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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Minnesota, USA
    Posts
    24

    Exclamation Simple Helix Service Down 16 hours (and counting)

    Hi All,

    I have a Magento hosting account with SimpleHelix (Semi-Dedicated Linux VPS, a $74.95/mo product that was marketed to Magento hosting customers). Up until very recently, I've been happy with it and the service and support I've gotten from SimpleHelix.

    Today, however, one of the worst hosting situations I've ever encountered has been unfolding. My service has been down in an outage that is now going on at least 16 hours - and counting. I say "at least" because I'm really not sure when service went down - only that it was down for the entire business day, evening and night.

    According to support, there was a problem on their VMWare cluster and they are working on restoring service on a new cluster. Support has been friendly and does respond to tickets and chat, but they have not been able to give me an ETA. I was fine with that a few hours in to the problem. I'm obviously getting a lot more nervous about the implications as time goes on.

    I guess I'm looking for an independent assessment and/or any advice (from anyone) here. How worried should I be? What are recommendations for taking action from my current situation?

    The truth is, I'm more vulnerable in this situation than I ought to be - and that's my fault. I was relying on SH and their claims of- and reputation for- reliability. I don't have very recent file and data backups on hand and now I'm considering worst-case scenarios - like if SH simply is not able to restore service or if their restoration attempts will drag on additional days.

    Any thoughts / recommendations / anything would be appreciated. Thanks.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    VMWare is great but reliability and resilience depends on provider's implementation. Many VMWare providers offer HA, which is a good thing, but few have redundant SANs then you have a single point of failure.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  3. #3
    I am in the same boat with SimpleHelix.com, only my store has been down since TUESDAY morning... that's 3 DAYS ago. I have to go get a prescription for Valium this morning because I'm beside myself! The thing that scares me the most about this company is that their technical support team is not technical at all. They haven't even been able give me an ETA. They have been migrating stores onto new servers since yesterday at 4pm... which tells me that their migration process is not the best. Or they have too many stores for their current server load. Nothing should take this long to solve. The part that has me REALLY concerned is that they don't have any idea what caused the outage. They "think" it was a hardware malfunction... but if it wasn't, then we are going to have these problems all over again when they move us. I'm done with SimpleHelix.com the only problem is I can't even move my store until it's back up again. I think 3 days is a long time to have someone's business down. It's probably actionable at this point. I'm considering getting legal advice because every hour my store is down is money lost. Clearly they have no emergency systems in place. No one has 3 day outtages...this didn't even happen in early internet days! If anyone has any advice on new hosting services that host Magento stores, please post. Thanks.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    Quote Originally Posted by luckyseven323 View Post
    I'm considering getting legal advice because every hour my store is down is money lost. Clearly they have no emergency systems in place.
    Nor you

    Instead legal advice I think you should consider getting technical advice to define the full requirements to run your store.

    It is common posts saying "you get what you pay for" but actually "you get your requirements".
    Last edited by dotHostel; 02-09-2012 at 11:13 AM.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  5. #5
    We defined the full requirements. SimpleHelix.com advertises that they meet them... but then this happens.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    ~/
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    1,382
    Why not just ask them to make your disk image and vmx etc available for download and move it to someone like gnax, I am sure they will accommodate you?
    -> INCEPTION HOSTING LIMITED Since 2010!
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  7. #7
    Lol... yeah... guess what they said when I asked them to do that? "We can't because your site is on a cluster with 4 others and we'd be giving you an image of theirs too..." Seriously, this is the worst mess ever.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    I didn't find any information about VMware in their site.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  9. #9
    Well they offer it for $74.95 a month... the guy who started the thread is paying for it too. And that's what's having the problem.

  10. #10
    Has anyone had any experience with Crucialwebhost.com? That's where I'm considering moving to when this crisis is resolved at SimpleHelix.com

  11. #11
    Hello all,

    We understand any frustration regarding this situation and it is very unfortunate albeit not something we could have predicted. This issue came to a head on Tuesday and we've been working as quickly as we can to get these VMs moved to a fresh cluster and get all customers online as soon as possible. Our number one priority is to get our customers online at this time. We understand our customers' business is vicariously the reason our business exists and we take our SLA very seriously. We have every intention of resolving the situation as quickly as possible.

    As per our email to those customers, no SimpleHelix staff will rest until the process is complete and all customers are completely back online. We urge any inquiries to be directed to our helpdesk by emailing support@simplehelix.com. We will email all customers with the latest updates as we progress.

  12. #12
    Yes, I received the email. Thanks for addressing. Let's just hope we can get up and running again without losing another business day.

  13. #13
    Guys, this stuff happens. You have to accept that they are doing their best to get the service back up. In the meantime, restore your backup onto another host and when their service is back, switch back.
    My personal blog -- rubiverse.net

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Apr 2006
    Location
    Phoenix, AZ, USA
    Posts
    771
    Quote Originally Posted by luckyseven323 View Post
    Has anyone had any experience with Crucialwebhost.com? That's where I'm considering moving to when this crisis is resolved at SimpleHelix.com
    Unfortunately, most of our clients are going to be busy running their businesses and not frequent visitors of WHT - though, we do have clients that may be able to provide first hand experience here, perhaps you will also hear from them. You can also search WHT for a history of our reviews on this forum.

    The fact is - any host can and will have problems from time to time and the important thing is how those hosts handle the communications during the problem times. Simple Helix deserves the opportunity to correct the problems they've encountered most certainly due to no fault of their own.

    Specializing in hosting an application such as Magento is no small feat. This is a very demanding application that requires a finely tuned, high end computing system. If you have any specific questions regarding our services or professional references please contact our Sales department via our support channel.

    We appreciate your interest and wish you the best of luck.
    rick@slicie.com - Vertical Scaling Servers
    30 Minute Backups - Only pay for what you use

  15. #15

    Hijacked by Simple Helix

    First let me say that I am not a technical person,I am the owner of a retail business that has a Magento site hosted on Simplehelix's VMS server. My sentiments reflect those of every single person that has replied to this thread (except for the last guy who must be stuck in the 80's when server crashes were the norm and the person that balked at the $74.95/month charge-you get what you pay for and when you pay $$$ for a website you don't want it hosted on a $20/mo plan).

    My site has been down for 3 days and counting and no one at Simple Helix has been able to tell me when service will be restored. I was never notified that my service was down and only found out when I checked my site and was confronted with a page that said "Account Suspended"- sounds like I didn't pay a bill or had some malicious code on my website. I have been distraught ever since!

    Despite the fact that this situation has been unfolding for 3 days..customer service and their "technical" support staff continue to have no issue with telling me that "we're working on it" and "that we don't know when it will be fixed." Obviously, there are many customers whose sites are critically down. It seems that a reasonable approach would be for SH management to sit down with their technical support staff and figure out a best and worst case scenario for resolution so that at least they could deliver a message that wouldn't be so infuriating to their customers!

    In closing, let me just say that SH is no longer selling or advertising their VPS plan because "it did not perform to our standards"- just call their sales department and ask for their VPS package- which speaks volumes in and of itself. Sound like Ashley in billing is going to have to work overtime to calculate these credits!

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by HIP9550 View Post
    except for the last guy who must be stuck in the 80's when server crashes were the norm
    Assuming you are talking about me, I can safely say that I wasn't alive in the 80s. I've had this same situation happen to me from both ends; the client and the host. It's not fun, but you can't avoid. Things happen, bad circumstances appear. It's frustrating for everyone involved. The biggest sites have major outages, and you will hear about it in the news. Downtime is not a thing of the past and I'm not sure why you believe it is.

    My site has been down for 3 days and counting and no one at Simple Helix has been able to tell me when service will be restored. I was never notified that my service was down and only found out when I checked my site and was confronted with a page that said "Account Suspended"- sounds like I didn't pay a bill or had some malicious code on my website. I have been distraught ever since!
    You are getting an "Account Suspended" page? This must mean that the server is up. Are you sure that it's down? This doesn't really make any sense.

    [QUOTE]Despite the fact that this situation has been unfolding for 3 days..customer service and their "technical" support staff continue to have no issue with telling me that "we're working on it" and "that we don't know when it will be fixed." Obviously, there are many customers whose sites are critically down. It seems that a reasonable approach would be for SH management to sit down with their technical support staff and figure out a best and worst case scenario for resolution so that at least they could deliver a message that wouldn't be so infuriating to their customers! [QUOTE]

    They probably have a good reason why they can't give an ETA. What do you want them to do, give you a fake ETA? That would be even worse. They can't control the situation, so you just have to wait it out while they work their butts off trying to get your site up.

    In closing, let me just say that SH is no longer selling or advertising their VPS plan because "it did not perform to our standards"- just call their sales department and ask for their VPS package- which speaks volumes in and of itself. Sound like Ashley in billing is going to have to work overtime to calculate these credits!
    At least they are doing something about and not letting new customers sign up for an unreliable service.
    My personal blog -- rubiverse.net

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    Minnesota, USA
    Posts
    24
    Well, nominal downtime does happen, and customers who don't make a significant investment in redundancy can expect *nominal* downtime. But this was days. To me, days is not excusable.

    Hours of downtime are what you hear about happening to major sites and making the news. If a major site had *this* kind of downtime, it wouldn't just be notable. People would be rightfully incredulous and question the competency of their IT strategy. Big changes, clear communication and an expensive PR campaign to restore consumer confidence would follow. A high-level executive would probably resign or be fired over an outage of this length. But really, that's all hypothetical because it just doesn't happen.

    Before this incident, I've never had or even heard of a reputable hosting company having customers down for this amount of time. And I've been hosting sites long enough to have seen my share of "s**t happens" scenarios. This is the first one I've felt was totally unacceptable.

    For example, few years ago, at ServInt, a construction worker doing utility digging near the DC cut through an entire dark fiber trench severing their ring and causing $100K+ in damages, not to mention a really difficult repair job. The total downtime for dealing with that disaster? Less than one business day, and we were communicated with at every step of the way - we were told as soon as there was a problem, we were given updates throughout the outage, and when it was all over we got an apology and thorough explanation (including a timeline and even photos of the problem and response) from the company President. The downtime stung a bit (it always does) but in the end I came away from the experience feeling more confident in ServInt than ever.

    SH's response and process through this issue is a sharp contrast. There's been no coordination. Customers have had to actively seek updates and reassurances - and those given were extremely limited and reserved. No attempt at explaining the situation in any detail that we could give to our customers was made. No apology was offered. Apparently, no one at SH was resting while this problem was unfolding. I guess that's good to know, but honestly, I have no idea what they *were* doing. Because, of all the people that are reported to have been working on the situation, not one of them was tasked with keeping us in the loop.

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