Hostwinds Shared2 Client's

This email was sent out last night

You may or may not be aware that server Shared2 is currently offline. We are working as hard as we can towards a resolution of the problem. We had a dual spindle failure on the hard drives associated with Shared2. We are attempting to recover the journals manually and the process has been going on all day. With the way the recovery is going, it appears it is going to be a long recover that could span well into tomorrow. We wanted to reach out to your ahead of time and give you some options. We know that the majority of our clients keep local backup copies of their websites. If you have a local backup of your website and you would like to have your account re-created on a another server, we can recreate your account instantly, and you will have the ability to re-upload your website, to your new hosting account.



We will be giving all clients one free month of hosting for this outage. If we are unable to fully recover the data from Shared2, we will be offering the options of: partial refunds to all client(s) who paid for more than one month up front, or one year free hosting with us. The year free hosting offer is being extended to all clients- not only clients who paid for more than one month at a time. We are doing everything in our power to recover the data from the hard drives, and we only ask for your compassion in dealing with us during this difficult time. We really appreciate you as a client, and we work hard every day in order to make you happy. If there is anything we can do for you to make this situation better, or to better resolve it in your eyes, then PLEASE open a ticket, or respond to this email and let us know.

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Here is the final status of the situation

The data recovery efforts which have been going on all night have been somewhat successfully

All clients with usernames beginning with the letters A-C 100% of your FILES (not databases) stored on the server have been 100% recovered We have also recovered full account from backups (around 20 total accounts)


All other clients who when you login to your shared2 account and do not find your files or databases, will have suffered complete data loss. This situation is not being taken lightly, and while our client's data is 100% not our responsibility

Hostwinds TOS said:

Backups and Data Loss
Your use of this service is at your sole risk. Our backups run constantly mirroring all of your data on to a second disk to protect against hardware failure. Hostwinds is not responsible for files and/or data residing on your account. You agree to take full responsibility for files and data transferred and to maintain all appropriate backup of files and data stored on Hostwinds servers.

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We still care about our client's and we care about you trusting us with the responsibility of hosting your website. For this reason we have decided to offer a full free 12 months of hosting to all affected clients. We are also changing our internal infrastructure to offer an offsite backup service to all Hostwinds client's. This backup service will be fully managed on the backend and require no outside intervention from you. One of the ways in which we offer such great prices on our hosting, is by not automatically backing up all client's hosting accounts, we leave that responsibility to you, and in exchange you get cheaper hosting. We do not want to blanket increase our prices and offer this service to everyone, so we have decided to develop a backup service as an addon to normal hosting. The cost will be $5, and the full system will be live within 14 days. The equipment has all been ordered.


We are also offering pro-rated refunds to all clients who paid for any term longer than one month and wish to terminate their services with us.

The new backup system will be going live for ALL of our shared servers, not only Shared2. This backup system cost us a grand total of $25,000 USD today and it is top of the line, the backup system is actually a raided storage array so your data on this system will be protected twice.




We really do care about our client's, and we are doing everything to work towards making you happy during this difficult time. We have all hands on deck today, and all staff members have been pulled off of their individual projects to focus on resolving your issues. If there is anything at all we can do for you no matter what it is, then please do not hesitate to ask and if it is within our ability we will gladly make it happen for you. I only ask for your patience and compassion in working with us during these difficult times.

--Peter Holden
CEO Hostwinds.com

I should have switched to Hostgator after Hostwind's latest downtime fiasco. I am going to do this now. This is just not normal.

Shared2 File System Recovery (In Progress)

Affecting Server - Shared2 | Priority - Critical

We are currently working on restoring the Shared2 file system, a dual spindle failure on the main hard drives for Shared2 has caused this critical error, we are working tierlessly to restore the file system manually, we will update you when we know more

UPDATE:

We are still working on recovering the file system, however initial feedback is not looking good, if anyone on shared2, has a local backup, or would like to have their web hosting account re-created on another server, then please open a ticket requesting this, All clients on Shared2 will be recieving a full free two months of hosting

If the data is unrecoverable, then we will be extending full refunds to all shared client's who request it, and on top of that all of Shared2's clients will recieve one years free shared hosting, or 3 months of free hosting on any of our VPS plans.

We will update you once more information is available
Date - 06/03/2012 22:00
Last Updated - 06/03/2012 23:46

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I whas lucky this time I am with hostwinds but I guess not on shared2,
This is a real pain in the ass and if you dont have backup it means you are really fu***!!

I just signed up with Hostgator. Account creation took one minute for them. Moving everything there now. I am sick and tired of this. I mean they don't even have a freaking backup of our data... you've got to be kidding me...

I am on shared2 and i don't have a backup... I'm fucked.

Haven't experienced any problems today.. Im on shared2 though

2tdruid said:

I am on shared2 and i don't have a backup... I'm fucked.

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use google cache to retrieve what you can -> search for -> site:yoursite.com
http://web.archive.org may also be of help.
good luck!

I'm with them for around two months and almost every two weeks some shit happens... not fun at all.

Same for me, thinking of packing my bags and moving to other hosting company. Already found some decent one, cheaper as well.

foshizzle said:

use google cache to retrieve what you can -> search for -> site:yoursite.com
http://web.archive.org may also be of help.
good luck!

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That won't work for scripts source code.

Just in the nick of time. Friday evening I started migrating my host over to Zyma. And this morning I got the email. Looks like I really got lucky this time around. I was thinking of pointing another domain to the now vacant hostwinds account, but i'm gonna go some place else.

ive been with them for almost a year now and not one single thing has ever happen to me. i dont understand how everyones having problems always

no back ups ....... i know i should of had one , but i really didnt expend their servers to go commit harry carrey , lesson learned !

I feel you... I am having problems with my backups as well....
Just finished moving one site of many successfully. I am so annoyed and pissed off right now.
I am moving everything to hostgator because enough is enough. I have never been with such a shitty host like Hostwinds before. It has been a nightmare for me... lesson learned as well I guess.

andee said:

ah for fu*ks sake ! they dont even have a back up , hey 2 months free hosting 2@$5.50 dont cover it, this site just started making $300 a day.

and my clients site that i finished a week ago with no back up, all that work gone ....

no back ups ....... i know i should of had one , but i really didnt expend their servers to go commit harry carrey , lesson learned !

every off the titanic

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Hostgator... Solution to everything they never let me down once!

Got lucky this Time as i am on shared1 also agree to everyone else they are having problems every month if not a week. cooling problems and server crashes all the time and their support not answering tickets for 5+ hours, despite they are saying that they are online all the time. One of the messages I got on 6 of may When cooling was finally restored to the datacenter, we worked quickly to assess the damage. There were around 16 servers offline due to overheating. We had all 16 downed systems rebooted; all but 6 of them came back online. Of the 6 down nodes, all of them had hard drive failures but we were able to rebuild the arrays and bring 4 of the nodes back online. ThisDream you are saying you found cheaper and better one can u pm me what u have found. Are there any good hosting companies that transfers all the websites for you from the old hosting and with the price range like hostiwinds.

I'm on Shared 3 but I've had my share of problems.. I switched to HostGator for my SEO Company's website and kept some small niche sites on Hostwinds but I wouldn't suggest anyone keep the bulk of their income generating sites with Hostwinds.. Unless you have a constant backup and don't mind lots of downtime.

uruz555 said:

ThisDream you are saying you found cheaper and better one can u pm me what u have found. Are there any good hosting companies that transfers all the websites for you from the old hosting and with the price range like hostiwinds.

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Problem is.. cheap doesn't go well with reliability and this is something to keep in mind. I'm using Zyma.com which is more or less on the same price range. You can check with other hosts too and in most cases, the answer your question about website transfer is just a support ticket away (most don't advertise/mention it in the open).

Your best bet is to do it yourself. It takes at max maybe 30 minutes or so.
Do a general back from your old host incl DB
create same db details in new host then phpmyadmin>import sql
transfer public_html files (create any subdomains if you have any)
wait for 24 hours or so in order for DNS to be propogated complete.y

seoguy81 said:

Problem is.. cheap doesn't go well with reliability and this is something to keep in mind. I'm using Zyma.com which is more or less on the same price range. You can check with other hosts too and in most cases, the answer your question about website transfer is just a support ticket away (most don't advertise/mention it in the open).

Your best bet is to do it yourself. It takes at max maybe 30 minutes or so.
Do a general back from your old host incl DB
create same db details in new host then phpmyadmin>import sql
transfer public_html files (create any subdomains if you have any)
wait for 24 hours or so in order for DNS to be propogated complete.y

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Hostgator is cheap as well and I never read anything bad about them.

Also... there is no way to make a backup now at Hostwinds Shared2 if you don't have one already. They say they probably lost the customer data. LOL.

seoguy81 said:

Problem is.. cheap doesn't go well with reliability and this is something to keep in mind. I'm using Zyma.com which is more or less on the same price range. You can check with other hosts too and in most cases, the answer your question about website transfer is just a support ticket away (most don't advertise/mention it in the open).

Your best bet is to do it yourself. It takes at max maybe 30 minutes or so.
Do a general back from your old host incl DB
create same db details in new host then phpmyadmin>import sql
transfer public_html files (create any subdomains if you have any)
wait for 24 hours or so in order for DNS to be propogated complete.y

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So you are with Zyma. They are very cheap they say 5 pounds a year. Have you noticed any downtimes with them? What about the speed does websites load up fast? Thanks in advance. Ohh yea they offer free transfer as well.