100% Guaranteed Uptime on VPS!!!

[Shane Phillips]

Are you tired of downtime on your hosting package!!!

BODHost now offers you VPS Hosting solution with 100% Uptime Guarantee. This is to ensure that you remain online 24x7 with all featues that a VPS Hosting package can offer. With nine years of hosting experience, we have known that downtime cannot be tolerated and henceforth, we brought in our Fail-over VPS concept which was tested for months by our specialized Engineers.

Following are the server configurations that we offer :

Virtual Private Primary Server :

Processor : Dual Quad Core Xeon with 16GB RAM Hardware Node Setup
Hard Disk : 60GB
RAM : 2GB Guaranteed RAM
Bandwidth : 800GB High-Quality Bandwidth Per Month
Control Panel Options : cPanel ( WHM ) with Fantastico or Plesk Domains
Dedicated IPs : 2 ( VPS - Server 1 ) + 2 ( VPS - Server 2 ) = 4
Server Management : Fully Managed Solution
Server Monitoring : 24x7 Server Monitoring
Custom Installation and Upgration
24x7 Customer Support : 24x7 Toll-Free Phone Support | 24x7 Live Chat Support | 24x7 Email Support with 15 Minutes Response Time
Uptime Guarantee : 100%
Setup Fee : Free!

Virtual Private Secondary Server :

Processor : Dual Quad Core Xeon with 16GB RAM Hardware Node Setup
Hard Disk : 60GB
RAM : 2GB Guaranteed RAM
Bandwidth : 800GB High-Quality Bandwidth Per Month
Control Panel Options : cPanel ( WHM ) with Fantastico or Plesk Domains
Dedicated IPs : 2 ( VPS - Server 1 ) + 2 ( VPS - Server 2 ) = 4
Server Management : Fully Managed Solution
Server Monitoring : 24x7 Server Monitoring
Custom Installation and Upgration
24x7 Customer Support : 24x7 Toll-Free Phone Support | 24x7 Live Chat Support | 24x7 Email Support with 15 Minutes Response Time
Uptime Guarantee : 100%
Setup Fee : Free!

Total Price : $149.00 Per Month

Our plan can be viewed at : Virtual Private Server Mirroring

If you have any questions, please email our sales department through BODHost Helpdesk :: Support Center

[Damien]

That's a great concept launched by Bodhost. Usually hosting providers offer server mirroring solution on Dedicated Servers. But now everyone has a chance to experience 100% Uptime at a relatively affordable cost.

[Shane Phillips]

To be honest, i forgot to revise the plan pricing in this offer thread. Now, the VPS Hosting Mirroring solution is only for $99.00USD Per Month.

[RichardM]

The price and concept are very inviting.

Three questions, though (I am presently on a Linux Enterprise VPS plan hosted in the Montreal DC):

1. Can the existing IP addresses and nameservers be ported over to the Virtual Private Primary Server? My registrar is presently in a state of chaos after a series of registrars, and getting nameserver IPs changed is comparable in difficulty to getting an audience with the Pope. (I do plan to move my 34 domains to some other registrar when things settle down a bit, but not right now when things are a mess at the existing company.)

2. Is the Virtual Private Secondary Server in the same datacenter? (And 2-b: In what datacenter(s) is/are are the machine(s) located?)

3. To what extent do you "manage" the servers? I have some oddball settings that I use because I need them for various scripts and apps, and I would prefer that these not be "managed" very much. For the most part, I'm content to manage things myself and ask for help when I need it.

Thanks,

Richard

[Shane Phillips]

Hello Richard,

In respect to your questions, i have answered them as follows :

1. Can the existing IP addresses and nameservers be ported over to the Virtual Private Primary Server? My registrar is presently in a state of chaos after a series of registrars, and getting nameserver IPs changed is comparable in difficulty to getting an audience with the Pope. (I do plan to move my 34 domains to some other registrar when things settle down a bit, but not right now when things are a mess at the existing company.)
Ans. We only setup Virtual Mirroring Solutions at our Chicago Data Center. This means, we will need to change the main IPs of primary VPS. Perhaps, you can start transfering your domains to us in this case.

2. Is the Virtual Private Secondary Server in the same datacenter? (And 2-b: In what datacenter(s) is/are are the machine(s) located?)
Ans. The Secondary Server is located in the same Data Center but hosted on a different server node.

3. To what extent do you "manage" the servers? I have some oddball settings that I use because I need them for various scripts and apps, and I would prefer that these not be "managed" very much. For the most part, I'm content to manage things myself and ask for help when I need it.
Ans. Our VPS Hosting solutions are fully managed and monitored 24x7 round the clock. If you do not need us to manage your VPS, that's not much of a problem.

Please let us know if you need any further information.

Regards,
Forum Administrator
BODHost.com

[RichardM]

Okay, thanks. I like what I'm hearing so far.

The Chicago DC is Hurricane Electric, right? I really, really love the Montreal DC (fast, stable, great connectivity), but HE is a great outfit, too. They're one of the elder statesmen in this business.

In any case, there's a right way and a wrong way to do this; and since this is no emergency (I'm perfectly happy with my existing Bodhost service), I want to do it the right way.

Aside from moving the domains to a new registrar (who do you use for domain registration, anyway, or is Bodhost ICANN accredited independently?), I like to drastically shorten the SOA's, TTL's, retries, refreshes, and expires on the retiring server a few weeks prior to the move. This would waste resources under normal circumstances, but it minimizes client-side DNS caching prior to a planned move.

I've found that previous visitors often are unable to access sites after an IP change, even if the new servers are working splendidly, unless the users are savvy enough to flush their local DNS caches. Reducing the times on the retiring DNS a few weeks in advance forces frequent DNS calls, which is resource-expensive, but minimizes the caching problem.

In addition, I also like to leave the old server running for a few days after the move, with the DNS pointing to the new server's IP, just to avoid downtime while slow ISP's update their DNS servers.

Like I said, my present registrar (formerly IYD, then Tucows, now Hover) is in a state of extreme chaos right now, so I have to do things carefully. The new Hover control panel has almost no functionality, so even simple things like changing nameserver IP's require a ticket -- and they're running a week behind on tickets!

I was thinking about using GoDaddy as a new registrar, but feel free to pitch me on your own registration services. I have 30+ domains to transfer. What can ya do for me?

Thanks,

Richard

[Shane Phillips]

Hello Richard,

That's correct. Our Data Center is based in the Chicago Facility of Hurricane Electric. I also understand that you need to take precautions at the time of migrations and domain transfers. We register our domains through enom. What i suggest is, we will transfer domains at regular intervals. Once the IPs switch-over to the new vps hosting plan, i do not think there should any issue with DNS caches. However, there might be exceptions.

We will not touch the old server until we have completed the migration process to the new vps mirroring hosting solution. In fact, we will keep it active at least for a week's time to make sure everything is running smoothly.

In case of transfers, we will have to do one domain at a time or may be two or more and be assured they are transfered without any hassle and there are no delays in any scenario. Also, i would request you to send me the domain list to our email address : sales at bodhost dot com in order to provide you with the registration / transfer charges.

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Forum Administrator
BODHost.com

[RichardM]

I do plan on moving to this service very shortly (within a week or two, hopefully). It'll help me in a number of ways, including being able to implement a few ideas I have for serving content onto third-part sites via PHP includes and iframes. I'd shied away from that in the past because of uptime concerns.

One more question, though:

Is the mirroring truly two-way? In other words, let's say the main server hiccups and the failover kicks in. Let's further say that the failover server runs the show for a few hours -- maybe even a day or two.

During that time, orders are placed, mail is sent and received, databases are updated, possibly new pages are uploaded by clients who don't know they're on failover, and so forth. In other words, stuff changes.

So... When the primary server comes back online, will all of the changes that took place while the failover server was running the show be mirrored back onto the primary server?

Thanks,

Richard

[Shane Phillips]

Hello Richard,

Thanks for replying.

Yes, the VPS Mirroring is definitely two-way. If one VPS fails, all services switch over to the second VPS immediately without any downtime. Our VPS Mirroring Solution offers 100% Guaranteed Uptime. Any changes made on the secondary VPS is copied over the Primary VPS and vice-versa.

Regards,
Forum Administrator
BODHost.com

[RichardM]

Sounds great. Thanks.

Richard

[Shane Phillips]

Your Welcome

Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Regards,
Forum Administrator
BODHost.com

[RichardM]

Okay. Everything's ready, the order has been placed, and I'll be giving the Mirrored VPS a try.

I signed up yesterday, actually; but unfortunately I didn't get around to reading my email and paying the invoice until this morning. We have the grandchildren over this week, and they're little attention magnets. In addition, they commandeered my only Windows computer (which also happens to be the one I use for email) to watch movies on Netlflix; so the mail went unread until this morning.

In any case, I paid the bill this morning and expect that the setup will commence in good time and in good order.

As an interesting aside, I told my better-informed clients about the planned migration and the benefits. Surprisingly, they seemed troubled. It was only after I explained that we'd be staying with Bodhost, but migrating to an upgraded service with Bodhost, that they were reassured.

My clients remember the near-daily outages and erratic service when my previous hosting company moved to a different DC, and anything with the word "migrate" in it scares them. Once I explained that we'd be staying with Bodhost (and also that Hurricane Electric's DC is one of the best in the world), they were reassured.

Once this migration is complete and I'm on the Mirrored VPS service for a while, I'll let you know how things are going. I'm looking forward to it. I think the uptime assurance is going to allow me to do implement some projects I've been thinking about for years.

Thanks,

Richard

[RichardM]

and moved my accounts to this Mirrored VPS solution over the New Year's holiday.

So far, I'm pleased with the service, and the setup and migration process was painless. That's not to say there weren't a few hitches: Because I had some oddball settings that I wanted to preserve, I did some of the setup and the initial migration myself -- and I made a few mistakes along the way. But hey, that happens sometimes. Live and learn.

Luckily for me, though, Alex P was there every step of the way, not only fixing the things I messed up, but patiently explaining exactly why things had to be done a certain way. He's a real asset to your company: Geeks are a dime a dozen these days, but professionals who are smart enough to keep things running, but also patient and personable enough to teach clients without making them feel stupid, are priceless.

I think I'll like this Mirrored VPS service. Plenty of space and resources, the kind of reliability that I want to offer my clients, and excellent support, all at what I consider to be a very reasonable price. What more could I ask for?

All the best,

Richard

[Shane Phillips]

Hello Richard,

Thanks for your feedback.

Alex is definitely one our most experienced support technicians along with others and when it comes to migrations of every server, we make sure everything goes real smooth for our clients and they do not have any problems in respect with the same.

Please let me know if you need additional assistance.

Regards,

Shane Phillips

[RichardM]

Namely, it didn't work.

The setup and migration went well; Alex was there with prompt and knowledgeable support every step of the way; and I tested the setup by shutting down httpd on the master server, and it worked. The slave server stepped up to the plate, and downtime was minimal.

But a few hours ago, the hard drive on the master server failed, the sites went down, and nothing happened. The slave server didn't kick in, and the annoyed phone calls began.

I can access VZ on the slave server, but that's it. Not http, no mail, not even any SSH so I can attempt to restart services. The server responds to a ping, but that's it. Everything is down -- and my clients are getting annoyed.

I understand that hard drives do fail (although I wonder why RAID wasn't used -- this was something I didn't notice when I looked at the specs). But the purpose of this whole mirroring setup was to protect against downtime caused by such failures. As of now, all of my sites have been down for several hours, and I will have to eat the costs for failing to meet my uptime guarantee to my clients.

Worse yet, I have lost a lot of credibility.

I'm disappointed that the first real-world test of this mirroring arrangement has failed. I'd like to know why, and I'd like to know what's being done to address that "why" so it doesn't happen again. I made promises to my clients based on your promises to me, and I don't like breaking my promises.

Looking forward to your response,

Richard

[RichardM]

We're now going on about six hours of downtime... and counting.

[RichardM]

Now more than 13 hours...

[Shane Phillips]

Richard,

We sincerely apologize for the inconvinience caused to you. Failure of the drives was unexpected and RAID Array could not built again. However, we have restored the VPS's now.

Please let us know if you are facing any issues now.

Regards,

Shane Phillips

[centelo]

I am sure after reading all of this and the other notes about the support here, this was fully a random thing that happened. I like the quick connect here and I am sure when this was going on everyone was busy doing what they do best. Would like to hear more if thats okay.

[RichardM]

Shane, my VPS still isn't working, ~20 hours later. All of the sites are down, and I've lost existing and prospective clients. That's issue 1.

Issue 2 is will I receive a credit for this, seeing as how the promise of 100% uptime was not kept?

Issue 3 is, again, why didn't the failover work? That's a big one, because if no one can answer this for me, that means that no one knows; and if no one knows why, then no one can fix it, and then it could happen again.

Richard