Hetzner apologizes for downtime

Right, I would believe that dribble? Fine, they apologized, but a big site like this one, how many hits you get in 2 hours? Definately alot. How much potential revenue due to advertisment have you lost? Possibly alot.

Now ask the question, how is Hetzner going to compensate YOU.

This just goes to show how ultimately and unbelievable k@k service is in South Africa. Not to mention the outrages bandwidth prices if you want to host locally?!

I am pissed off to say the least...
 
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At least they apologise - more than can be said for most other SA companies. No host guarantees 100% uptime - any down on behalf of hetzner is within the 1% (they guarantee 99% uptime.) Don't trash a company you don't know.
 
kilo39 said:
At least they apologise - more than can be said for most other SA companies. No host guarantees 100% uptime - any down on behalf of hetzner is within the 1% (they guarantee 99% uptime.) Don't trash a company you don't know.
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So you mean that if you buy a service from me, and I, for instance, cause your business damage to the sum of R10 000, and I apologized, that you would take it up THAT litely? "Hey, at least he apologized"

HA! Thank you for proving my point that South Africans just LOVE taking it up the ass.

99.9% uptime is not good enough anymore... they suppose to have redundant systems in place... it's like building a fire escape but forgetting the door needs to be opened in case of emergency...

Any self-respecting business hosting with Hetzner should move service providers...
 
So you mean that if you buy a service from me, and I, for instance, cause your business damage to the sum of R10 000, and I apologized, that you would take it up THAT litely? "Hey, at least he apologized"
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No, the 1% is in the contract - you are not receiving any less than you signed up for.
 
Yes, but what if you had a business that runs online. In all respect, MyADSL is a business. With online advertising. Advertisers rely on the site being online at all time to get maximum effectiveness for their ads.

Who do you think is going to be blamed for the site being down? As an advertiser you are blaming the site you advertise on, not their hosting provider.

If I were to place an ad in the news paper, and their machinery stopped working and their news paper is 1 day late, and I had a special offering on for that 1 day. What do you think is going to happen? I'm obviously going to sue the paper for damage and loss of income due to non-performance from their side. I'm not going to blame their printers...
 
not acceptable

I've spoken with three folks from Hetzner now. I'm also just getting apologies.

Kilo39, it's not simply a matter of 1% being in the contract or not.

Our server apparently went down at 20:20, yet Hetzner made no effort to inform us until 00:15!!! We became aware of the problem at 22:30 because a customer phoned in.

Hetzner charges more than overseas data centres. Yet, besides for getting 1000 times more bandwidth per month for the same price, our San Diego server is in a data centre that is able to withstand terrorists with airoplanes flying into it.

Hetzner does NOT have it's own generator OR a direct power supply. And their UPSs only last 20 minutes.

This is the 2nd time this year that they've had a major power outage (last time was in Feb). Hetzner also made no attempt to contact customers before, during or immediately after the crisis.

It's not just a matter of us losing money in the 2 hours it was down. We are also looking to acquire VC funding, the process of which will include a technical due diligence of our systems. The point is that mickey mouse services like Hetzner's does a lot of damage to the potential of South African businesses wanting to run global internet services.

We don't run military mission critical systems, BUT Hetzner DOES charge world class prices for what is definitely not a world class service.

Henk
 
There is NOT SUCH thing as 100% uptime, not in IT, or any other part of life.

If you have an advertizing site that can lose up to R10000 in 2 just hours(haha I would like to see that) then you should have your own datacentre with your own redundant links. Possible also have more than one backup site with multiple A records pointing to these alternatives in a rond-robin way.
What will happen if someone bomb the datacentre? or a tornado, or a flood or whatever.
Bottom line:
If you run a high availbility site that can lose money if the site is down for 30 seconds and you host one, or more servers with one singe hosting provider you are the fool for doing so. Plain and simple.
Do you think Cnn.com bbcworld.com, google.com etc just have a few server with one hosting provider?

Most of the Hetzner's customers will not even have noticed it if they did not apologize.
Did anyone complain when IS had zero connectivity a month ago for over 30min (including the datacenter)?. No, because they did no apologize...
 
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Hetzner charges more than overseas data centres. Yet, besides for getting 1000 times more bandwidth per month for the same price, our San Diego server is in a data centre that is able to withstand terrorists with airoplanes flying into it.
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Its not hetzner charging these prices - it is them covering telkoms piracy. That's what they said of the World Trade Centre. If hetzner have downtime they have my sympathy - if they go down they have a serious problem (not mickey mouse stuff but would be good to know exactly what the problem was -.) Wasn't it Feb we had massive power failures in CT? Yes, redundancy is nice and I would think hetzner could provide this - at a price. There is no comparison between SA hosting and US hosting - telkom is the major factor.

AFAIK only Visa, Google, etc run true redundancy - with zero downtime. Even the most bulletproof host can be brought down (difficult with google, or visa!?)

I don't believe the newspaper analogy is 'real' - expect some downtime, it's in the contract.
 
bluefox8080 said:
If you have an advertizing site that can lose up to R10000 in 2 just hours(haha I would like to see that)
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I lose up to 2.5 million rands worth of business in "just" 2 hours...
 
kilo39,

Could you please explain how you relate Hetzner's lack of redundancy to telecoms policy?

Of course redundancy comes at a price... guess what, we're paying it!

Yet Hetzner doesn't bother to have a UPS that lasts more than 20 minutes or even its own generator.

They also didn't bother to inform customers of the outage until 4 hours later.

They boast 24/7 emergency response, 24x7 Network Monitoring and 24x7 Security Surveillance. Yet somehow no notification until 4 hours later!

The fact of the matter is that Hetzner is getting away with a substandard service at above standard pricing.

We've only been operating a couple of months, and didn't lose 10,000 rand. I'll have to pay overtime to our systems developer as he had to get out of bed at 10:30 to get everything running on the server and check all logs. And our loss from eCommerce sales was probably only about R500.

Sure, we can pay more money for having super duper servers, but the fact is, Hetzner promises everything we need for our service. It's when they don't keep their promise and think that a verbal apology is enough, that I get worried.

Any lawyers here keen for a class action suit? It's not just a a matter of us getting our R1000 or so lost rands back, but it's actually a matter of principle to show South African businesses they can't continue to get away with failures and mere verbal apologies.

Henk
 
kilo39 said:
Its not hetzner charging these prices - it is them covering telkoms piracy. That's what they said of the World Trade Centre. If hetzner have downtime they have my sympathy - if they go down they have a serious problem (not mickey mouse stuff but would be good to know exactly what the problem was -.) Wasn't it Feb we had massive power failures in CT? Yes, redundancy is nice and I would think hetzner could provide this - at a price. There is no comparison between SA hosting and US hosting - telkom is the major factor.

AFAIK only Visa, Google, etc run true redundancy - with zero downtime. Even the most bulletproof host can be brought down (difficult with google, or visa!?)

I don't believe the newspaper analogy is 'real' - expect some downtime, it's in the contract.
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They claim to have diesel generators and backups. Wtf? Their UPS's only last 20 minutes? The company I'm at runs 500 PC's, when the power goes down, their UPS kicks in, supplies all PC's with power for at least 1 hour, but it doesn't even get that much, after 0.8ms (or something) the diesel generator kicks in.

Now, if they had said Diesel generator, they wouldn't experience ANY power outage. Next excuse please... I'm getting sick and tired of people's ignorance and inability to comprehend the fact that a "top notch" hosting provider can't provide **** if they TRIED.
 
false advertising

Hetzner's website states the following:

"Data Centre:
• 100 Mbit Redundant Network
• 99,9% Uptime
• UPS & Diesel Generator
• 24x7 Network Monitoring
• 24x7 Security Surveillance
• Biometric Access
• Security Guards
• CCTV cameras
• Fire detection"

Isn't it False Advertising if they list Diesel Generator there, if they don't actually have their own Diesel Generator? (They share a generator with the Great Westerford building, over which they have no control)

Where are the lawyers???

Henk
 
w1z4rd said:
how?
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In trade if my servers are down or alternatively, Telkom. Thats why we have redundant lines + Diesel Generator + UPS. Worst Case scenario the data centre goes down, which is never longer than a normal restart of a server.
 
Could you please explain how you relate Hetzner's lack of redundancy to telecoms policy?
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Was more relating price - the prices hetzner charge are largely due to telkoms data charges.
Of course redundancy comes at a price... guess what, we're paying it!
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Have you looked at telkoms hosting prices lately?! (I almost fell off my chair.)
The fact of the matter is that Hetzner is getting away with a substandard service at above standard pricing.
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The price thing is just not relative (to any comprehendable realworld reality.)
Sure, we can pay more money for having super duper servers, but the fact is, Hetzner promises everything we need for our service. It's when they don't keep their promise and think that a verbal apology is enough, that I get worried.
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It would be good to know exactly what the issue was - personally I don't provide mission critical services - anybody who does should be aware how weak any given chain is... hetzner go down, it's happened before. Believe hetzner could provide multiple redundancy - they don't(?) - perhaps the customers have never demanded it before - for sure - this will cost and essentially undoable in the SA environment??
Any lawyers here keen for a class action suit? It's not just a a matter of us getting our R1000 or so lost rands back, but it's actually a matter of principle to show South African businesses they can't continue to get away with failures and mere verbal apologies.
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The world is changing - in more "advanced" places it has changed already - watch Paul Strassman, Google: Model for the Systems Architecture of the Future

Amazing and brilliant.

(and damn telkom their caps, dogslow 3rd world service)
 
AcidRaZor: If you realy lose 2.5 million rands every 2 hours if your site goes down then you should just invest in your own datacentre there chief. I'm sure inbetween snorting coke off of expensive french hookers and smoking imported cubans that you light with R100 notes you can get some techie to set you up with a fat data pipe and moerse UPS.

As for hetzp0 going down, I have been hosting with them for a while and except for spending literally a total of 5 minutes with them on the phone to fix some issue that would take telkom a couple of weeks (were I hosting with them) they have never let me down.


BTW, from what I have read, only one of their 3 hosting facilities went down due to some unforseen "maintenance" and as far as their bandwidth prices go, just do what a buddy of mine did and have them move your site to their german servers with HUGE bandwidth for the same amount that you pay to host in SA. Same great service - much more value.
 
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hobotron said:
I bet AcidRaZor is the kind of idiot that calls their helpdesk with the first words out of his mouth being "My email doesnt work, is your server down?"
:D :D :D :p
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hobotron, how much are you willing to bet, snotnose?

I'd bet you 500 bucks on that statement, and raise a further 1000 or so that you are the idiot...

And here's why:

1. AcidRaZor's co DO have their own Data Centre, if you were smart/intelligent/receptive enough you would clearly have seen that.

2. Because you've had a great service from Hetzner 'in general' is not an excuse for them ****ing up. It's like saying Zuma shouldn't be blamed too badly for rape because overall most people think he's a 'great guy'.

3. Good on calling AcidRazor "chief". Nice attempt at being condescending. Go read some of his earlier posts. Now go and count his posts on this forum... then count yours... Can you count?

4. Another stupid idea is to move servers overseas. We have overseas servers AND local servers. We need local servers for local clients and we need overseas servers for overseas clients, we pay for both.

So, do us all a favour, try running your own online business for a while on a shoestring budget, grow up a little, get a bit more insight and then come back to the forums when you're actually smart enough to not call someone else an idiot, cos that was really just stupid.
 
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