When your server explodes

21 January 2004

28 comments

A Blue Perspective: When your server explodes

Overnight on my web host's server the "Harddisc crashed. It has been replaced and data is being restored with latest available backups." Of course, this means I've lost over a week's worth of data. Of course, this means I'm changing web hosts.

Therefore, I'd like to quickly get people's suggestions as to their favourite web host so I can move to sunnier surrounds as quickly as possible. Has to be Linux, fairly cheap (say US$0 - 10 per month) and reliable.

I know that a quite a few of the design sites host with Media Temple, and having a look at their site they seem pretty good, so they're in the lead at the moment. All help is appreciated.

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Comments

  1. 1/28

    Erik Sagen commented on 21 January 2004 @ 12:23

    I use ehostpros.com. So far, so good.

  2. 2/28

    Beau commented on 21 January 2004 @ 12:58

    I use phpwebhosting.com and am thinking of using dreamhost.com.

    phpwebhosting.com is pretty good, but I have had times when they have been offline for a few hours (not very often tho).

    I'm told dreamhost are good and they look pretty impressive.

  3. 3/28

    Justin French commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:11

    HDD failure is a fct of life on any host... Even if they've got a RAID system, nothing is a certaintly.

    Finding a host that does nightly back-ups of pages AND databases would be your safest bet, but I'm tipping there aren't many who offer that.

    I don't think changing hosts will help you at all here -- it'll possible even INCREASE the risk, because at least with the current host, you know the HDD is brand new today :)

    I'm sorry for your loss of data, but why didn't you make your own back-ups :)

    A weeks worth of lost data isn't too bad -- it could have been a LOT worse.

  4. 4/28

    Ray commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:19

    I've been hosting one of my domains on my own linux box...fortunately my ISP allows "reasonable use" of bandwidth, so I'm definitely not getting thousands of page veiws/day, but it does give my the luxury of a server configuration that suits my needs exactly. Depending upon traffic and your ISP, this might be a viable option

    I do have a couple others that are hosted by a freind that has a dedicated 10Mbit conn, however, this is on a windows server.

  5. 5/28

    Simon Jessey commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:22

    I am happy with my webhost, MediaCatch.com, but I might also suggest that you ask Matthew Mullenweg ( http://photomatt.net/ ) if he can help you out. He does it for selected friends and colleagues (like Dave Shea's Mezzoblue, for example).

  6. 6/28

    Paul commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:50

    I use www.mediatemple.com
    They are not cheap but I have had another site of mine on them for over 1 year and have not suffered any noticable downtime for more than 2 min on 1 instance.

  7. 7/28

    The Man in Blue commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:56

    It's not a world ending loss, but it's not just today's loss of data, it's a general speed/reliability thing. Today was just the catalyst for getting me into action.

  8. 8/28

    Matt Burris commented on 21 January 2004 @ 17:25

    If you hurry, you can take advantage of the 3 years free professional hosting over at www.1and1.com -- I've been using them for over 5 months now and they've been solid as a rock, never gone down so far. There's no catch to the promotion.

  9. 9/28

    Erik Sagen commented on 21 January 2004 @ 18:18

    Wow. Thanks for the heads up Matt.

    Per your suggestion I signed up for an account.

    So, we'll see how this goes. 3 free years is nothing to complain about and from the looks of their site and their service it all seems really polished.

  10. 10/28

    Mike commented on 21 January 2004 @ 18:38

    I've been using Xrach Hosting for a while, excellent service and they bend over backwards to keep me happy.

    About 10$/month if you pay a year in advance. Unix based.

  11. 11/28

    The Man in Blue commented on 21 January 2004 @ 13:56

    Well, 12 hours of calming thoughts and financial exigencies have lead me to believe that finishing out my contract with my current web host (4 months) is the best course of action. However, I'll definitely be looking to move on after that, so thanks for the information posted above, it'll really help me.

    After re-constructing my latest posts and restoring script files I'd changed, in the end the only thing I've lost is comments; they're highly valuable for their ideas and thoughts, but I'll survive. Incidentally, quite a few web hosts offer daily backup.

    (You got me all excited about 1on1 hosting Matt, only to have my hopes dashed by the requirement of a US/Canadian residency. Their setup does look good though.)

  12. 12/28

    Erik Sagen commented on 22 January 2004 @ 02:14

    Yeah. You know, to tell you the truth.. I never really think of things like that. Living in the US all my life I suppose I've become quite accustomed or even spoiled at several of the services that are limited to US and Canadian residents only.

    Although, I'm sure it works the same way for the Aussies. You have services limited to Australia only, I'm sure.

  13. 13/28

    The Man in Blue commented on 22 January 2004 @ 03:09

    Yeah, we have our special KangarooNet that you guys can't access.

  14. 14/28

    Matt Burris commented on 22 January 2004 @ 06:58

    Sorry about that, I didn't realize you were in another country. It does suck that you have to be in the U.S. and Canada. I know a lot of British friends who were disappointed that they couldn't take advantage of the deal.

  15. 15/28

    Ben Vaughan commented on 22 January 2004 @ 07:31

    I'm using these guys:
    http://www.thehostingspecialist.com/shared.htmlThe're incredibly inexpensive and have been nothing but helpful. Support is timely and performance pleasing. :)

  16. 16/28

    Erik commented on 22 January 2004 @ 07:59

    Yeah, we have BushNET. ;)

  17. 17/28

    Shawn Kelley commented on 22 January 2004 @ 09:14

    When you do decide to switch, I highly recommend Dreamhost. I've been with them for over three years now and have signed up more than a dozen others who love them as well. They've got great service, fantastic deals and they're always increasing what you get for your money, all while guaranteeing that you'll never have to pay more. There are a number of others in the "design world" who use them as well, including Todd Dominey who has highly recommended them in the past.

  18. 18/28

    Justin WS commented on 23 January 2004 @ 12:35

    I don't wish to sound unsympathetic as I too have had a similar experience of being wiped out by a hosting failure. The one thing that this experience did teach me is that it doesn't matter who you host with - BACK UP!
    Ultimately you are responsible for your own data and can easily prevent loss from hardware failure yourself. While most hosting companies do their best to protect you from these losses, they usually provide the means for you to do perform your own back ups and will stress that you should do so.

  19. 19/28

    j.bon commented on 24 January 2004 @ 00:37

    I m on http://www.aussiehosts.com,their prices are good and supports are excellent :)

  20. 20/28

    joshie surber commented on 27 January 2004 @ 12:30

    http://www.eryxma.comcheap and reliable. keep me happy.

  21. 21/28

    Me commented on 30 January 2004 @ 07:03

    me

  22. 22/28

    James Craig commented on 30 January 2004 @ 07:40

    http://www.bytestacker.com/virtual server packages with root access on debian... best deal around.

  23. 23/28

    Roger commented on 30 January 2004 @ 09:40

    I 've used Hurricane Electric (www.he.net) for a couple of years and have found them to be reliable and helpful.

  24. 24/28

    Sverrir Gunnlaugsson commented on 31 January 2004 @ 13:21

    I recommend Dreamhost.
    Fantastic company with good user support.

  25. 25/28

    Aaron commented on 1 February 2004 @ 09:22

    http://pair.com

    I've used Pair hosting for 5 years and dozens of domains - also my old employer hosts quite a few sites on them from a recommendation from me...

  26. 26/28

    Richard Rutter commented on 10 February 2004 @ 02:58

    A little late coming to this conversation, but I'd happily recommend DigitalSpace.net (http://www.digitalspace.net/)
    For $3 a month you get Apache, PHP, MySQL, Python, unlimited POPs, your own cgi-bin, daily backups (files and db) and a fair bit more besides. More money gets you more disk space and more bandwidth if required.

    They also give excellent service to support requests and queries. I use them for clagnut.com and bunch of other domains as well.

  27. 27/28

    no1son commented on 25 February 2004 @ 09:41

    <a href="http://www.jaguarpc.com">JaguarPC</a>is 10$/month with great features. They bought out <a href="http://www.aletia.com">Aletia,my former host. Aletia still does great <a href="http://www.aletianic.com">DNS</a>for very little money too. I just switched over from Register.com.

  28. 28/28

    no1son commented on 25 February 2004 @ 09:42

    sorry about that, didn't read. :P

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