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Major outage at our hosting company

Discussion in 'Forum Rules, Information and Announcements' started by oss, May 19, 2016.

  1. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Been getting very slow response with this site today here in Manila, and over the past few days as well.
    At first I thought it was the hotel's wifi but every other site seems to load OK.

    Had a couple of those white screens with a code number at the top, sorry forget which number.

    On another note MY domain hosting company screwed up when changing my domain to a different server last week, and ended up bouncing all of my important e-mails from my main account for over three days, no recovery at all, I thought these guys were supposed to be professionals. :mad:
  2. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    OK had the white screen again with this site, it is a "504", with "nginx" underneath the top message.
  3. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Fasthosts had a known problem, again.

    They appear to have transitioned their entire platform to a new Cluster architecture and clearly they are having teething problems with it.

    There are two fundamental components to this site, a web site that is completely static, and a MySQL database.

    The database is performing fine, I have never experienced any problems with it, the front end web site has not changed since the day it was installed on this host, it is clearly capable of performing well when the underlying platform allows it.

    We are reviewing our options at host renewal time, but basically at this time we have to rely on Fasthosts fixing their platform when these kind of problems arise.
  4. Markham
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    Markham Guest

    Thanks, Jim :) So, in a nutshell the problem is with the cluster controller which routes inbound data packets to the correct server?
  5. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    They have adopted a distributed architecture, I won't pretend to know how it is implemented, it looks like we are now on more than one server but without having to pay for it.

    I doubt their problems are a simple routing issue, but I have not looked into it, if they are replicating servers and data then they are somehow transparently spreading individual servers across multiple physical or virtual machines, in a scenario like that there are many dispatchers and many interconnected communicating nodes.

    The specific problems today were to do with their cluster platform and we appeared to be suffering while they had that issue so I am guessing that they have been migrating to this platform for a while and that we are now on it, and suffering when they have issues with it, but really it is anyone's guess.
  6. Markham
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    Markham Guest

    Yesterday I thought they must have fixed the problem but they've returned today with a vengeance. For much of the time, the site 'can not be reached' or has sent an empty data packet. Slight change from all the 504 errors. When a page is finally sent, it is incomplete and therefore can not be correctly rendered by a web browser.
    Xenforo achieves its speed by delaying the download (and rendering) of elements unless they are specifically needed to render a particular page or perform a function. Hence the delay when replying with quotes, adding a link to another site or picture or adding a media item. That stuff is all in pretty small javascript files which could - and should - be cacheable (but don't appeared to be). That's all fine and dandy until there's a problem with the host (as now) or problematic connections as can often happen in the Philippines.
  7. Markham
    Online

    Markham Guest

    Yesterday I thought they must have fixed the problem but they've returned today with a vengeance. For much of the time, the site 'can not be reached' or has sent an empty data packet. Slight change from all the 504 errors. When a page is finally sent, it is incomplete and therefore can not be correctly rendered by a web browser.
    Xenforo achieves its speed by delaying the download (and rendering) of elements unless they are specifically needed to render a particular page or perform a function. Hence the delay when replying with quotes, adding a link to another site or picture or adding a media item. That stuff is all in pretty small javascript files which could - and should - be cacheable (but don't appeared to be). That's all fine and dandy until there's a problem with the host (as now) or problematic connections as can often happen in the Philippines.
  8. Markham
    Online

    Markham Guest

    Yesterday I thought they must have fixed the problem but they've returned today with a vengeance. For much of the time, the site 'can not be reached' or has sent an empty data packet. Slight change from all the 504 errors. When a page is finally sent, it is incomplete and therefore can not be correctly rendered by a web browser.
    Xenforo achieves its speed by delaying the download (and rendering) of elements unless they are specifically needed to render a particular page or perform a function. Hence the delay when replying with quotes, adding a link to another site or picture or adding a media item. That stuff is all in pretty small javascript files which could - and should - be cacheable (but don't appeared to be). That's all fine and dandy until there's a problem with the host (as now) or problematic connections as can often happen in the Philippines.
  9. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Their web server is simply not working, it can't serve a plain one paragraph test.html file, this has been posted by me via my virtual machine which hosts a copy of the site, I've temporarily pointed this at the live database just so I can post something here.

    One option is to update my server with a backup of the static files that I took today then point the DNS at my server, while continuing to use the back end database on fasthosts.

    I won't be able to do anything until late tonight and I don't know how long it would take for the DNS change to propagate or if Fasthosts will let be point it outside their network.

    I am also not sure if my dedicated VM would have enough oomph to run the site, it should have but it is Server 2012 and IIS instead of a Linux box.

    I will let you all know as soon as I can.
  10. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    The site is temporarily available at

    http://osscom001.cloudapp.net/index.php

    It is still using the live database at Fasthosts.

    Note clicking Home or the Brit-fil Logo will take you to the real site http://www.british-filipino.com and you will be back in nginx 504 error land.

    If any of you manage to connect to the temporary site please let me know what the performance is like.
    • Winner Winner x 1
  11. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Well dodgy.
    What does nginx mean, looks like strange Vietnamese?
  12. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Well dodgy.
    What does nginx mean, looks like strange Vietnamese?
  13. Dave_E
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    Dave_E Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Well dodgy.
    What does nginx mean, looks like strange Vietnamese?
  14. Markham
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    Markham Guest

    Top Man, Jim! :)
    Got on to your temporary site with no problems and performance isn't at all bad. Much better than the real site :)
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 20, 2016
  15. bigmac
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    bigmac Well-Known Member Trusted Member

    Me too...just posted.
  16. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    nginx is web server software on Linux, it is like Internet Information Services on Windows (IIS), it is actually very good and capable of fantastic performance.

    But something is screwing it up on the server we are on.

    If you got here on my link you are now on IIS on Server 2012 but we are pulling that database data across the web from Fasthosts so performance will not be optimal.

    Paul is talking to Fasthosts to see if we can get moved to a different server on their platform, timescales are fairly long in the region of 6 hours or so.
  17. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    For anyone using the alternate site on osscom001, please do not post attachments or embedded images, I suspect that embedded images will not survive.
  18. Anon04576
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    Anon04576 Well-Known Member

    Fasthosts Server will go offline when they start migration apparently. So Jims will provide cover for those who want to continue in the mean time.
  19. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Looks like Fasthosts are now in the process of moving the site to a new web server, hopefully they will be done by morning.
  20. oss
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    oss Somewhere Staff Member

    Well it looks like it's not complete by the morning :(

    It says the service is still being provisioned "Service pending activation" :(

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