Does Your Web Host Ever Go Offline
As you might have noticed you wouldn’t have been able to get to my blog this morning, Rod Templeton’s blog or any other site that we might be hosting on the same server. That was because there was a scheduled power outage at the building that the web server is being hosted at. It seems that BC Hydro was to do some upgrades to a transformer near or on the property and I would assume that they are preparing the transformer in case the Fraser River decides to flood its banks.
Sure I could spend a bit of money and have my site hosted somewhere else, but why spend money if I don’t have to? As long as I work for my employer I get hosting for free! Not only do I get hosting for free, I’m the administrator of the server itself and have physical access to the server room. Having access like that is nice, it is only a 5 minute drive away and I can let myself into the building at anytime. How many people can do that at their web host?
Now it is not very often that our server goes down and I would put it into the running with other web hosts where they guarantee 99.9% uptime to their clients. If anything happens to the web server that I use at work, all I have to do it pull out the hard drive and put it into one of the other spare machines and voila we’re back in business. It’s almost like a little server farm, definitely not like Google’s but I believe we have at least 26 servers currently running and expecting to get more. There is even talk about purchasing a blade or two to free up some rack space.
I have a similar setup to you. A buddy of mine hosts my website out of his apartment. Only time it goes down is when there is a power outage. Since it’s run on a dynamic IP address it could take an hour or tow to reinitialize the DNS but that ain’t too bad. I like that I can see the server when ever I need to. Some day I would like to transfer it to my apartment and get a static IP but that is another war for another day.
Brennan the Vyper
It all depends on your purpose for the site. I enjoy that physical access to when it comes to my employer’s servers, but for my personal site, which I have long-term plans to lead to freelance work, I needed more: better bandwidth, with multiple upstream backbone providers for reliability and short-path, UPS & generator support for no down-time. Even my employer has the last two… if you have a server room at work, you should promote those too!
The server is on a UPS, there is a generator being installed actually as we speak. I have unlimited bandwidth on the server and our connection is going to upgraded for quad T1s (currently its dual T1s). There is also talk of going fiber when it’s available.
I knew that the power was going to be cut to the building on Sunday, but never saw a point where I couldn’t get to my site. So it probably wasn’t out for that long.
But yes, it is a good arrangement
I remember the days when we only had 1 1/2 T-1’s at the university, we now have a DS-3+ (45MB+). We have a local phone company SONET ring terminated in our machine room, so we can upgrade to what ever the budget will pay for…
However, we will soon have a 1GB+ connection to I2.
But, back to why I chose my host… redundancy of connections from multiple upstream providers, preferably entering your facilities from different directions to avoid the ‘backhoe effect’, is one of the best connectivity protections you can have. Combine that with a generator that makes you independent of the grid, and you are pretty safe.
Now thats crazy redundancy, multiple upstream connections!
I love the ‘backhoe effect’. It even happened to our building, well before we took over and moved in. They were cutting up the cement (for renovations for us) and they cut through the EMT that was buried and took out the electrical and fire alarm systems to the whole building
We’ve had our share of backhoes on campus, but I don’t believe we’ve ever lost our network from it. Only water or power… and steam.
(I checked before this post, and I have rel=”nofollow”… let’s see what happens!)
Well, Dreamhost just had a day or two of DNS troubles where most of my sites were unreachable. Very frustrating, but they did get it resolved.
Earlier in the year they also had about a day of power troubles with the building they’re in that took sites down for some time.
All that said, Dreamhost is the best hosting I’ve ever used (apart from my real job, where the ops group keeps things up virtually flawlessly — like they’d let me host my sites there… ha!).
I’ve used Dreamhost way way back in the day. Think it was their $7 special hosting package or something. Though I think if I needed hosting now I’d choose BlueFur.com there is also a 15% discount if you use JohnChowRocks as a promo code.
i Agree with you.having Control on server which is hosting your website is far better then paying more for web hosting and still no access to your own files.
Plus You yourself put more effort to get your website up rather then mailing you web hosting company and asking them about when your site is going to be up.