FCF and BXC Down Again

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CitroJim
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FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by CitroJim » Fri Apr 17, 2009 11:49 am

The FCF and BXC are playing up a bit again today and are currently down.

This time the problem is with the web server. This from Webfusion (the host)
VPS Connectivity

Created: 17 April 2009, 12:41
Last Updated: --
Some customers may be experiencing connectivity issues to their VPS.
Our engineers are working on getting this resolved as soon as possible
Webfusion thanks you for your patience.

I'll keep a watch on it and report back.
Jim

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Ex- owner of several XMs and many Xantias!

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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by CitroJim » Fri Apr 17, 2009 1:56 pm

All back to normal now :D

I understand it was a DNS problem.
Jim

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Ex- owner of several XMs and many Xantias!

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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by Ciaran » Fri Apr 17, 2009 5:11 pm

How do you find Webfusion for uptime and general reliability Jim?

I run several customer's sites off them and they've been very good on that front IMO, yet if you do a quick google, there seem to be tons of people who are deeply unhappy with them....

Ciarán

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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by CitroJim » Fri Apr 17, 2009 6:08 pm

Ciaran wrote:How do you find Webfusion for uptime and general reliability Jim?
Generally very good Ciarán. A total outage is very rare indeed. We have a Windows 2K3 VPS and it's pretty good overall. It runs a little slowly every now and again and a reboot (very fast) quickly restores normality.

Tech. Support is the area of a little concern though. It's a lottery, you either get someone who's brilliant and the 'phone is picked up immediately or it rings and rings or you get someone who's not really up to the job.

One time I broke the server pretty comprehensively after doing something silly :oops: I struck gold with Tech. Support and they did a full restore in 20 minutes.

The downside of the VPS is the Plesk admin console. I try not to use it and go in via RDP to do any maintenance but that carries risks as if you try to change something outside of Plesk, it gets very upset. The other downside is the disk space is small and that's one reason I run the databases on another server. The limited space soon fills with IIS logs..

I think if you read about any ISP you'll find negatives. People do like to complain it seems. The link between the web server and the database server runs over Pipex broadband. Most people think Pipex is rubbish but honestly, for me it's as reliable as the day is long and any outage is invariably the Netgear router going down. That appens about every 1500 hours normally so it's not bad really. I chose a Netgear router as they seem to hold up the best. I have no isues with Pipex at all except for their billing. Somethimes they skip a month and then take two payments the next... Pipex Tech. Support is good in my experience.
Jim

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Ex- owner of several XMs and many Xantias!

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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by Ciaran » Fri Apr 17, 2009 7:42 pm

Interesting Jim.

I too have had no serious issues with them, but have come across people who have big complaints about the tech support. Ironically, a lot of them say its gone way downhill since Webfusion were bought by Pipex about two years ago. Pipex always had a great rep as an ISP, as you know.

So you're running your SQL queries over the broadband link? Do you have a direct VPN setup, or just have the SQL ports open at your router?
What kind of performance do you get there?

I didn't know they used Plesk, I've never used it to administer a Windows machine before (what's the need really when you have RDP), does it work Ok or is it clunky like it used to be with Linux?

I think in that situation I would use RDP from the outset and not touch Plesk, because at least I know that changes get done properly that way.

The customer sites I have on there are webhosting only, I've never had a ded. server from them. Whats the disk space like? It must be really small if you can't run MySQL on it....

Ciarán

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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by Dean » Fri Apr 17, 2009 9:32 pm

Hi all

Cant seem to get onto FCF so i tried BXclub and no joy there either, hopefully just a small glitch.........................

D
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Re: FCF and BXC Down Again

Post by CitroJim » Sat Apr 18, 2009 6:05 am

Dean wrote:
Cant seem to get onto FCF so i tried BXclub and no joy there either, hopefully just a small glitch.........................
It was Dean :) My girls reported the internet down at around that time as it was interrupting their Facebooks and MSN messenger :lol: It went up and down a few times last evening and finally I had to power off the router to restore reliable service. It held in OK all through the night. Not sure of the cause but the Netgear router does occasionally need a full power-off to make it happy. Not sure either if one of my girls wes doing something to upset it either!!!

Plesk is very clunky Ciarán and not at all loved :twisted: It's suposed to make thing easier for unskilled people to run a web server but for us, it just gets in the way :lol: It reminds me of the old MS Small Business Server interface of years back somewhat.

I've opened the MySQL port on my router and just raw SQL Queries are passed between the database server and the webserver. It works pretty well on phpBB2 although there is a speed penalty. It was origionally just a temporary arrangement until the root (no pun here) cause of a MySQL problem on the web server was resolved. Basically, the root password has been lost and Webfusion cannot help with this. Also, MySQL is used by Plesk and it presents a customised interface to MySQL. It was how I broke the webserver. I tried to uninstall MySQL and reinstall it via RDP and discovered that if you don't know the root password you cannot uninstall nor install a new instance of MySQL :twisted: After the restore, the root password remained unknown and does to this day. I'm also not happy with the phpBB2 backup integrity when you use the backup option from the ACP. It is not happy on a large board. Disk space is 10Gb which seems plenty but with all the Plesk bloat and the IIS propensity to generate volumnious log files it can soon get eaten up.

I also like to have the databses remote as I can properly back them up and guard them. The database runs on a Compaq ML350 server with RAID5 hot-swap hard disks and every week the daily backups get written to DLT tape. The server is pretty good. It ran for 13 months without a reboot and when it did reboot it was because of an extended power cut that exceeded the UPS support time! The server also runs my own website, handles the family email via Exchange and acts as a big file server for all the data I've acquired over the years. It has stuff going back to 1999 on it! And just top complete it, there's also an MS SQL server running on it!

Going back to the databases, I've also been a bit reticent of upgrading to phpBB3 as the speed penalty of running phpBB3 queries over the link worries me slightly. What I want to do is to build a test phpBB3 site up on the webserver and see how it performs. With all these things I operate very carefully and cautiously and like to test everything fully before it goes live.
Jim

'98 Saxo
'95 AX
Three bikes - Road, Aero and TT

Ex- owner of several XMs and many Xantias!

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