Here is a recent email exchange I had with Dreamhost, the host I chose for CureTinnitus.org. At the time of writing, I was a bit frustrated, because I had noticed site outages every few days. On more than one occasion, when wanting to show the site to friends, potential business associates, even a marketing coach, the site was down. So, I sent this email during a longer outage.
——————————
curetinnitus.org seems to have been down now for a couple hours. While
you seem to be recommending an upgrade, how can I trust your service,
if, with just 20 or so members, my site keeps going down? Also, how
can I build a business when my site can go down for hours and minutes
at a time? How can I keep my top google ranking?
Please let me know what kind of uptime you can provide me, and why my
sites have been down so very often and for so long.
I understand that there are no “perfect” solutions, but I frequently
experience downtime of 30 minutes to 2 hours, and we are at about 3
hours now. How can I attract and keep members?
Looking forward to your response and seeking more stable hosting.
Thank you,
Dainis
——————————
Dreamhost’s response:
First, I am very sorry for the delay in answering this request. We try
very hard to answer all requests withing 24 hours (and we are usually a
lot quicker), but sometimes when the queue for support is particularly
long, we are not able to respond as quickly as we would like.
I am sorry to hear of these problems, and I too very much want you to
enjoy more stable hosting with DreamHost. It appears to me, from your
error logs, that the problems you were having were here were related to a
hardware issue that has since been resolved. Software problems that are
of a transient nature are one thing to deal with, but a hardware problem
can be tricky as it can be intermittent and can *appear* to be software
related.
It seems that now having replaced the NIC in your server jove, these
downtime problems have been curtailed, as jove has now been up almost
three full days, and is running well at low load (this is a
multiprocessor machine):
jove:/home/dainis/curetinnitus.org/community/wp-content/plugins# w
14:03:05 up 2 days, 22:59, 2 users, load average: 0.98, 1.76, 1.57
We want you to have the best service possible, and we will continue to
work toward that end. Machines do break on occasion, and when they do we
will do our best to find, and fix, the problem as soon as possible. It
appears at present that all is in good order for a steady server
experience here, but please let me know if you have further issues.
——————————
I’d like to say that I am comfortable with Dreamhost’s reply, though I find it necessary that we as a community stay vigilant about uptime for our community. Should the site be down, just reply to one of your newsletters with the subject “CureTinnitus.org Site Down from X:XX to X:XX [TimeZone]” or just “CureTinnitus.org Site Down at X:XX EST” if you don’t want to hang around until it is up again (of course, just put in your own time zone, and the date I assume will be the date of the email).
That ought to do it. Since the site is pretty stable, and the support seems to be professional and courteous, you might want to check out their service for your sites.
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Comments
LAUD you for your compassion and initiative...
"I really appreciate what you’ve put together. Truly comforting.…LAUD you for you compassion & initiative on this!"
--Bob M.
Appreciate it beyond words
"Delighted, appreciate it beyond words…"
Julian Cowan Hill R.C.S.T.
"If you really look after yourself and learn to get in touch with how you are feeling inside and learn to process that, that is the way out of tinnitus. Most people spend their whole lives running away from themselves, filling their lives with furious frantic activity, proving this, doing that. The best thing you can do is sit with yourself and notice how you are, how you are treating yourself. And if you can treat yourself with loving kindness and really accept how you are with a really wonderful, open-hearted, deep, caring approach, just like you would mother a baby, for example. If you can really look after yourself, your nervous system will change. Nothing is fixed. Everything is constantly changing and flowing, and it is entirely dependent on the way you approach yourself. Look after yourself, and your tinnitus will back off."
Wow, good stuff...“I REALLY appreciate your asking Julian about my questions this morning! You posed them in such a clear and dear way and protective of my ‘identity”. It is amazing that I was home and able to listen. I had over slept, (I am on vacation) had missed an early appointment for my car and so I called, cancelled it and looked on my computer and it was 8 minutes to the broadcast! Was I surprised, delighted and grateful to hear you both discuss the issues that are pressing me. I thank you. I also am taking your website and Julian’s advice and working on awareness of RED-ALERT and difficulty surrendering or relaxing into support. Wow, good stuff. Julian reminds me a bit of Ekhart Tolle. Doesn’t he you? And funny to say, you remind me of myself when you are questioning him! With gratitude”
-- L.G. Connecticut
I really feel you're going to make some peoples' lives millions of times better. I really do.
I would just like to say thank you for what you are doing. This world is really lacking people like you that aren't all about themselves. It really makes me pleased to see that you're getting your and Julian's ideas out there, and I really feel you're going to make some peoples' lives millions of times better. I really do.
--Samuel Diego-Cunha Wetzel, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Already Recommended 2 Friends..."What a great site….Thanks so much! I already referred the Yahoo forums tinnitus group to your site and also 2 friends with tinnitus."
--Meta_4
Solid and needed work"Thank you and keep up your solid and needed work."
Eric G.
Saved my life...--B.
Kevin Hogan
"It's not unethical to say that it's incurable, it's just totally incorrect. In fact, if I go back and I look at the cases that I've worked on, and I've worked with thousands of people over a decade, and the vast majority, are either dramatically better, or their tinnitus is gone. One of the two."
...my tinnitus was gone
""It is not coincidence that I saw your e-mail this am, right at the time I realized my tinnitus was gone."--E. B. California
Dr. Hans Greuel
"I can say in good conscience that tinnitus is curable. That's the bottom line: that tinnitus is curable, and I dare say, for just about everyone who comes down with it."
Please don't tell the ATA"As I may have mentioned earlier, ATA.org is incredibly mediocre (if that much!), compared to your organization. I even found the British T. site far superior to ATA.org and now, I have found you guys!!!"
--R. S. Illinois
(Honestly, we want to stay friends with the ATA and we cherish the work they do...so let's keep this one between us...)
Great Conference Calls“…The conference calls are great as we can help each other”
--R
Paul Tobey
"It's such an incredibly low volume if I recognize it once a week it's just because I'm out in the backyard looking at the stars thanking the universe for what it has given to me, and I go 'how did I get to this point?" Oh yeah tinnitus helped me get here. Let's listen to it for a second, let's pay hommage to the tinnitus for a second and go thanks you did some good work. Thank you.
T is becoming less and less noticable"…with the help of this site, I am learning to deal with [edited] and my -T- is becoming less and less noticeable."
--B
You Are Truly An Insipration"I just want to add that you are truly an inspiration and I hope that more people find your website. I find your videos (and especially this one) to be enlightening, and it really gives me hope, and I’m sure others too. God bless."
--J
Literally clearing the fog from 20 years of T
"the information, research, support, and shows with dainis and julian are literally clearing the fog of the T i have endured for 20 years. it’s not about the ears it’s about the body and soul. i’m sure ancient wisdom had more answers to T than the entire medical community has at this time. this site is really quite groundbreaking."
--S
Mental Clarity And Calm
"A very simple thing - progress for me today was after work,instead of "rushing" home because of fatigue, I walked down another street and sat in the sun with a warm beverage. This resulted in some mental clarity and calm, as well a experiencing a choice of a positive new behavior. It felt expansive...'cause T can lead one to be hemmed in."
--Member s.
RE: Gone?
"After a short period of T-free happyness, my T (scale 4/10) came back for a few weeks (stressfull times, bought a house etc..). Did lots of relaxation exercises, stretching and yoga and now it's gone again (scale 1/10). I would like to ask Julian about the following [...edited...] Keep up the good work!!!"
--Member R.
Much Calmer About Tinnitus Now...
"When I started the programme shortly after developing T, I was terrified of tinnitus and felt that I had no control over it. I lay awake at night panicking that it would get worse. I am now much calmer about it, thanks largely to this site and Julian Cowan Hill's e-book which I strongly recommend. I am beginning to realise that my pace of life consistently exceeds my energy levels and that my T is probably connected to this. For me, T fluctuates a lot, but when I have a bad patch I comfort myself that it will probably lessen after a few days if I take better care of myself. I have only had a few minutes of total relief in the past five months, sometimes before going to sleep or early in the morning, but I'm aware that I have a long way to go in the personal wellbeing stakes, so it would be surprising if I were already better. The school holidays are a very busy time for me and the fact that I have got through them without a major tinnitus meltdown is itself encouraging. I shall be tuning in for the next show! Best wishes, D.H."
--Member D.H.
T subsided...
"After suffering from a catastrophic tinnitus for almost two years,it subsided in the last month to level 5 in a scale of 1-10 and sometimes even to level 2...My question is what will happen when I..."
--Member a.
Taking Better Care Of Myself
"information on T is settling in to my psyche, some underlying depression issues are being addressed, I'm getting on with life, taking care of myself better, and doing things I enjoy more. I have even recently shed a negative friend or 2...thank you"
--Member s.
Your site has helped IMMENSELY...
"I'm just 26 and enjoy loud music so was terrified when I thought my tinnitus was getting so bad that I'd hear it all the time. I went into a state where I kept monitoring it and thought that it had suddenly gotten really bad. This was about a week ago and coincided with a very stressful day so I suspected that had something to do with it. Your site has helped IMMENSELY in alleviating my concerns about it and now I'm pretty much totally over the fear that I'll have ringing in my ears my whole life. In fact, since a few hours after reading the information on your site, I've stopped noticing it at all, and I'm not worried about it when trying to sleep (I don't hear it during the day now because I'm not listening for it and I'm more relaxed so its quieter). Now that I'm proactively relaxing myself and trying to be happier in my life, the ringing has mostly subsided and I can only hear it when I put my fingers in my ears to create complete silence. From suicidal thoughts to complete peace in under 2 hours. Thank you again!!" PS: I even went to a Metallica concert last night and forgot to bring my earplugs -- and the tinnitus has not flared back
-Tegan Nejad: Perth, Australia
PPS From Dainis: Yes, we do have stories like these, though for some members, the process takes longer. In any case, it's enjoyable to come "out" from tinnitus and experience well being. Thanks Tegan for sharing :-)
Hello Dainis,
Down again right now…5 min so far…
I would like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. The
server was having problems this morning and our admins had been working
to correct the issue. It appears that the were able to correct the
problem and the server was rebooted.
0 kenrob8 peon1994 jove 2009-04-10 06:36:17 powerc swap
storm
peon1994 jove 2009-04-10 06:36:55 reboot
2.6.24.5-opteron-aufs20081006-grsec
Our admins will continue to watch this server to prevent any future
problems or any reoccurring problems. At this time, your website is
loading again and all services has returned back to normal. If you have
any further questions please don’t hesitate to let us know.
Thank You
David H.
On Wed, 08 Jul 2009, you wrote:
Dear Dreamhost,
I was recently upgraded to Galaxy, but the downtime is still recurrent
and quite frequent. For example, I have about 2hrs right now to work
on my sites, but they are down. Also, I actually do have real paying
members to curetinnitus.org. Even though I only have a few members,
it’s tough to build a business with unreliable servers.
It looks like the most recent outage might be over, since one of my
sites is now loading, but can you give me some confidence that your
uptime will improve?
I like your service, and I really don’t want to go through the hassles
of switching, it’s just such a pain in the butt. I also don’t
currently have the confidence in dreamhost to upgrade to a more
expensive plan, because if this plan has poor uptime, why should your
more expensive plans be any better?
Here is my main question: how can you or I increase the uptime
percentage of my sites?
I’m sorry for the problems you were having with your sites. The
server that you are on has been having some issues today. Unfortunately,
we’re not entirely sure of what was causing it. We didn’t see any users
on the server that were using up too much of the server resources and
this particular server is well within limits that other servers in the
same cluster are using and are running smoothly. Our admins are going to
be keeping a close eye on this to try and prevent this from happening
again. We realize this is frustrating, as this server was used to offload
customers that were having problems with their previous server. We’re
doing all that we can to get to the root of these issues and resolve them
permanently. In checking on the server now, it does look like it’s
running smoothly. If you have any further issues with this though, please
write to me directly at [edited]@dreamhost.com (it must be from a contact
address on your account) and I’ll be happy to look into the possibility
of moving you to a different server that has proven stability. Again, I
apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you and thank you for
your patience as we try to get to the bottom of these issues.
Thanks!
Dan W (Dreamhost Support)
My members report downtime since Monday. Now my sites are up again:
http://www.curetinnitus.org/
http://www.dainis.info/
http://vaccine-facts.com/
Can you please tell me what is going on?
Best,
Dainis
On Jul 15, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Dainis Michel wrote:
I’ve gotten a bit further. Static pages load. Even
http://www.curetinnitus.org/xxxxxx/admin/setup.php
loads, which requires ionCube,
however, none of my wordpress sites are loading.
http://www.curetinnitus.org/
http://www.dainis.info/
http://vaccine-facts.com/
Please do not leave me alone on this, because I have a top Google ranking that can be adversely affected by this kind of downtime.
I really don’t like it that you moved me to a new server and busted my sites. I’ve had visitors, and your message about having moved me to forge did not prompt me to visit my sites, because the paths mentioned in the site are the same as when you moved me from jove to galaxy. If you read my prior support messages, I said “please do what you feel is best,” and I placed my trust in Dreamhost.
I do not find it responsible for someone to just move me to a different server, dash me an automated mail, and just take my sites down. In my opinion, that is not responsible hosting at all.
Please correct the situation ASAP.
Sincerely,
Dainis
On Jul 15, 2009, at 2:06 PM, Dainis Michel wrote:
What did you guys do?
My php.ini looks like this:
[ionCube]
zend_extension=”/home/xxxxxxx.org/cgi-bin/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so”
which should be right.
But I get “error establishing database connection.”
That did not happen when you moved me from jove to galaxy (a few weeks ago), and now you’ve moved me to forge, but did you forget to move the db’s or something?
Best,
Dainis
This came in within a few minutes of my previous emails, so I’m comfortable with the response time:
—————–
I apologize for the inconvenience this has caused you. I show there was
a mysql permissions issue, but that was since been resolved. I had to
run a permissions re-configuration on the server.
Can you let me know if your sites are up and running for you now? I
checked a few of your sites, and they are loading for me.
If there is a specific site you want me to check, please let me know the
URLs.
Thanks!
Chih W
Q:
Here’s my take on offering me the PS server option:
If you don’t guarantee uptime on your shared servers, and they go down
regularly, then why should I trust Dreamhost at all? Why should I
spend more money with you instead of just looking for someone else?
A:
Hi Dainis,
No where on our site do we advertise or guarantee any uptime. As I said
earlier the stability of the server is dependent on multiple factors, in
the last even there was a problem were another customer was running
something they shouldn’t have been and that caused the server to become
unresponsive. When this happened our admin on duty had taken action to
correct this and the server is now back to normal
forge:~# uptime
10:50:58 up 14 days, 19:26, 7 users, load average: 1.69, 1.71, 1.79
As for trusting us, did we ever deceive you or did you assume we provided
100% uptime? the questions of if you should trust us ultimately has to be
answered by you, we can only provide you with information for you to base
your answer on.
First, we don’t provide 100% uptime as no shared hosting provider can, if
they say they can they are lying or they are hoping that once it happens
that you dont notice it or they plan to apologies to you, we just tell
you the truth in regards to shared hosting and uptime. Second, we will
guarantee that we will do all that we can to keep your server up and
running, this not only benefits you and us as well as we like to have
happy customers. Third, if your looking for better uptime in general,
shared hosting is not the place to look, think of it as going to a
discount store to look for Luxury items, sometimes you get lucky but most
times you have to put up with some type of compromise, in the case for
shared hosting that is stability for price. Since you are sharing the
server with other customers which helps subsidize the cost of having
your own server there is a risk of having one of these other customers
affect your service like what had happened earlier.
Hope this truthful reply helps to answer your question and to keep you as
a customer.
Thanks!
Response:
Dear Dreamhost Support, thank you for the explanation, understanding the tech side of things helps me quite a bit.