So, at 16.45 GMT on Christmas day, ’Bo’ a technical support wizard at Surpass Hosting decided that we were the cause for problems on the server and shut down the database. Then he referred us to the Abuse and Security Department (which was on holiday of course). This began 20 hours of problems for GDN.
With no one available in the department the alleged problems could not be resolved meaning this technical support person had single-handedly taken GDN offline for the duration of Christmas day. A very poor decision the way we see it.
What was the result of the Abuse Department’s investigation?
The access log for [gamersdailynews.com] shows more than 118610 raw hits since [25/Dec/2009:04:00:26 -0500].
This averages to around raw 6977 hits per hour, and does not seem abusive.
So if it was not abusive then the 20 hours of downtime was unjustified was it not? What kind of technical support training includes ’shut down a site on Christmas day and refer the ticket to a department that is not on duty that day.’?
As a result of this and numerous other problems with Surpass Hosting (including 14 hours of downtime blamed on ’bad RAM’), we are switching hosts. While I believe the numerous problems to be due to poorly configured and underpowered servers I do not have direct proof. However, initial tests elsewhere seem to lend credence to my belief.
The new host may or may not become our permanent home as we are considering a new server all to ourselves at a new host (where I know people and used to work personally). But I assure you that when we move to that server we will be ready to continue our growth (350% since 2008) and have the room to breathe for some time to come.
We apologize for any inconvenience the downtime caused you and hope that you still consider GDN your source for the latest gaming news, without the corporate hype or fanatical ranting. We are always striving to maintain our position as the premier independent video game news source and look forward to another fantastic year.
Season’s Greetings,
Christophor Rick - CEO
Thomas Balisteri - Dir. of North American Operations
Alex, Amy, Chris, Dave Jim, Robert and the rest of the GDN Family.
314 days ago
The server continues as of Tuesday 29, December to show instability. The webhost seems unable or unwilling to solve the problems. In the meantime we are working to quickly select a new host and service to provide you with a more stable and more enjoyable experience here at GDN.
The server has gone down today no less than 2 times and perhaps even three. This causes damage to database tables which then disallow access to the site until manually fixed. I apologize for the problems.