Database server is down.

My website has started producing this error message: "A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. "

I haven't changed anything so it cannot be the server name or password which have been entered incorrectly. I also get the same error message from SQL Server Management Studio.

The server is: sql2k801.discountasp.net Are you doing any maintenance work?? If not, can someone check why it's down?

As a result my whole website is down!!!

 

Yes look here:
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?p=42695#post42695

 

I got a reply on my support ticket:

"The issue was related to customer abuse. on the server where server resources were depleted "

That was yesterday and now I get this error message:

"SHUTDOWN is in progress.
Login failed for user '200343User'. Only administrators may connect at this time.
"

What on earth are they doing with the server? If they're doing any maintenance work don't they think they could give some warning? Or maybe they think the customers don't actually use their database and won't notice it??

It's really not professional.

 

Customer abuse means that someone on that server was abusing the server, which basically means someone was doing something on their database that caused the server to have problems. If "Shutdown is in progress" shows, it means an admin is recycling the service, or stopping it to prevent further abuse.

It's not maintenance, but basically trying to stop a customer from further abusing the server, which was the initial problem.

 

I do understand that but 2 days ago there was a very similar problem:
http://community.discountasp.net/sho...2695#post42695

Jorge, in the support ticker, told me it was because of customer abuse and you're saying that today it's because 'someone on that server was abusing the server'. Before the server was rebooted the visitors on my website got 'time out' messages for about 20mn which means my whole site was inaccessible for about 20mn. It was the same roughly 2 days ago. I can't have my website down for 20mn every other day.

Because it was exactly the same problem (customer abuse) it looks to me that no step is being taken to prevent this from happening again.

 

Dmitri, in his support ticket, a few minutes ago told me 'The system administrators reported that the TempDB was abused which crashed the server.' I understand this as being 'customer abuse' like 2 days ago.

 

What steps would you suggest that we take?

Everyone wants to have as much control as possible over their database, and we provide as much as we can. The only way to prevent "customer abuse" is to not allow the customer to do anything. That's not an option.

 

I'm not trying to be difficult but you have to understand that your customers and I'm one of them need the database that we are paying you for.

Today ago there was this problem because of customer abuse (according to Jorge in a support ticket):
http://community.discountasp.net/sho...2695#post42695

Today, we have this (similar problem 'TempDB was abused which crashed the server' according to Dmitri in a support ticket):
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?p=42695

I have been very happy with DiscountASP for years and I have recommended many people to you but you have to understand that our websites are critical to our businesses. If this kind of problem happened once in a while that would fair enough but twice in 2 days seems a lot to me.
Also you might think that rebooting the server didn't take long but before it was rebooted automatically the database was so slow that it was inaccessible (time out error messages for about 20mn before the server was rebooted). As a result my visitors (= my customers) couldn't access the website at all for about 20mn and they were complaining to me like I'm doing to you now.

Would you be happy if the discountasp website had been inaccessible for 20mn (regardless of the problem) today and 2 days ago?

You're saying 'What steps would you suggest that we take? ' and 'The only way to prevent "customer abuse" is to not allow the customer to do anything." That's not an option.' implying there is not much which can be done. Dmitri, in a support ticket, just wrote to me 'we ARE taking steps to prevent problems in the future.' so you have to agree between yourselves.

Again, I do understand that you have no control over the customers but a good first step would be to contact the customer(s) in question (hopefully you've done it) and warn them. You could also have fewer databases per server (yes that would increase the cost as you would need more servers (ie more licences) but that is an option). This way customers would be potentially affected by fewer other customers. You could also offer dedicated servers to customers willing to pay for it (I would, well, depending on the cost of course). So clearly there are different options.

 

I meant 2 days ago there was this problem:
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?p=42695

and today:
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?p=42737

 

I would like to add that the issues were unrelated. That they happened on two consecutive days is an unfortunate coincidence.

I know your site is important. A lot of people work here around the clock to make sure you get good service. But we can't guarantee that a database server - or any server - will not ever experience problems. No host can. That's why you don't see uptime "guarantees" of 100% advertised anywhere. There are an almost infinite number of ways a web or database server can fail. We use top of the line hardware and monitoring, but there are things that it is not possible to proactively prevent, so we have to react when the problems arise.

We don't plan to offer dedicated servers of any kind. The licensing fee alone for a single SQL 2005 server is more than $200 per month. That has to be paid to Microsoft even if only one database is on the server. If you add hardware cost and a markup so we can pay the bills, I think the cost would be prohibitive for almost all of our customers. Dedicated hosting just isn't something we want to be involved in for many reasons (beyond licensing).

I understand how frustrating it is to have a site go down. We all have sites of our own. But sometimes it is unavoidable. We try to keep the downtime, when it does occur, to a minimum.

 

The server was down again an hour ago:
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11541

The first 'time out error' message was received at 6:09am (Uk time) and everything was back to normal at 7:02 (uk time) from what I can see. This means my website was down for 1 hour. Yesterday it was about 20mn and 3 days ago 20mn as well.

What are you going to reply back to this?

I notice that you didn't mention anything about having fewer databases / server.

 

And again:
http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11542

You have to admit there is something wrong somewhere.

Dmitri, you said that this "server was down for the total of 40 minutes per year". Well, in the past few days:
October, 3rd: down for 22mn: http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11517
Yesterday: down for 19mn: http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11534
Today: down for 50mn: http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11541
Today (2nd time): down for 9mn http://community.discountasp.net/showthread.php?t=11542

That's a total of 100mn in 3 days only and that's only based on what I see in your forum. In reality, the server was down for longer than that as I imagine you only log a problem once you aware of it which can be a few minutes after the problem started.