

Dreamhost is down. All of it. - tlrobinson
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2009/10/12/dreamhost-network-is-down/

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colbyolson
Now I know downtime is normal for a host. Yes, even Google.

But when you visit the homepage of their status-blog[1], don't you think
that's a bit too many updates a little too frequently?

Or should we commend Dreamhost on being super-transparent in their
network/uptime issues?

[1] <http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/>

~~~
madaerodog
what is funny about the status page is that it isn't a day that they don't run
into an issue ..

~~~
timdorr
Given the number of domains they host (nearly a million:
[http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/reports/total_domains/DR...](http://www.webhosting.info/webhosts/reports/total_domains/DREAMHOST.COM)),
I'm shocked they don't have _more_ outages to report. Perhaps they do. They've
got enough hardware that system failures are bound to be a daily occurrence.
And I'm sure software problems stack right on top of that.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
if you look at the issues too there's a lot of "this server had to have an
fsck to resolve something" and "theses servers were slow so we fixed them".

99.9% uptime is still something like 8 hours downtime - this big outage was
about 40 mins so they've some leeway yet.

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timtrueman
Semi-unrelated but if you're curious about BGP, this 2004 talk—although
absurdly long—talks about some of the issues with BGP (an many other issues
with hosting content on the Internet). The speaker is Tom Leighton, one of the
founders of Akamai.

<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/199> (BGP at ~10 minutes in)

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noonespecial
_It looks like our core router lost its BGP session which took down our entire
network (as far as we can tell). We have our network administrator heading to
the data center now and should be there in 20 minutes or so. More updates to
come._

Umm core rout _er_?! One? I'm thinking they'll revisit this strategy now.

~~~
dangrossman
Significant downtime throughout the entire history of the company doesn't seem
to have caused them to revisit any of their strategies. Nothing will change,
changing would cost money they clearly don't need to spend, or they wouldn't
have retained their customers.

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madaerodog
I liked this comment on their status page

"shabooty Says: I wonder if this site is hosted at media temple?"

epic

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andrewvc
Good news, my DH hosted site just came back up sometime in the last 2 minutes.

~~~
whatusername
mines up as well

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st3fan
"""We have our network administrator heading to the data center now and should
be there in 20 minutes or so."""

Huh. He could not dial in to login to the router? No emergency DSL line for
maintenance?

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alexandros
First Microsoft/Danger/Sidekick, then Apple, now this. We need a computing
paradigm that does not suffer from single points of failiure, or at least
fails more gracefully.

~~~
mseebach
You've got it. Call IBM and ask them about managed hosting. You can use the
Dreamhost prices as a reference, just add 3-5 zeroes on the end.

If you buy a $500 car, never service it, and it breaks down unexpectedly, do
you call for a new paradigm of personal transportation, or do you say "rats,
well it was cheap and served me well while it lasted"?

Is avoiding 33 minutes of downtime worth tens of thousands of dollars to your
business? Didn't think so.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
I switched from DH, where I had constant outage problems, to Slicehost and
Linode, both of which have never had outages (for me), for only $15 more a
month...

~~~
mseebach
That's nice, and $15/month probably buys you a lot over DH -- but it's not
like Slicehost is immune:

<http://status.slicehost.com/2009/9/22/stl-a-network-issues-2>

[http://status.slicehost.com/2009/3/27/stl-b-network-
issues-0...](http://status.slicehost.com/2009/3/27/stl-b-network-
issues-0945-gmt)

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johnnybgoode
I am not very familiar with Dreamhost, although I've heard of them many times,
but if they're big enough, shouldn't they have failover for everything?

~~~
niyazpk
But even after all those measures, shit happen sometimes. Then the only thing
that matters is how you respond to it and how transparent and honest you are
about it.

~~~
johnnybgoode
Are you saying they did have failover set up for everything? I'm just curious.
I do agree with your point, though.

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gorm
Quick fix for such a problem. Dreamhost support is pretty impressive, but
sites can be a bit slow.

~~~
whirlycott1
"We have our network administrator heading to the data center now and should
be there in 20 minutes or so. More updates to come."

If they host a million domains, why isn't someone on site 24x7?

~~~
sjs
Anyone with serious uptime requirements avoids DreamHost. It sounds strange
considering their size but it probably just isn't really in their budget. I
used to have a DH account and it's pretty good for what it is. Now I have a
VPS though.

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Mystalic
My site's loading...and websites loading is a good thing.

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vaksel
works fine for me

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schammy
Shit happens. Even Google has outages (Gmail, anyone?). Life goes on.

~~~
uriel
Other than search and google.com, the reliability of Google's services is
truly awful.

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jonursenbach
Funny that this happens the day I start looking into a hosted Wordpress
service.

