Server Downtime Mon 21st April

[UnlimitedMB]

While we had scheduled an upgrade for today a few days earlier and made a post about it, the downtime experienced today was unrelated to this.

Earlier today the power strip our servers were connected to failed, the problem was fixed an the server powered back up.

Unfortunately as we have multiple servers which connect to each other on bootup there was an unforseen problem, if this connection could not be made the boot process stops.

This created a catch22 if all servers happened to go down at the same time, as each server started up, it could not connect to the others and froze, not only could you not reach it, we could not use the remote administrator interface to login to it ourselves.

We had to wait for someone to physically goto the server and use a disc to edit the configuration and start it up.

We have resolved this problem so that it will not happen again.

I have been trying to resolve this since being notified of it immediately, so believe me it was as stressful for me as it was for you not being able to access the server.

We are sorry for the inconvenience.

[usmranks]

Ah, alright. Glad to see it's back up.

[parkook]

Hi, I have purchased a tiny package for a month just to see how is your service and I think it's not quite good! because I just uploaded some pictures of my products to sell on ebay and today I had 2 of them for auction that just ended about 4 hours ago and no one bid them because there was no pictures for these products and your server was down from around 12 noon (London) till 12 middnight, don't you think you need to at least email us and let us know about this, minimum one week ahead?

Good I just started to do this business and this happened to just 2 of my products and another good thing is that I have just bought one month of your tiny package otherwise I think I would sue you guys.

Any way could you please let me know how many server down/crash you have had last year and how many are you going to have for the next 12 months?

[zidian]

The time('u') function and probably others are messed up. Their current configuration is sometime last year. Could you fix this?

[Victor01469]

Read this, an excerpt from our TOS:

UnlimitedMB.com is provided on an "as is," "as available" basis without warranties of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to warranties of title or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No oral advice or written information given by UnlimitedMB.com nor its affiliates, nor any of its officers, directors, employees, agents, providers, merchants, sponsors, licensers, or the like, shall create a warranty; nor shall you rely on any such information or advice.

Under no circumstances shall UnlimitedMB.com or any other party involved in creating, producing, or distributing UnlimitedMB.com be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages that result from the use of or inability to use UnlimitedMB.com, including but not limited to reliance by you on any information obtained from UnlimitedMB.com or that result from mistakes, omissions, interruptions, deletion of files or email, errors, defects, viruses, delays in operation or transmission, or any failure of performance, whether or not resulting from acts of God, communications failure, theft, destruction, or unauthorized access to UnlimitedMB.com's records, programs, or services. You hereby acknowledge that this paragraph shall apply to all content, merchandise, and services available through UnlimitedMB.com. Due to the fact that some states do not allow the exclusion or limitation of liability for consequential or incidental damages, in such states liability is limited to the fullest extent permitted by law.

We are not liable for interruptions of service, and although they happen very rarely around ULMB, you cannot sue us.

We're sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused you, but many times we cannot forewarn our members of downtime, due to the fact that it is on the most part unexpected.

As in the past, we ALWAYS give a good amount of time notice to all members via the forum when we will be expecting downtime. As of yet we provide no e-mail support, although that service may come in the future, probably to paid customers.

Also, you asked for the statistics of our downtime, here they are:

UnlimitedMB (www.unlimitedmb.com)

Since: July 8, 2007
Outages: 22
Total Uptime: 99.620%
Monitor: Every 5 minutes
Last Check: April 21, 2008 at 6:52 PM PST+2.0

Year Outages / Checks Uptime
2008 10 / 31916 99.455%
2007 12 / 50488 99.725%

Year Month Outages / Checks Uptime Downtime
2008 April 1 / 5898 98.661% 1.339%
2008 March 0 / 8848 100.000% 0.000%
2008 February 4 / 8313 99.735% 0.265%
2008 January 5 / 8857 99.176% 0.824%
2007 December 1 / 8905 99.989% 0.011%
2007 November 5 / 8648 99.919% 0.081%
2007 October 3 / 8907 98.597% 1.403%
2007 September 0 / 8644 100.000% 0.000%
2007 August 1 / 8749 99.954% 0.046%
2007 July 2 / 6635 99.970% 0.030%

[UnlimitedMB]

The time on the server is set correctly.
PHP time function is relative to the server time zone.
To get the timezone you want to display read the php documentation on the time() and date() functions or make a thread in the scripting area.

[parkook]

Impressed!! what a quick replay! hope this is not because I said I would sue you? thanks any way

About the statistics:

Year Month Outages / Checks Uptime Downtime
2008 April 1 / 5898 98.661% 1.339%

Does 1.339% means 13:39 hours? if not could you please explain it?

Thanks

[UnlimitedMB]

It means 1.3% of the month so far. ie 1.3% of 22days*24hours.

I would say you were just unlucky to have downtime immediately after buying an account, it certainly isnt normal.

[zidian]

The time is OFF BY A YEAR.

There is no timezone 1 YEAR IN THE FUTURE!

Check it: http://www.gamedeviants.com/

[UnlimitedMB]

I say again. ITS YOUR SCRIPT.

# date
Tue Apr 22 01:57:57 UTC 2008

Edit: also time('u') is invalid.
time() does not have any parameters.
Read the php documentation.
Make a new thread in scripting if you do not understand.
Infractions will be given to any more off topic posts in here.

[Victor01469]

parkook, your question and response have been moved to the correct thread, which can be found here:
http://forum.unlimitedmb.com/showthread.php?t=2464