Moving question

Notes to and from the paowers that be
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Should we pack up and move to a better neighborhood?

Yes, this downtime has been severely unacceptable.
0
No votes
No, downtime is a part of internet life, and it doesn't happen that often.
8
44%
PAO goes down sometimes? I never noticed.
3
17%
I don't really care, as long as PAO doesn't go away completely.
7
39%
 
Total votes: 18

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jfugina
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Moving question

Post by jfugina »

So, just a quick poll. We had 5 hours of downtime today - probably more than we've had in the whole three years we've been around. And this is on the heels of an hour+ downtime on Friday night. So I'm wondering if it's time to consider moving. At our host, we share severs with other websites. Probably hundreds others. So when any given one of us does something to hose the entire server, it impacts every web site on that server - not just ours.

But on the flip side, other than answering e-mails and responding to FB inquiries, I don't have to spend any time fixing whatever is broken. Our host has a policy of 99% uptime on the network, but ZERO uptime on the servers. Which means they could be down for days if it took that long to fix whatever the problem was, but.. they will eventually get it fixed. We could go with another host, but since I don't really have any references, I don't know if we'd get better or worse if we moved.

Here's the last option. Rob and I can host this ourselves. PAO would have dedicated server resources. So there wouldn't be anything that any other site could do to bring us down for any period of time. But, the other side of this is that Rob and I have full-time jobs, and Rob has two side jobs. And then there's the kids. So if something went down and we were hosting it, the response time could potentially be terrible. The host responds immediately, without me needing to report the problem. We would have to respond as soon as we could, which might not be for hours. Days, if we're on vacation.

So I'm torn. Please respond to the poll and let me know what you think. If we moved PAO, there would be at least a day, somewhere down the line, while things wouldn't be available because it would be moving day. And it would start with the forum, just like in the beginning, with other stuff like the gallery and the home page coming back up as I had time to do it. Really, what's the lesser of all evils here? Please vote.
Julie Fugina
#26 in the order of the PAO
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pamcook
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Re: Moving question

Post by pamcook »

I vote for whatever is easiest for you and Rob. Even though my hands were a bit shaky by the time the site came back up, I can make plans to occupy myself if we need to be "down" for an extended period of time.

Seriously (and I probably speak for several folks) - you know we love you and appreciate you. Do what's best for you.
:happy94:
Pam Cook #48
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azemigh
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Re: Moving question

Post by azemigh »

pamcook wrote:I vote for whatever is easiest for you and Rob. Even though my hands were a bit shaky by the time the site came back up, I can make plans to occupy myself if we need to be "down" for an extended period of time.

Seriously (and I probably speak for several folks) - you know we love you and appreciate you. Do what's best for you.
:happy94:
ditto here! including the shaky hands. :happy94:
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pbp908
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Re: Moving question

Post by pbp908 »

Stuff happens with websites. Do a few hours down out of how many in-service hours constitute a reason to move? I would hate for you and Robb to feel like you had to be tied to a server "just in case." You have lives. And what if you guys loose power, which is subject to happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime who provides a web-hosting service. Then the server is down and everyone is yelling at you. There are so many things that can go wrong between any 2 given points that don't even have anything to do with the provider. I just think that it would be more grief on you, but that's my humble opinion. It was just a little more noticeable today because a lot of us are having the after-Christmas down-time and able to check in more often.
Pam P.
Number 5 In the Order of PAO



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tlscrap
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Re: Moving question

Post by tlscrap »

I agree, as long as PAO is still around.... whatever is easier for you...

Heck, even FB goes down... frequently! :lol:
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PAO #8
Theresa Lee
Painesville, Ohio
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Monica
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Re: Moving question

Post by Monica »

azemigh wrote:
pamcook wrote:I vote for whatever is easiest for you and Rob. Even though my hands were a bit shaky by the time the site came back up, I can make plans to occupy myself if we need to be "down" for an extended period of time.

Seriously (and I probably speak for several folks) - you know we love you and appreciate you. Do what's best for you.
:happy94:
ditto here! including the shaky hands. :happy94:
Ditto from me too! If you feel the need to look into other potential hosts for the site, that would be up to you... but I would hate to see you and Rob be responsible for the whole shebang by hosting it from your house. Maybe sometime next year those of us who are tech-savvy (that would NOT be me!) could poke around and look @ other potential hosts for the site.
No. 28 in the Order of PAO
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jfugina
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Re: Moving question

Post by jfugina »

You guys really are the best! :happy94: Being in the web site business, I get that downtime happens - I'm more sympathetic than most, because I spend most of my days on the service end and I'm the one getting the call having to fix things. But 15 minutes, give or take, is not something that upsets me. One hour irritated me a lot. Five hours is downright inexcusable. Five hours is something someone in my department could lose their job over. That's the kind of issue that causes people to work for 18 hours straight, and that's only after they brought up the hot spare and got people back in business.

If I were running a store using this host, and this happened only two days after Christmas, the lost revenue could be potentially devastating. Thankfully, PAO isn't in the business of making money, so it's not a hit to anyone's livelihood. I just couldn't believe how their canned response was that I was welcome to take my business elsewhere. :-o
Julie Fugina
#26 in the order of the PAO
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pbp908
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Re: Moving question

Post by pbp908 »

Then maybe the answer IS to take the business elsewhere. But certainly not to your house for a ton of aggravation. If you had no life outside of PAO or you had an office and someone to back you up, then yes, do it. But you have a family, you have a full time job, and you'd like to spend spare time playing, not fixing. It may be time to look for a new host and tell them to shove those five hours of down time where the sun don't shine.
Pam P.
Number 5 In the Order of PAO



http://www.pamsmeanderingthoughts.blogspot.com
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troublesmom
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Re: Moving question

Post by troublesmom »

I have to agree with Pam on this.
pbp908 wrote:Then maybe the answer IS to take the business elsewhere. But certainly not to your house for a ton of aggravation. If you had no life outside of PAO or you had an office and someone to back you up, then yes, do it. But you have a family, you have a full time job, and you'd like to spend spare time playing, not fixing. It may be time to look for a new host and tell them to shove those five hours of down time where the sun don't shine.
Cheryl
Myrtle Beach
#59 in order PAO
bethrich

Re: Moving question

Post by bethrich »

So, Julie, I'm going to weigh in with a bit of insider info. ;)

I would agree that you hosting it would be a pain and we shouldn't inflict that on you and Rob.

I'm pretty sure the current host is in earthquake country and I don't think they have a redundant data center in a less volatile area. They've also had some fairly nasty reviews about declining service and performance. I think they've gotten just a bit too cocky, thinking they have the world by the tail.

On the flip side, moving PAO would be a major pain. I wouldn't consider it lightly.

If you decide to move it, please take into consideration disaster recovery. It might cost more, but I know I would be happy to pitch in and I know others would, too. I'd also be happy to assist in any way I can with R&D.
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pugmom
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Re: Moving question

Post by pugmom »

bethrich wrote: If you decide to move it, please take into consideration disaster recovery. It might cost more, but I know I would be happy to pitch in and I know others would, too. I'd also be happy to assist in any way I can with R&D.
I don't know the first thing about hosts or servers or what it takes to run this place, but is someone paying out of their own pocket to keep this whole shebang going? I never thought of there being a cost involved and who is paying it, but I would be more than happy and willing to kick in my fair share - I certainly spend enough time here.

And, Julie, you're so sweet to even think about taking it over, but you have enough on your plate. We want you here creating and enjoying yourself.
Sue in NC (formerly known as Sue in Colorado)
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pamcook
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Re: Moving question

Post by pamcook »

Yes, there is a cost involved and Julie has been gracious to cover it (with some minor donations over the years).
Pam Cook #48
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jfugina
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Re: Moving question

Post by jfugina »

Thanks to everyone for weighing in. So here's a little more specific info about what would happen if I hosted this site: for starters, it would not be hosted on servers in our own house. Rob already has a host for his LLC, and those servers have two-coast redundancy. But what he rents are just the servers. No one but him manages the software on the servers. So if there's a hardware failure, he's covered. But if the problem is in software, it's nobody's problem but his. These servers cost per month what we pay for PAO hosting in a year. We could put PAO on those, though we'd probably need to run a few things by the accountant, since we deduct the expense of the servers on our taxes.

Then there's the cloud. Rob also has a few things going on with Amazon's cloud services. From a DR perspective, we'd be set. But again, it would be more expensive than the hosting is today, and we'd still have to manage all of the software. However, Rob's site has had an uptime of over 99% during the time he's been renting these servers. And software failure has never been the issue. He is of the opinion that all of PAO's issues have been as a result of the servers being shared among hundreds of clients (or more) and that it's probably never once been anything that we did that broke the software. Therefore, he thinks the likelihood of a software failure on one of our rented servers would be near zero.

The only other hosts I've found so far, basically have either the same exact setup as our host, so we probably wouldn't really be in better shape in the long run, or it's just server rental, like what Rob is proposing. The server rental is the solution that Rob thinks would run perfectly 99.9% of the time. But if there's ever a problem in software, then it's up to the two of us to troubleshoot and/or repair it, and we couldn't guarantee an immediate response.

Lastly, as far as DR goes currently, we take nightly backups of the forum, the homepage, and the gallery. So if our host literally fell off the face of the earth, we could probably get PAO back up on our own servers within a few days - it would take longer for the domain name to transfer than it would for us to stand up a site and restore from backup. And we'd lose a few posts, but not more than 24 hours worth.

Anyway, Rob and I are continuing to contemplate our options. I do believe that the service at our host has been getting quite a bit worse lately, and will probably continue to decline. Perhaps we'll use the rest of PAO's 4th year (we just renewed in November) to put together a plan to get things transferred before the next renewal. That is, unless things just get unbearable, and then we'll have to figure out something sooner. :angry48:
Julie Fugina
#26 in the order of the PAO
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Laurie
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Re: Moving question

Post by Laurie »

tlscrap wrote:I agree, as long as PAO is still around.... whatever is easier for you...

Heck, even FB goes down... frequently! :lol:

I agree
Laurie Bennett #118 on POA
North Carolina
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