back to article Users rage as Fasthosts virtual servers go titsup... again

Webhosting company Fasthosts has been hit by a severe outage that has seen the collapse of its virtual servers. The systems fell down early this morning and even though engineers worked frantically to restore services, some users are still reporting problems. In an announcement on its website at 9.36 BST, Fasthosts said: "A …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This is what happens when you use Linux.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No, this is what happens when your hosting company are a bunch of fucktards who use Linux badly.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Correction for you AC@16.09

        No, this is what happens when your hosting company are a bunch of fucktard MCSEs let loose on Linux.

        1. Monkey Bob

          Obligatory xkcd

          http://xkcd.com/908/

      2. Return To Sender
        Holmes

        Or rather this is what happens when you (or rather the bean counters) think you can safely outsource your data centre to a bunch (and I don't just mean FH here) whose strategy seems to be to say 'Look at us, we're really big, isn't all this stuff impressive,much bigger than you'd ever have so it must be much better. Oh, and have you seen how cheap it is? Think how much money you'd save. No, really cheap. Ever so cheap. You'd be a mug not to want to save this much money. Of course it's safe, how could it not be? And it's really cheap.'

        So you outsource, things go titsup, and guess what? Instead of being able to escalate (to a single director if it gets bad), re-prioritise your recovery and so forth, you're now just one voice amongst lots, all clamouring to get those critical systems back on line, and you're probably nowhere near the biggest customer so how much influence do you really think you've got?

        Economies of scale (for the provider) exist mainly when everything's going smoothly. Scaling your recovery so that you can get away with fewer bods requires investment in tools, techniques, developing robust procedures, testing... all those things, in fact, that cost. When the market's in its usual race to the bottom pricing mode, guess where the corners get cut (clue; it's not the director's bonuses). So, for those screaming at FH for not being perfect, I'd have to ask: what planning did you put in to make sure that when a big outage in your (now outsourced) data centre happens, your business didn't take a disproportionate hit? Or did you actually believe the salesman when he/she trotted out the usual soothing words? And how were the unicorns?

        I'm not against outsourcing per se, despite the impression you might have got from the above. I'm against the school of thought that seems to believe that because you've outsourced, you can abdicate all responsibility as well. It's your business, not theirs.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        There was no need to qualify it with 'badly'

    2. frank ly

      The AntiEadon has arisen in the east.

    3. MrMur
      Thumb Down

      What is Microsoft's excuse?

    4. LarsG
      Meh

      Store

      All you important stuff with us, we never let you down, nothing can ever go wrong........

      'I told you not to use the kettle!'

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      FreeBSD > Linux

      I agree with the OP.

      If fasthost.co.uk had used FreeBSD they wouldn't have this issue, instead they use Linux and end up in a right mess.

    6. Mr Anonymous
      FAIL

      re: This is what happens when you use Linux.

      FastHosts run Hyper-V.

      http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000007585

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re: This is what happens when you use Linux.

        So presumably the problem isn't with the Hypervisor layer then....

    7. Captain Scarlet
      Mushroom

      correction

      This is what happens when you use a computer, systems designed by humans programmed by humans mean errors can occur on anything.

      Nothing is perfect (Apart from a mug of tea and biscuits)

      1. RealFred

        Re: correction

        Or a good scotch

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Not so fast

      Last time I had a VPS with Fasthosts, I was running CentOS and it was hosted on Hyper-V which appears to be what Fasthosts's infrastructure is based on.

      Every couple of months it would stop responding and behave as though the drive was corrupt. I only lasted one year before moving to the rock solid EC2. Which is Linux based. Never had any problems at all since.

  2. chappers
    FAIL

    SlowHosts or NoHosts?

  3. 1Rafayal

    I am surprised these guys are still in business tbh.

    Got to be one of the worst companies of its type in the UK

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Slackhosts

    Seem to read read regular reports of notsofasthosts falling over on their ass, don't use 'em myself - anyone with them care to comment ?

    1. Ian 55

      In a sentence

      Was looking for a host for several VPSes, saw their site, had a few questions, emailed their sales dept, never got a reply, went elsewhere, very happy.

  6. Florida1920
    FAIL

    But that was yesterday...

    "Our services are so reliable that over 90% of our customers never need to contact us."

    1. LarsG
      Meh

      Re: But that was yesterday...@florida1920

      Not that they could get through to them....

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anyone Surprised?

    It's all based on Netapp and Dell - are you surprised?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Anyone Surprised?

      Err... Yes. You can setup NetApp and Dell badly, or you can do it well. If the hardware is unreliable (your implication, I think?), you can mitigate against that with clustering and redundancy. If it was all homebrew hardware, I'd be surprised, but NetApp and Dell are both good, solid makes, albeit not Proliant and EMC.

      1. leeph

        Re: Anyone Surprised?

        Proliant isn't a make.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Anyone Surprised?

          Ok, Proliant isn't a make, but a Dell server is always x86 Win/Lin box, whereas "HP server" covers a multitude of platforms and OSes, therefore it seemed sensible to specify Proliant, their x86 range.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    degraded performance

    "Servers that are brought back online will continue to experience degraded performance for the next few hours until the work is complete."

    That'll be the RAID rebuilding, hope they haven't used large disks, as it could be days! I think it was botched upgrades to the arrays firmware last time, wonder if it is too. Maybe I should go up to Manchester and see how busy they are in the DC cages.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: degraded performance

      I doubt it, for all VMs to be affected it's far more likely that it's the sheer load in booting hundreds of machines at the same time. Or moving VMs to another cluster/datacentre.

  9. Oli 1

    Recommendations please!

    not with fasthosts, im not that stupid... but i do have hosting in the US (webzpro - who i have nothing but praise for)

    Im now looking to move over to a UK based host, who would people suggest?

    ive been to a few review sites but when i see fasthosts in the top 3, its best to avoid.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recommendations please!

      gigatux mebbe

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recommendations please!

      My company has used Claranet's VDC for a while, love the portal.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Recommendations please!

      I used to host with FH (when I started I didn't know what I was doing). After several F-ups and the worst support known to mankind I moved to Linode. Now I manage my own server, it runs perfectly (currently on an uptime of over 380 days). Linode has a UK based data centre you can choose when creating your node.

      I'm not a sys admin but using their guides and templates I've managed to setup a LEMP stack and postfix/dovecot email server for my girlfriends business - all runs like a dream on a tiny monthly price.

      1. leeph

        Re: Recommendations please!

        Can you fix it when it goes wrong? No?

        A bit like companies that host with Fasthosts then?

        That there is the problem. It's all fine, until it's not. And then you're stuffed.

    4. LeeS

      Re: Recommendations please!

      I could recommend my current hosts, but then I'd have to kill you. (i don't want more muppets using them !)

      Try Redstation, they were a total bunch of cunts when it went wrong on them, no backups, no idea - told the server was dead on conference call with the chief iTard and managing director, he was a little bemused when I told him I'd downloaded the 150mb CMS site of the 'server that was totally dead as the disks had failed' via FTP but sadly I didn't do the rest as I assumed they had a fucking clue/backup. Then they decided they didn't like it.

      "After much deliberation over the future of the H-Sphere Hosting platform we have reluctantly decided to withdraw the service and close it down. "

      Followed by fuck off in 6 months tough shit we give up

      Good Riddance

      So Redstation, try them, can't be worse than Farcehosts...

    5. Getriebe

      Re: Recommendations please!

      http://www.navisite.co.uk/

      Not cheap but rock solid and a high degree of competance

      It goes like this FastHosts>Rackspace>>Navisite

    6. This post has been deleted by its author

    7. Mike Pellatt

      Re: Recommendations please!

      RackSRV.

      Competent beyond belief.

  10. batfastad
    FAIL

    Terrible

    I have ended up migrating several different customers from Fasthosts over the years because of terrible service. I'm seriously surprised they are still doing business and have any customers left. They are truly the worst service provider I have ever dealt with and by some margin.

  11. koolholio

    Any link with their web server would be my question...

    Then again, could be an update mishap?

  12. Ian Johnston Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    The people working on this are not engineers.

    They are technicians. Thank you.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Their VPS Platform is MS Hyper-V, not linux based.

  14. Vince

    Nothing to do with the Hypervisor AFAIK

    Just for clarity, assuming it was Virtual on Hyper (nothing to suggest that's all they use), sending a cursory pile of blame in the direction of MS sounds a little unfair if classic el Reg.

    As for as I have seen the issue is not the hypervisor tech, but storage. Hyper is really very good actually, I but if tardhosts are not using it properly by ensuring storage isn't the weak point it hardly MS for the blame

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nothing to do with the Hypervisor AFAIK

      What's embarrassing for Microsoft is Fasthosts are pretty well a hosting reference architecture for Hyper-V, System Centre and everything else MS do. That's not to say this is necessarily an accurate reflection of what a well run MS powered hoster could do, but given the amount of publicity MS have generated for Fasthosts, this kind of incompetency can't be welcome...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nothing to do with the Hypervisor AFAIK

        That's also not to say that every other reasonably sized public cloud provider has been been perfect, they've not, pretty well every one has had a major outage or two over the last year. None seem to wind people up like Fasthosts though..

        1. Danny 14

          Re: Nothing to do with the Hypervisor AFAIK

          it could have been shitty UPS that downed a load of SANs for all we know.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Nothing to do with the Hypervisor AFAIK

            You would hope a UPS issue wouldn't take 6 hours to recover from? #click# goes the bypass switch, let the SAN count its toes, an hour tops?

  15. wolfetone Silver badge

    I've never once heard anyone say anything good about Fasthosts, and I've been in the industry for about 10 years now. I'm surprised they're going at all to be quite honest!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's a general human and particular IT guy trait though: If it's all going well, you don't notice it's there, as soon as it goes wrong, even slightly, slag it off with all your might.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Once upon a time

      Once upon a time they were quite good if you wanted basic cheap webhosting and email. Then it became a fight to the bottom in the market and to maintain their low prices the quality of the service shot downwards.

      I bailed out a number of years ago after a series of outages and giving all of the users passwords away to hackers.

      1. DPWDC

        Re: Once upon a time

        I echo what Mr C Hill said.

        Used to be reasonable price and reasonable service, then got cheap and crap.

        Stopped using them 4 years ago after the many arguments telling them what was wrong with their servers and pointing them to various test websites to prove to them that no one outside of their building could access the servers... Got quite frustrating!

  16. Rich20B
    Devil

    Things have improved since their early days

    I remember when FartHosts ran their whole operation off a single fibre into their Gloucester DC.

    1. DPWDC

      Re: Things have improved since their early days

      They the floods happened... That was fun...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Uk recommendation

    Our customers who use fasthosts or parent company 1&1 cause us no end of grief and it's always our fault not farcehosts until we always prove otherwise, indeed this month their dns issues have caused us no end of grief, still they admitted to it in the end, the power of twitter! Wasted us a lot of time and nearlty lost us some customers because fasthosts continually told them there was no issue.

    How do they survive, simples, generating enough new business to replace the lost customers, offering something 'free' like 1&1 do to make up for issues, such as 2 months free hosting for a 4 hour outage, somehow that keeps enough customers happy.

    I'd recommend intrahost.co.uk, used them for years, very helpful, based in the UK, UK staff, UK datacentres and nice cheap cloud servers.

  18. Slicethecloud

    We're not all the same!

    Hosting isn't easy when you analyse all the resources and skills that are needed but any self-respecting hosting company should be able to get the basics right. What really matters is how you respond when things go wrong and believe me, things always go wrong.

    I don't want to go all sales spammy but there are those of us (out here) who are different. We expect to be contacted by phone. We have UK only support staff who can help and more importantly, who genuinely care about getting customers back on line as soon as is humanly possible - on the very rare occasions things go horribly wrong. And we have directors who do things and who talk to customers and who sometimes have to take some flak - I know, I'm one of them.

    You just need to choose your hosting partner wisely!

    Trouble is, most purchasers are drawn to the big names or the big marketing campaigns; or sometimes (oft-time) to the lowest cost. He (or she) who lives by the sword, dies by the sword as the old saying goes. So my suggestion would be to work with a partner who cares and who can do this stuff well and support it even better.

    Happy hosting!

    1. Vic

      Re: We're not all the same!

      > or sometimes (oft-time) to the lowest cost.

      Bell Motorcycle Helmets used to have an excellent slogan:

      "If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet"

      It's applicable in so many circumstances...

      Vic.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like