Backup policy

[overchord]

It now looks as if the storm is gradually fading insomuch as my sites are back online - albeit in a hopelessly old backup. This experience has left me somewhat bewildered in terms of what web hosting uk is actually providing.

So I would like to know:
1) What exactly is the freuqency of your backups?- and by backups I mean fully restorable content

2) How can it take in the region of 24-36 hrs to reinstate server content? I appreciate you have a lot of customers and a lot of content - but that amount of time is not really acceptable to anyone (including yourself I suspect)

3) Is this in any way related to the recent server move? Obviously I (an probably a few others) are a bit concerned that the move has resulted in a degradation of service rather than the opposite.


I hope you realise that I am taking the time to write this post because i actually rather like the hosting service you have provided so far, and that I prefer to stay with webhosting.uk.com. But it has to be on a basis where the information you get is trustworthy. I would have cut a lot of slack simply by finding a post in this forum explaining in some detail what has happened and what will happen next.

Anyway - sincerely do hope to hear from someone!

[londonmate]

Typical webhosting.uk.com responses to your questions would be:

1) We are restoring your account now for you.

2) Please be patient whilst we reinstate your account.

3) We have recently moved our servers. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Thanks for your feedback.

[Beccles Carnival]

London, you really make me laugh, tee hee... ANY response from Webhosting would be some respite...... lol.

I am having to laugh at this situation now, coz if i don't i might be tempted to reach for the hankies for how much sh*t I am receiving because our sites are STILL offline after 48 hours.

I am pulling my hair out (what's left of it) and I am getting no answers from anyone.

I can log into the control panel part of the site we have, though no pages can be viewed, and the ftp login still wont work.....

Really cannot believe the time this is taking.... and somewhat concerned like you, with regards to how long it takes to restore a backup...

Much as I would like to scream at webhosting, i suspect the loss of several clients over this F**k up will be enough to shake them into sorting it out so that this doesn't EVER happen again.... though you never know....

[londonmate]

Beccles, I'm like you, i'm past caring now. I'm already searching for a new hosting company. I guess we'll have to wait until Monday before anyone from webhosting.uk.com replies to us on this forum.

My main concern at the moment is that I'm losing emails etc and I won't know anything about it.

I really can't be bothered raising more tickets each time I notice something is wrong with my account. And I cannot arsed talking to some pleb on java chat and reading someone say "Welcome to Team Help" or whatever it is they say.

[Tiff]

My main concern at the moment is that I'm losing emails etc and I won't know anything about it.

That's my main concern too. I'm sensible enough to have back ups of most parts of my site, but incoming emails is something we don't really have control over.

[Administrator]

what has happened with Tristar was something I've always tried to make our System Admins aware of and I've always tried to keep records of how backups were running. This server was in US based datacenter till April 2007 and then we got it moved in UK as all features and facilities over here were much better than what we could get in US.

Previous backup configuration for this server was on a US based backup server so those scripts remain intact while the other script that should have been there to make a backup on UK based backup server was never configured. We had a backup of the date on which the server was moved but that was too old and the latest one that we had was on US based server. date of that backup was 3rd June 2007 as per the cron notifications but it seems that the backup had some flaws due to the distance and slow network response. We use Rsync technology for backups and Rsync never fails if the network response is good.

Our guys have learnt a lesson now and they are finding it difficult to answer our management team. As a precautionary measure they have now configured daily remote backup ( UK Server ) for databases and 2 separate weekly backups which will run on Thursday and Sunday night.

Its really sad that RAID configuration didn't do much to help in this problem but there's nothing much for us to do now. We will add 1 month credit to accounts of the customers who have been victim of this problem.

I would like to request our old and Genuine customers to keep their trust in our company as similar incidence wont occur again. Though we don't advertise any sort of guaranteed backups with shared hosting plans but we care for your business and we will go beyond our ways to ensure safety and growth of your business / personal / family websites.

[overchord]

Thank you for the info. Its good to hear that you are already taking measures to improve the situation.
I think a lot of frustration could probably have been avoided by posting something along this information earlier on (and then perhaps have your support staff send a link to that message for details).
I can't answer for anyone else, but I will stick with you guys. I have had a lot of good service up to this point and for now this outweighs the one glitch (major as it was though).

[Administrator]

Thank you for the info. Its good to hear that you are already taking measures to improve the situation.
I think a lot of frustration could probably have been avoided by posting something along this information earlier on (and then perhaps have your support staff send a link to that message for details).
I can't answer for anyone else, but I will stick with you guys. I have had a lot of good service up to this point and for now this outweighs the one glitch (major as it was though).

We care for our customers and its difficult to explain what sort of harsh treatment our support staff has gone through in last 3 days. Though it was and unpredictable hardware failure but we have gone through such things in past and guys were expected to learn from those hardware failures.

its difficult to say anything more now and I am completely out of words. Only thing I can do now is to assure you that we wont let this problem repeat again in future.