CLARA maintenance

[fleetwood]

Receiving "Virtual host not found on this server" this afternoon.
This is not looking good on the run up to Xmas - been going on for 2 weeks, and possibly getting worse.

Last 2 service status messages were on Monday:

Posted: 6:01pm, Monday 27th November 2006

The service on the Clarahost platform has now been fully restored.

We again apologise for any inconvenience caused by the earlier degradation in service.


Posted: 4:54pm, Monday 27th November 2006

Claranet would like to apologise for the degradation of service with Clarahost.

Our engineers are currently investigating the issue.

Any further word from Actinic support?

[george]

Getting "The operation timed out" errors when attempting to download orders.

Very frustrating.

[jont]

15.00pm 28th November

just spoke to support - at least the blighters are now admitting there is a problem although they don't know what it is! Fantastic. Engineers are working on it - phone back later to see how it is going!!

[fleetwood]

Have they tried switching it on?
Sometimes works for me

[jont]

I actually suggested that as a light-hearted tongue in cheek solution but the guy answered in all seriousness "I doubt that would resolve the issue" ... blimey ... it must be bad if re-booting doesn't work

[fleetwood]

Wed 29th 16:12

Service is still grinding
Just spoken to support
Engineers are aware of problem - but can't say what it is - and are working on it

Could this be the same thing that hit the Pinbrook servers a week or 2 back??

[jont]

Have been OK so far today (touch goat - wood is not as lucky).

Interesting that their service announcement has ony just showed an issue at 14.46pm today!!

[Darren B]

Martin

The pinbrook problem is still not fully resolved but i am getting the impression that perhaps the big uptake on broadband is actually causing huge amounts of traffic and the good old brits only put enough lines in for data transfer if 5 % of the country used it.

You know what i mean, like still building 3 lane motorways knowing that in 5 years they will have spend another 2 years widening it. M25 spring to mind.

Cheers
Darren

[pinbrook]

We took web5 offline for 30 mins last night to increase the memory in the server

The bandwidth and memory required by some of the actinic shops on this server has gone through the roof in the past week.

Fortunately we have enough of both although the upsurge in demand took us by suprise.

So it could be that clara is suffereing from the same issue. Our DC move last November gave us the room to grow. Otherwise we may have been suffering too.

It would be interesting to see if there is any news on the Register re shopping going mad this year

[Darren B]

Jo

I can confirm that today is probably one of my busiest this month. As you are aware i do more than one job and, thanks to draytel, i have been taking calls about kites for alot of today.

Just have to think before i anwer the phone as to which way my hat is on.

Cheers
Darren

[jont]

No wonder my keyboard sales have stalled

[Darren B]

Oh Dear, I got caught moonlighting again, i thought you had finished for the day.

I am still pushing the shocking keyboard see post http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=25832

Also Norman has been having troubles with the goat, i did wonder if it was actually a toga but the code was a bit muddled. We may need to look into this a bit deeper as i am now wondering if there is a compatibilty issue with the goat and shocking keyboard.

Cheers
Darren

[Stuart Morley]

No Joy from Clara

Reported the problem on Monday and despite calling each day have never had a call back yet.

Total waste of time.

If your thinking about hosting with clara - then don't waste your time.

[fleetwood]

Have been with Clara for 4 years, and have to disagree that they are a "total waste of time".
Whilst there have been some service lapses, the service has been generally pretty good.
The servers are clearly suffering from overload at peak times due to the seasonal traffic, as things are on go-slow (and sometimes collapse) between noon and 5pm, but fly again off-peak.
They had this problem a year or two back, and did take action (after some time it must be said), to install additional servers.
That has been promised again this time (see the service update on Wednesday).
I'm hoping they stick to their word and have it sorted within the next few days.

No they don't call back, but they do at least answer the phones fairly promptly when you call support.

[Stuart Morley]

Claranet

I have been with Clara since 1998 (8 years) and all is fine when things work. However when each year they forget to renew your SSL despite phone calls the day before and then take two days to rectify it that's not acceptable.

I recently tried to link my clara domain to another mysql db hosted elsewhere (they couldn't offer the solution) it took two weeks to do. It was made up on 8 phone calls and 4 different IP addresses they gave me. Each time they gave a different address it only took technoweb 10 mins to change the security. This is the sort of thing that is a real pain.

As for not phoning back, I'm sorry but I don't think thats good customer service, our customers would soon go elsewhere if we didn't phone back!

Due to the fact that it is a lot of hassle to move from any hosting company means they (like others) don't have to give good service.

Answering the phone is one thing, but then not doing anything about it is another.

My site has been rejecting about 65% of all orders all week, plus problems due to the fact that for the fourth year running they didn't renew the SSL again.

So yes they (like others) are superb when it's all running fine, but crap when it's not!