I'm a reseller with ResellerZoom on their advanced plan. I can't say enough about how great they are. However, there is one problem they refuse to confront and I'm wondering if the poroblem is just due to how servers work or if it is related to them.

The problem is that many times a day, the sites on the server are locked out. A "server cannot be found" message is displayed. After a certain amount of time (usually about two minutes), the site will display fine. Each time I contact RZ about this they say the server was not down so they see it as a non-problem. I know that shared servers will exhibit this behavior if they get too busy but the number of times this is happening seems to be growning. Is that the problem here? Have they overloaded the servers? Do other hosts have this problem? My customers are complaining about not being able to connect to their sites and, with RZ not helping, I'm afraid it will cause me to lose some customers.

Is anyone else having such problems, be it RZ or some other host?

If it was just you having the trouble I would say it may be an ISP issue, but if all your clients are experiencing the trouble there is an issue with RZ's server.

It is hard to speculate what may be wrong, because it could be many things. The server may reach the max clients allowed or the load may be too high for you to connect in time and a timeout is sent. The only one that will be able to help you is RZ that has access to the server.

Thanks. That is what I thought. Unfortunately, RZ won't address the issue.

I don't know if this is the same issue or not? I am on the RZ Dawson server. Two or three times now in the last 3 weeks I have had my sites go down. Meaning the http access is no longer available. During the outtage I still had FTP access and I could ping the server with no timeouts. Everytime I submitted a trouble ticket and was told the server was fine. The last time I asked them to check the logs and they said there was nothing in the logs to indicate a problem. And they said that if the Apache server rebooted then my sites would only be down for a minute or so. Not the 5-10 minutes I experienced. I know I am not going crazy because I got a report from my website monitor company informing me about the outtage.

I am not sure what to make of all this yet.

mhh that's odd
if you can access ftp, ping the server that would mean port 80 for HTTP is down

if they claim it's up
you should try to telnet port 80 of the server. if you get a reply then the server isn't down and it's related to something else.


what website monitor do you use ? because a lot of the free ones aren't very reliable all the time. I've had notifications myself saying servers are down while in fact they are up and running.

I've had them go down that long a few times. They tell me the server had to be restarted. But the problem I am having occurs many times a day but for just a few minutes each time. I think, and maybe someone can ccorrect me on this, that if the server is busy it will deny access to the site. That is not considered downtime since the server is not technically down. And since a connection is not made, there is no record of it having failed. At least, that is how it was explained to me. So it seems that RZ is just overloading the servers. Too bad really since everything else with them is great.

but when you talk about time outs
are you simply checking it through your browser ?

or do you also ping the server?

because a lot of the free ones aren't very reliable all the time. I've had notifications myself saying servers are down while in fact they are up and running.

Yes, I use one of the freebies out there which is notoriously inaccurate. With that said, during the outtage I received the report. It just so happens that when the outtage occurred I was working on a shopping cart design for a potential customer. I was in the administraor control panel editing the template when......nothing but cannot access server errors occurred. I fired up an additional terminal window and was able to ping then I FTPed right into the box. The whole time I had no web page service. About the time that the http access came back online I received the outtage report.

if they claim it's up
you should try to telnet port 80 of the server. if you get a reply then the server isn't down and it's related to something else.

This is a great idea! I should have thought of it myself. Thanks.

but when you talk about time outs
are you simply checking it through your browser ?

or do you also ping the server?I'm checking it in a browser. It usually goes something like this. I'm in a control panel of some site making a change. When I click update, the browser says it can't connect. I open another browser window to check another site to see if they are all down, which they are. Then, before I can do much else, they are workng again. What would being able to ping gain me? I know the sites are down since it is not just me that is seeing it. I was on the phone once with a customer and he was explaining about a problem on his site. Sure enough, the server went out and we both had to wait the two minutes until the site came back.

able to surf to your site or sites through a browser or being able to ping them is a totally different thing!

pinging send ICMP packet to your server. (Sends signals to the server to see if it sends a return or an 'echo.' )

if you only test through your browser you:
1. don't know for sure if the server is really 100% down. when you surf you use software on the server. In case of a linux server you use APACHE most problably which connects to port 80 of the server. If apache is down you cannot surf sites on that server. but this doesn't actually mean the server is down.

2. if could be server related. either port 80 is down (so apache failed) or if you ping your server and you get time outs, then the server is down totally.


you have to test various things to be able to find the source of the problem.
it could also be your connection to the internet that's failing... don't forget that.

I'm checking it in a browser. It usually goes something like this. I'm in a control panel of some site making a change. When I click update, the browser says it can't connect. I open another browser window to check another site to see if they are all down, which they are. Then, before I can do much else, they are workng again. What would being able to ping gain me?
Pinging the server won't gain you much, a false positive is about the best you can hope for.

A server can have httpd go down due to an overload and you can still ping the server. Without seeing more information on the issue my best guess would be that httpd is crashing under heavy use and once the processes are all killed httpd is restarting automatically through the inbuilt mechanisms.

It's pretty easy to solve. All they have to do is monitor httpd correctly and see where the issue is starting, then take action accordingly. If it's a case of an overloaded server, as can happen with companies that oversell to such an extreme, then it's probable that you have to either accept it as part of doing business with a cheaper provider or move on to a different company.

Simon

I should have mentioned also some servers don't send ping replies so indeed you get a false idea...

A server can have httpd go down due to an overload and you can still ping the server. Without seeing more information on the issue my best guess would be that httpd is crashing under heavy use and once the processes are all killed httpd is restarting automatically through the inbuilt mechanisms.

It's pretty easy to solve. All they have to do is monitor httpd correctly and see where the issue is starting, then take action accordingly. If it's a case of an overloaded server, as can happen with companies that oversell to such an extreme, then it's probable that you have to either accept it as part of doing business with a cheaper provider or move on to a different company.

SimonYour description of httpd seems to describe the problem exactly. I'm sure I already know the answer to this but I will ask anyway. Is there a way to tell if this problem exists with a host other just trying them. I hate to leave RZ due to all of their good points but this might be a deal breaker. But if I just go to another host and find the same problem, it will have only caused more grief for my customers (not to mention me).