even tho i only have few customers...i alway worry that servermatrix tech may unplug my server without contact me like so many story on the dedicated server forum or server got hacked or some other stupid thing that may happened to bring my server down. i'm alway on outlook checking email non stop to see if anyone need help even when i try to go and do my thing. i'll be thinking about checking email, server...

is this what burn-out feel like...

If your provider or customers make you feel that insecure, then I believe the question should be: "What provider will help me sleep better at night".

It's a company slogan in the making ;)

Simon

If thats what a burnout feels like then you are lucky =P It only gets worse bud, part of the fun of being self employeed. Live it up :)

hah simon you couldnt be more right. You cant put a price tag on a good nites sleep :)

Originally posted by IHSL
If your provider or customers make you feel that insecure, then I believe the question should be: "What provider will help me sleep better at night".

It's a company slogan in the making ;)

Simon

that is true but even if you get all that...do you still worry a bit? i alway feel nervious when it come to my own business.

it's like if i work for someone else, if something happened at least i know the worst thing to happened is me getting fired but with your own business...i get all nervous about the unknow. what will happened to my biz image, am i getting sue...etc.

blah, sorry for the rant. i just get worry that's all.

I never can't sleep because I'm worried. I have trouble sleeping because I keep thinking about what else I could be doing to further my company, thinking of plans for the future, etc. and not getting enough sleep.

Originally posted by jt2377
that is true but even if you get all that...do you still worry a bit? i alway feel nervious when it come to my own business.

it's like if i work for someone else, if something happened at least i know the worst thing to happened is me getting fired but with your own business...i get all nervous about the unknow. what will happened to my biz image, am i getting sue...etc.

blah, sorry for the rant. i just get worry that's all.
Being nervous is just human-nature.

Relax, set up a good monitoring system, and don't let it dominate your life :)

Simon

Originally posted by KarlZimmer
I never can't sleep because I'm worried. I have trouble sleeping because I keep thinking about what else I could be doing to further my company, thinking of plans for the future, etc. and not getting enough sleep.

:D

well said...that's what i need to do. how to make biz better.

Originally posted by KarlZimmer
I never can't sleep because I'm worried. I have trouble sleeping because I keep thinking about what else I could be doing to further my company, thinking of plans for the future, etc. and not getting enough sleep.

It's like you read my mind. Further advancement is the bug in my brain that prevents a good night's sleep sometimes. What goes around, comes around. Do everything legit, be honest, be yourself, and good things will happen.

At least that's what I tell myself :D

Originally posted by KarlZimmer
I never can't sleep because I'm worried. I have trouble sleeping because I keep thinking about what else I could be doing to further my company, thinking of plans for the future, etc. and not getting enough sleep.
Couldnt have said it better karl, I always keep myself up coming up with ideas for the future. I always end up not going to bed until say 2, and waking up at 5 and end up writing down stuff for an hour. I think the problem is you are more relaxed when you lay down then any other time of the day, so ideas flow more freely. The ideas (good or bad) will keep ya up :(

Originally posted by jt2377
even tho i only have few customers...i alway worry that servermatrix tech may unplug my server without contact me like so many story on the dedicated server forum or server got hacked or some other stupid thing that may happened to bring my server down. i'm alway on outlook checking email non stop to see if anyone need help even when i try to go and do my thing. i'll be thinking about checking email, server...

is this what burn-out feel like...

Well I dont worry much about the server. Instead of going to a cheap provider and getting a server I'd constantly have to worry about, I went to reputable provider, paid a little more, and that gives me peace at night.

I do find myself constantly checking my help desk though. Even though I get cell phone notifications whenever someone places a ticket its as if I dont trust it, whether I get a cell phone notification or not I still find myself checking it at least once per hour. obsessed? hmmm....

Even when I pay someone to man the help desk so I can take a break for a day or two I still check in to make sure they are answering the tickets correctly and promptly. I'm pathetic.

EDIT: Sorry. Double post.

Originally posted by Moni-Q
Well I dont worry much about the server. Instead of going to a cheap provider and getting a server I'd constantly have to worry about, I went to reputable provider, paid a little more, and that gives me peace at night.

I do find myself constantly checking my help desk though. Even though I get cell phone notifications whenever someone places a ticket its as if I dont trust it, whether I get a cell phone notification or not I still find myself checking it at least once per hour. obsessed? hmmm....

Even when I pay someone to man the help desk so I can take a break for a day or two I still check in to make sure they are answering the tickets correctly and promptly. I'm pathetic.
Considering the competitive nature of hosting and how easy it is to switch providers these days you are hardly pathetic. You run your business how you want it run, and you make sure your techs are answering your questions the way you want them answered. Having a tight grip on your business and being pathetic is two different ball games.

Originally posted by Moni-Q
Well I dont worry much about the server. Instead of going to a cheap provider and getting a server I'd constantly have to worry about, I went to reputable provider, paid a little more, and that gives me peace at night.

I do find myself constantly checking my help desk though. Even though I get cell phone notifications whenever someone places a ticket its as if I dont trust it, whether I get a cell phone notification or not I still find myself checking it at least once per hour. obsessed? hmmm....

Even when I pay someone to man the help desk so I can take a break for a day or two I still check in to make sure they are answering the tickets correctly and promptly. I'm pathetic.

i did my research on service provider as for cheap dedicated server SM was rated pretty high up with EV1.

i don't have much money and going with SM allow me to start small.

i don't use cellphone for email but whenever i got a chance to check email. i do it in a heart beat and alway thinking about checking email, checking email...it's like there is a voice in my head.

most customers are pretty cool they don't email me unless something is wrong but i still worry...

:(

I was the same way too until our server got hacked/unplugged a couple of times. Then I kinda got used to that :) There is nothing I can do to prevent an hdd failure or a customer launching a flood attack while I am asleep. So why worry? I'd rather learn to restore servers quickly. As long as you are in the business your server never goes down for the last time. There will always be more restores and angry customers.

I remember our first unplug/restore. It took us 2 days (!!!) to bring everything in order and we only had 100 customers. Last time we had to do a restore it took us 5 hours with 300 customers. I am convinced a restore can be done in under 2 hours for an average case scenario. In such case we won't even have to issue any refunds with our 99% uptime guarantee.

Some of you might say it's better to pay extra for better hardware/added security, but I disagree. Well, first of all we run a budget company here, so every $100/month counts. Second, I'd rather believe that whatever happens I can fix it than expect nothing to happen. Of course, if you can't fix it - you don't have as much freedom here as me ;)

i was like you a few months ago, now i pay for 24h monitoring support to my server provider, i suggest you doing this,

you have to sleep to be the number one !

Sleeping pills - they work wonders. I am not worried about the servers going down. Just have hundred of things going on at once & just never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything accomplished

Originally posted by jt2377
even tho i only have few customers...i alway worry that servermatrix tech may unplug my server without contact me like so many story on the dedicated server forum or server got hacked or some other stupid thing that may happened to bring my server down. i'm alway on outlook checking email non stop to see if anyone need help even when i try to go and do my thing. i'll be thinking about checking email, server...

is this what burn-out feel like...

You sound like a person just starting out, who cares very seriously about your business.

If you are not at the point where you can hire people to help, here is what you need:

1) You need a monitoring system. There are many that can do what you need, including 3rdparty solutions. A very good solution for a one-man hosting operation is IPSentry. ( http://ipsentry.com ) IPSentry is great for a one-man operation because it has MANY options for alerts, including setting off a ridiculously loud alarm on your computer to tell you something is down.

2) You need mobile email. Look into a smartphone. Get a reliable provider. (Palmone Treo 600 with SprintPCS is a good way to go) This will cost some money, but it is worth it. (And your wife will appreciate this taking the place of your loud a$$ alarm. :))

3) You need to immerse yourself in the knowledge of what you are doing. You must become comfortable with all aspects of your hosting environment. Not just comfortable, but better than one of these 'hire-an-admin' running around these forums. You must aspire to this and reach it, or you'll never be able to relax. Once you have 'been there, done that' with everything, it'll be a lot easier for you.

4) Simply Sleep, which is a product from the same folks who make Tylenol is a non-habit-forming sleep aid that does wonders when you get the jitters and can't sleep. I've been there myself. Two of those will not only put you to sleep, but they don't knock you so far out that you can't get up and answer your loud a$$ alarm. Also, if you're freaking out, taking one of them instead of two will calm you right down.

I've been where you are and I was never a 'one-man show', so I can only imagine the stress you put yourself under.

Try and do what you can to make yourself relax. Hire people as soon as you can afford to, and remember to spend as much time with your family (even if you aren't married...remember that your time with your parents and other family is not infinite). That's what's really important.

Good luck. :)

Dont worry.... If something happens it happens its all in how you deal with it. You cannot change the fact that something has happened all you can do is have a plan in place for handling it.

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
I was the same way too until our server got hacked/unplugged a couple of times. Then I kinda got used to that :) There is nothing I can do to prevent an hdd failure or a customer launching a flood attack while I am asleep. So why worry? I'd rather learn to restore servers quickly. As long as you are in the business your server never goes down for the last time. There will always be more restores and angry customers.

I remember our first unplug/restore. It took us 2 days (!!!) to bring everything in order and we only had 100 customers. Last time we had to do a restore it took us 5 hours with 300 customers. I am convinced a restore can be done in under 2 hours for an average case scenario. In such case we won't even have to issue any refunds with our 99% uptime guarantee.

Some of you might say it's better to pay extra for better hardware/added security, but I disagree. Well, first of all we run a budget company here, so every $100/month counts. Second, I'd rather believe that whatever happens I can fix it than expect nothing to happen. Of course, if you can't fix it - you don't have as much freedom here as me ;)

hey! good point. a well planned disaster plan is better than a live box. i can see your point because there is no way for us small host to get newest gears for flood atttack, ddos, hack...etc. so better to have a backup and restore it right away then spending money on latest security gears.

thank good suggestion. i'm going to research on backup and restore. care to give me some pointers?

Originally posted by pueblosnet
i was like you a few months ago, now i pay for 24h monitoring support to my server provider, i suggest you doing this,

you have to sleep to be the number one !

i would but i'm too small to justified the cost of using third party monitoring service. the money that i earn right now just enought to pay for the server and getting ready to get another one.

i still work part time. ;)

p.s. the money that my biz is earning...my initial investment was one month plus the very first month for setup cost.

Originally posted by Andrew
You sound like a person just starting out, who cares very seriously about your business.

If you are not at the point where you can hire people to help, here is what you need:

1) You need a monitoring system. There are many that can do what you need, including 3rdparty solutions. A very good solution for a one-man hosting operation is IPSentry. ( http://ipsentry.com ) IPSentry is great for a one-man operation because it has MANY options for alerts, including setting off a ridiculously loud alarm on your computer to tell you something is down.

2) You need mobile email. Look into a smartphone. Get a reliable provider. (Palmone Treo 600 with SprintPCS is a good way to go) This will cost some money, but it is worth it. (And your wife will appreciate this taking the place of your loud a$$ alarm. :))

3) You need to immerse yourself in the knowledge of what you are doing. You must become comfortable with all aspects of your hosting environment. Not just comfortable, but better than one of these 'hire-an-admin' running around these forums. You must aspire to this and reach it, or you'll never be able to relax. Once you have 'been there, done that' with everything, it'll be a lot easier for you.

4) Simply Sleep, which is a product from the same folks who make Tylenol is a non-habit-forming sleep aid that does wonders when you get the jitters and can't sleep. I've been there myself. Two of those will not only put you to sleep, but they don't knock you so far out that you can't get up and answer your loud a$$ alarm. Also, if you're freaking out, taking one of them instead of two will calm you right down.

I've been where you are and I was never a 'one-man show', so I can only imagine the stress you put yourself under.

Try and do what you can to make yourself relax. Hire people as soon as you can afford to, and remember to spend as much time with your family (even if you aren't married...remember that your time with your parents and other family is not infinite). That's what's really important.

Good luck. :)

thank you for your advice. i do care a lot about my business because i want to be free from working for someone else. i'm really on budget so some of your suggestion will not work for me. heck, i can't even afford to put ad on google or any other hosting directory. not that i need it because i'm aiming different market.

didnt you say you were with servermatrix?.... if so first thing you could do is fill out your escalation procedure in orbit... we had our server pulled because we missed an email because our profile wasnt up to date but they called me as they pulled it and we got it resolved (thx abuse dept) in under an hours time.

Originally posted by abstracthost
didnt you say you were with servermatrix?.... if so first thing you could do is fill out your escalation procedure in orbit... we had our server pulled because we missed an email because our profile wasnt up to date but they called me as they pulled it and we got it resolved (thx abuse dept) in under an hours time.

hi, thank you. i didn't know servermatrix have that.

Originally posted by jt2377
thank you for your advice. i do care a lot about my business because i want to be free from working for someone else. i'm really on budget so some of your suggestion will not work for me. heck, i can't even afford to put ad on google or any other hosting directory. not that i need it because i'm aiming different market.

If that is the only reason you have to make your business work, you will not be successful. If you don't invest wisely in your business, your business will whither and die. I've given you the learned advice of a grizzled veteran who started with next to nothing. Do with it what you will. Ain't my job to talk you into taking my advice.

Originally posted by Andrew
If that is the only reason you have to make your business work, you will not be successful. If you don't invest wisely in your business, your business will whither and die. I've given you the learned advice of a grizzled veteran who started with next to nothing. Do with it what you will. Ain't my job to talk you into taking my advice.

please don't take it the wrong way. it just some of your suggestion may cost more than what i can afford now. i really appericated everyone's suggestion on this thread.

Nah, I know what you mean...

But you've got to scrape it together and get it done. How much is sleep worth? Personally, I think it's worth a lot! As an accomplished sleeper, I am very qualified to make that assessment. lol :)

If you were a programmer, you could trade the time it takes to program what you need to monitor your server, but you're not, so you've gotta shell out some bucks.

What if your customers knew we were having this conversation? That's no good at all. If you get the monitoring program and forget the phone for a while (don't leave the house till you get the phone...lol), do that...but do SOMETHING if you are really serious about making things work.

One thing that I can definitely tell you is that I had already researched these things and found a way to do everything I needed to do before I even started with a business plan. Before you went into hosting, you should have figured all these things out. Not to knock you, but what did you think you were going to do to figure out if servers were down?

Hi!
I, too, am in the same boat. I have reseller accounts..but are not ready for customer #1 yet. Today was an adventure in DNS and I now have *some* of my DNS subcontracted with UltraDNS.
I have no control of nameservers...and have already had problems...*happily* before customer #1 :) The last week has been a adventure in how complex a setup I can build, what can go wrong and how I prevent customers from even knowing server #5 is no longer with the world of the living. It's not easy..but you can do a lot of fancy stuff with DNS..so I've done it.
Cheap? Nope. Easy? Nope. It's not complete yet...so I'll have more to share when it is up and working...but I think I've got a way to do complete server fallover...to the customer..it looks like one server. It's not..it's actually three. :) Well..got to get back yo work...just thought I would add this here. Single points of failure...if you cannot completely eliminate them...at least do what you can to minimize them. I would never have box at servermatrix..they said there was no way I could have two NIC cards in one server. Next....! It should be said that most customers are more understanding than you might imagine..and if you have been giving them great tech support and great service...get some sleep. :) Things happen.

Bryon

Sleep? What's that? I've heard rumors about this mystical thing known as sleep!!!

In the very beginning I was very nervous and stressed out about uptime, server being hacked, or a hardware failure. Proper disaster recover planning and more experience under my belt lets me sleep a little better now.

Maybe you should get someone to cover as a tech support

jt2377, you have chosen an industry that tends to get under one's skin. It is very easy to let it take over your life. After all, it is a 24/7 business. And your customers' businesses/sites constantly rely on your performance. Not an easy business, to be sure.

But as others have said, you need to put some things in place that will give you more peace of mind so you can get some zzzzzzzs. Some monitoring tools sound like one of the best "first steps".

I have sleep apnea, so I never get good sleep anyways. Heck, I take my laptop to bed with me. When an email comes in at 3 AM, I'm replying within minutes. :D

Vito

In all seriousness and obviousness -- you can't run a business on
your own if it is growing, and if you try you'll burn out and probably
do a poor job at trying to run it in the first place. Hiring staff to handle
tech support at day/night is smart, that way you can focus on growing
your business rather than running it.

However, to argue the above, iof you really can't take a little stress and work through it then you should be working for someone else. It's not just in webhosting, most managers sleep very little at night and tend to live off coffee, it comes with being a manager, that's why some people are and some choose not to be, if you can't take the stress, get out before you go into melt down.

Sorry if the above sounds harsh, but i'm being realistic for you.

Nick,

I disagree. Between chugging gallons of coffee and can after can of red-bull,
your body will eventually give in. My personal record was two and a half days
straight, after which I needed a long rest. Killing yourself to manage a
business is, in reality, harmful to the business as you'll burn out faster...

::takes a sip of redbull::

The fine folks at Acunett Server Management are the reason I can sleep at night. Between their expertise, the Planet's monitoring, and having a detailed escalation procedure I'm sleeping like a baby.

Sometimes I can't sleep well and am dreaming **** about my servers beeing down and when I wake up I always think: Was that a dream now or is it really down etc. So I stand up earlier and stuff. My provider deals very professionally with abuse or billing issues and stuff like that but you never know: A hard drive might break down...the server getting hacked etc. I have had dedicated servers since 1999 and have too many crappy experiences.

I sleep fine as long as server monitoring (alertra) does not call :)

Originally posted by sightz
The fine folks at Acunett Server Management are the reason I can sleep at night. Between their expertise, the Planet's monitoring, and having a detailed escalation procedure I'm sleeping like a baby.

about the planet's escalation procedure...since it's my very first server...what do you guy put in escalation procedure? can you guy give me a pointer on how to wirte a proper escalation procedure?

thank

Originally posted by jt2377
about the planet's escalation procedure...since it's my very first server...what do you guy put in escalation procedure? can you guy give me a pointer on how to wirte a proper escalation procedure?

thank

nevermind someone give me their escalation procedure as template on servermatrix fourm.

to Andrew...i didn't think that far when i started. i have everything plan out for only few but now i got some more. i'm probably going to stop taking customer for a while and think about what you suggest.

Hi!
I think that is a good move. I'm about to "go live" (whoohoo...is that not nifty) with phase 1 on Monday. I have three different server monitoring services that will monitor all my servers...and then I'll see if the load/redundant fallover server really works by...you guessed it..stopping on of the servers and see if the second server takes over. I'm at least one full week away from even starting local advertising...and prolly will not start taking customers til the first of the year. I hate to wait...but now...at least I can afford it. I may sign on several "test" customers (People I know) before then...but...it's too close to Christmas to do any good. Oh wells.

Bryon
I am not crazy...we prefer the term "sanity-challenged". :)

Not only guys in the hosting business get no sleep :)

I came up with a nice system to let me sleep in something close to peace. What you need is a email at a reliable host (preferably your ISP). Now, sign up for alertra or some other server monitoring system and get alerts sent to that address.

Next get a email monitor that checks emails every so often (mine is set to 10 minutes), this way if the server goes down or someone emails the support department you can get it to play a song. Make sure its a loud song and the player is on repeat or you might sleep through it ;)

So there you go, this solution works very well so far, luckily very few customers use anything but live support, I ussually get a good 7-9 hours of undisturbed sleep. Of course If your support department gets alot of spam this might not be the best idea :P So now you all know how to become a complete hermit who lives eats and sleeps in front of a computer :D

After a while I had to put my foot down and make a conscious decision not to let it take over my life. So far, I havent had much progress :D, but what Ive been doing is forcing myself to at least take two hour breaks sometimes, even if its just to stop by the supermarket and see the world outside once more, of course I bring my cell phone and PDA with me, you know, just in case. :)

Originally posted by vito


I have sleep apnea, so I never get good sleep anyways. Heck, I take my laptop to bed with me. When an email comes in at 3 AM, I'm replying within minutes. :D

Vito

I'd do the same but I don't think that would go very well with the woman. And secondly, I don't think I would like to wake up tens times in a night because of spam :P

But whatever works for you I guess!

Greetings:


Originally posted by jt2377
even tho i only have few customers...i alway worry that servermatrix tech may unplug my server without contact me like so many story on the dedicated server forum or server got hacked or some other stupid thing that may happened to bring my server down. i'm alway on outlook checking email non stop to see if anyone need help even when i try to go and do my thing. i'll be thinking about checking email, server...

is this what burn-out feel like...


Many hosting providers, even those who are one to two person shops, sleep at night IF they did their planning and executation of those plans correct; AND they monitor their plans for changes that need to be made.

Also, while no one can every guarantee a server is not hacked, over the past nine years we've seen too many providers think being hacked will never happen to them.

--- I only have x customers; who would want to hack me?
--- None of my customers do ecommerce, who would want to hack me?
--- My server(s) are at _______, they are a reputable company.
--- Whatever

Only to find out that every one plugged into the Internet is a target.

Then we, and others in our industry, are the one's getting frantic calls at all hours -- can you save me now? Can you save any data now? I'm going to go out of business if I cannot rescue my customer's data!!!

Then there are those who will get their server hardened -- sometimes by very reputable companies, and other times by cookie-cutter jobs done by the same type of people who call themselves webdesigners after their first job using FrontPage or those who oversell like cracy --- and think that just because their server is hardened, they are safe (thinking all server hardening sare the same or that if the "products" used for hardening are all the same.

Not realizing that server hardening must be done throughout every single day of the year for the life of the equipment as long as it is plugged into the Internet. And that a server hardening done incorrectly can be as bad as not having been hardened.

In any event, do your home work, do your planning, execute your plans, monitor your plans, and make changes as appropriate.

Thank you.

At first I was the same way when we opened up shop and my customers noticied it right off. Now-a-days I won't go to bed until the issue is resolved by our admins. I am up on MSN until it is. I believe in good communication with the customer therefore I make sure I am avaliable. The rest of the day thinks work like a charm, tech support typically answers in 10-20 minutes server admins are monitoring the server (we have 5 different monitoring tools, ya know in case 1 fails ;) ) and customers are happy which makes me happy thus allowing for good sleeps :)

I'm the same way too ... although my only server was down only once for the last 6 months.Than I came up with a solution, I wrote a simple php script which is hosted on another computer.It checks my server every 15 mins. for ping/http and ftp responses and if its down the script sends me an sms.Needless to say the sms melody on my mobile phone is the longest one :)

@valmark:

How do you make the script send an SMS ? What kind of Gateway do you use ?

I'm using my local mobile providers option for email to sms, which is free for me. Let say your mobile number is 123456789 and your mobile phone provider website is mymobile.my you just need to send email to 123456789@mymobile.my

It's pretty simple, I'm not much of a programmer and I dont know how to integrate other sms gateways with my script.But If you know any, which is free, so I can test with them I could customize it for you.

Hm... I wonder if my provider offers that feature... I will look into it. Thanks for letting me know.

I could advice you to hire someone. Not hire: just get any friend who could do admin job. Get more friends. You cannot work and pull all cross alone. Just get something to share your ideas with and you'll see how easy things can be when troubles are vigesimal into 2-50 parts. I think thats the easiest way to go... its tottaly crazy to do everything by yourself.
Good luck. Hope you'll spand on your foot with sleep.


P.S dont forget to read Dale Carnegie "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living"

Originally posted by thomas.smith
Hm... I wonder if my provider offers that feature... I will look into it. Thanks for letting me know.

Most providers should. I have an email alias set up which forwards mail to my phone number @sprintpcs.com, and it rings my cell phone.

The game plan of you:

1. Find a reliable way to monitor your servers, so even if you're sleeping you have peace of mind that should something go wrong you'll be aware of it.

2. Get some sleep and don't worry about whether or not your servers are "about to be hacked". If a hacker is determined enough, he will hack into any server. This is a fundamental law. Worrying about what isn't happening at the moment wastes brain cycles that could be used to bolster your business.

When our company put this into action early on, our business grew....we had more time and energy to concentrate on what really matters - bringing in more clients, and supporting the ones you already have. You can't do that on two hours sleep and pot of coffee.

"Dale Carnegie "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living"

Yes highly recommend this book, if you're a chronic worrier.