How many of you are aware that DASP had a complete outage of service on 2/6/2008 that lasted about 2-4 hours? I have repeatedly asked DASP to inform users of the outage to assist us in managing our users who immediately complain that 1) the web site is down, 2) the ftp is down, 3) email is down. The outage even included DASP's own website and control panel. I did not recieve any notification that DASP was down (again I hear it from my clients); I see no comment or report on the outage on the "Home / News" page of the control panel (as DASP promised last time this happened that they would do); I did not get any assurances from DASP that emails were saved, lost, recovered during the unexplained and unreported outage. This continues to be a major issue with DASP, they continue to hide the fact that systems go down from us, their paying customers, and I constantly have to hear it from my users. The simple solution that we all agreed DSAP would use was not used in this case and so I continue to wonder what is DASP's policy on notifying their paying customers of unplanned site downtimes?
They did post the complete record in the Notices area of the forums. This time their entire network went down without their advanced knowledge. They are in the process right now of redesigning the network so that can't happen again. All customers should get a notice about that today. I'm willing to design a subscription system if it will help. Could use an off-site database to send notices out to DASP customers who request it. Salute, Mark
My fault did not see the "Outages and maintenance" topic in the Announcements thread. Indeed, DASP has notified us of the outage and some explaination of the time / event / etc. With a network outage, I am guessing all email either queued or bounced (probably queued till available). The last time I discussed this point, DASP said the updates to outages would be in the control panel of each site so I expected it there. DASP needs to come up with a standard means of contacting us when an outage occurs so that we can be knowledgable to our people on the expected time frames, etc.
I guess you missed my previous post in this thread, which is amazing because it was just before your rant, I think it said something like "My fault did not see the 'Outages and maintenance' topic in the Announcements thread." which is new to the forum, probably in response to my complaining about this issue which you and I have already argued on several occassions. And I must say, your customer service is impecable, quite a rude and non-professional response. I am amazed the DASP allows you the freedom to lash out at customers like that. Really amazing. Back to the main point, some kind of email alert system would be greatly appreciated by those of use who in paying for this service pay your salary mjp.
If you feel a one line tongue-in-cheek response was a "rant" or "lashing out," then I guess I have to admit that I misjudged the audience. Mea culpa. The forum is an informal mode of communication. If every post we made here was meaningless corporate-appeasement-speak ("Administrators are aware of the issue and we hope to have it resolved soon. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this has caused.") you would stop considering this a source of useful or valid information. And rightfully so. So if you want to really know what's happening, youmay have to tolerate my (our) less than formal approach sometimes. As a customer of many online businesses myself, it is something I appreciate, so I am hesitant to apologize for it here. But if it offends the sensibilities of a lot of users, I can change to robot-mode. It's certainly easier than being honest and genuine. I was just surprised to see such an indignant post when we have done so much to accommodate users who want information in the event of each and every kind of outage. The methods we use are not going to satisfy everyone, because satisfying everyone is not possible. The outages forum has been active for almost a year, I don't think it can be classified as "new" at this point. Again, to address your main point, an email list to notify users of a global outage is unlikely. Even if we maintained and used such a list, we would not have used it during last week's outage. It didn't last long enough. By the time most people saw the email the outage would have been over. Our outages are posted in a public forum. Nothing is hidden. Very, very few hosts can say that. mjp --- DiscountASP.NET
I am all for informal communications with DASP what I am opposed to is degradation of the communication channel by belittlement, harassment, etc....all are ways in which the real topic is lost in the verbal banter. I am not interested in getting into a flame war with you mjp; all I want to do is be knowledgeable when my customers whom I have brought to DASP for hosting contact me when they see an outage. I think I am making a very reasonable request and we have been around and around and around on this issue, too many times really. At the conclusion of these threads, mjp claimed he would set up a policy (I still don't see one anywhere, so I guess we don't get to know the policy?) and that the probable route would be using a "Control Panel message is (as) the most likely solution". I expected the update to be in the control panel location and did not know at the time of my post that in March of 2007 a forum category on outages had been initiated. There a now three ways of checking for a network outage (please mjp let me know if these are correct): 1) Master / Global Outage Page: [old update page is no longer used] 2) Control Panel : News / Events page per each domain 3) Forum : Outage and maintenance I think these are excellent choices for outages and even if we have to wade through mjp's outbursts, DASP has done a great job in listening to their customers. Thanks. This will work for me so long as when an outage is in process, one of the three places (based on the size of the outage) has some information for me to share with my clients. As to the mentioned outage in my post, I forgot to check the status page, so that is my bad. Now, the fun part, to respond to mjp's more "personal" comments: 1) "Tongue-in-cheek response" and "informal mode of communication": Hey, I am all for it and really don't mind wadding through your need to sound superior and important so long as somewhere in the post the information being requested is supplied. The comment, "Yes, we continue to hide those facts in the "Outages and maintenance" forum", is nothing more than your own insecurity bubbling to the fore and provides nothing of value to solving the issue. I know you feel better so maybe that is what was important to you? 2) Honest and genuine: Yeah baby I am all for it. So mjp, let's be honest and genuine for a moment, shall we? With other user's, we fought to get the outage information public so please don't start patting yourself or DASP on the back and claiming that "Our outages are posted in a public forum. Nothing is hidden. Very, very few hosts can say that." You were forced into this by customers; you didn't really want to do it when this all began some time ago. Read the threads, it's all there, no hiding from the facts. So please, some two years later, don't go sounding like DASP is some model of communication; we dragged you into it and you went with it screaming and whining and ranting about how hard it was, how we wouldn't satisfy everyone and blah, blah, blah from your piehole. 3) As to noticing outages, I get notified by my customers within minutes of the problem, especially when email servers are involved. When the web server goes down, I hear about it usually within 30 minutes. My folks use DASP's service consistently throughout the day and they know immediately when something is wrong. Many times, network is the real problem and DASP is not. I think you can appreciate knowing in advance that DASP is running is a real life saver when dealing with a cranky customer. 4) To compare DASP to hosting companies that don't share outage information is like comparing a nice, new car with some old, crappy clunker. I would never host with anyone that isn't going to offer SOME information on downtimes so DASP is a cut above those companies and comparing yourself (i.e. DASP) to them is not relevant. Remember no flaming here, just keepin' it real, you know, honest and genuine with a cherry on top.
I have to agree, having hosted with some of the largest hosts. DASP support and notifications areindeed much better. I still believe we have one of the best communities here. And in that expect us, the community, to work some of these things out. Let's be honest, DASP is not charging us for Business support, we get unbelievable deals here. Having said that...What's wrong with us working out some of our own support? I won'tmention names but I still help businesses and colleges with smaller and larger hosts. Yesterday I spent 7 hours working out something that would have taken less than an hour here. One of the main reasons we come to DASP is the control they give us over our accounts.
I did not make any personal comments about you, I wouldn't do that! I made a joke in response to your post, and also admitted that I may have misjudged the audience - meaning the joke may have been out of place. Then I said, mea culpa; "my bad." There is nothing else in anything I have said that attempts to paint you in any negative light. Sorry if you took it that way. I can understand why you might want to attack me here. I have been working in the hosting business for 12 years, so I am not going to take it personally. I know how these things can go. We all get wound up sometimes. "You were forced into this by customers; you didn't really want to do it when this all began some time ago." I came to DiscountASP a couple of years ago from a larger host with a much larger forum, and one of my primary duties at that host was to manage the forums. I instituted an outages forum and a policy of openness and honesty in order to be up front with the users. I think when people can see you, warts and all, they can't help but come to trust you more than they might trust some host who pretends that problems don't exist. I have been an advocate of doing the same thing here since day one, but I have to say that the same mentality already existed at the company before I ever showed up. So we do a lot of things because people within the company think they are good ideas, and we do a lot of things based on user requests.
MJP I knew within seconds when my site was down. Would DASP consider to have a select number of DASP customers to be able to contact DASP directly of a global outage? It took me around 5 mins to find out that there was a global outage and another 10 mins to get information on the DASP Status page. Please don't reply with any information about the cost/resource associated with a phone number. I understand but a handful of people having a phone number wouldn't hurt to help expedite the message on theDASP Status page. It would also be nice to get a 15 minute update, even if it's states there is "no change" to the status. When my boss and customers are hounding me, I would like to be able to tell them that the problem is being worked on, instead of stating "45 minutes ago, I know they were working on it but know I have no idea". This results is my boss telling me to switch hosting providers then I have to defend my decision of chosing DASP. Can you explain the impact on DNS since the failover internet connection has been implemented? What I'm really asking is, if Savvis makes another bonehead change, can we expect that the routing of our Domains will will continue to reach it's destination or do we have to make a change on DNS or point to a new DNS IP address? These are for customers that don't have DASP manage their DNS. Also, can you tell us who the other backbone provider is? What other measures is DASP taken to ensure that their customers are receiving 100% uptime (okay 99.9%). btw, the DASP status page worked like a charm and it was a great improvement from the last Global Outage (June 2007).
