainly did not sign up for free.
Even if it was “only” $11 (mine ended up being $21, for some reason), the fact that anything was paid at all means that I expect /something/, even if that something is only frequent updates and SOME sort of assurance that this problem will be fixed in a timely manner.
Agreed, I echo Jay. This is pretty absurd. It’s now 6 1/2 hours after the last update. Where is the update folks?! As new customers, we’re trying to keep the faith that this is a one-time issue and ignoring the pretty horrendous postings out there on the net (Yes, googling “Dreamhost Sucks” results in some pretty disturbing stories.
If it’s not fixed today, then I am switching away. Its turning out to be nightmarehost.com
What’s the ETA on availability? It’s been down all day,
with the last update this morning.
What gives? I haven’t gotten a full day’s hosting in the 3 days I’ve
been a customer! Maybe you should give us two more years free for our
troubles. I’m not asking for 5-9s, just more than 1-9 which you haven’t
met yet in the time that I’ve been with you.
Could you email us in the future when there is a server fault to let us
know there is an issue so we don’t have to rely on finding out the hard
way and also give us some idea of an ETA to being back online?
I fourty-second the so far sketchy service, and hope my complaint will be heard and acted upon. I was hoping to expand my involvement with dreamhost, but it can’t even handle updating its progress on solving the problem, let alone having a stable server.
From the sound of it, this server seems to be mostly people who signed up for the recent promotions. Although the lack of updates is horrible, and I really hope they have very recent backups, and they should have planned for this better, I can understand why it happened. The amount of people signing up for the promotions was enough to crash the signup server and homepage of the DreamHost website. Now imagine all those people uploading 1000’s of GB and you can understand why this happened. Lets get and ETA, hope they learned their lesson, then forgive Dreamhost and move along ASAP.
It’s true. I understand how it happened, and why it happened. I do forgive DreamHost because obviously with so many new customers they were going to have some trouble. That is why I still have my account here, added by the fact that I am generally optimistic and believe that they will soon have things running smoothly.
What I don’t understand is how DreamHost did not expect this rush of new members. Isn’t that exactly what they were hoping for? They should have had backup servers in place to handle the load. At the very least, they should be handling this better. I can’t understand their lack of updates and general care for their customers.
If it was not their intent to provide support and service to all their new customers, then the only other reason I can think of for the promotion is that it was simply to make a margin of money off the people who simply leave without trying to get their $11 back. As that has the makings of a scam, I sure hope that was not what they had in mind.
We are your new customers, DreamHost. Please update us.
Aquaman seems to be up and running again! w00t!
For reals, though…a little more info would be nice…
Looks like my sites are back online, but it looks like they lowered the PHP memory limit down to 8MB or less. So much for my Drupal installations.
Yay! Its working for me now!
FTP and web is up! Hope that this time is going to last…
I am an old customer. Though this server is back up and working supposedly, my databases are still screwed. It has been over 48 hours with no response. WTF? Do they realize that this affects people’s daily lives along with their client base?
I agree. This is just a matter of respect. They could have at least kept us informed. Bad practice overall.
This will take some redemption before I forgive them.
My account has been moved from aquaman to venom!
However the new server is really slow and I have sent a support ticket!
Is this the case with DreamHost? A new problem every day?
I am genuinely grateful that you have finally solved the issue. (Hopefully for good) It wasn’t a very good first impression for a new customer like me, and that much down time was bound to get on most people’s nerves, but you can’t be blamed for the massive response to the rather lucrative offer. So once again thanks for putting the server back together.
I’m a new customer and I got moved from aquaman to venom as well. Everything working perfectly for me.
I think its understandable that the server has failed as so many people have joined with the 90% off deal - but I am placing my trust with Dreamhost that they can sort it out
The FTP has had problems since yesterday!
Jesus.
I hope you have good backups! This is astounding.