Comments on: Epic Fail…

By: How To Plan Hosting Disaster Recovery

How To Plan Hosting Disaster Recovery — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:32:00 +0000

[...] on June 12, disaster struck. My home page would not load and every attempt to access it resulted in a 500 error. I attempted to [...]

By: girasquid (Luke)

girasquid (Luke) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 07:30:51 +0000

@slicehost just out of curiosity, what does Slicehost have in place to prevent horror stories like this one? http://tinyurl.com/6lcfwd

By: 10 Rules for Finding Good Domain Hosting | The Blog Herald

10 Rules for Finding Good Domain Hosting | The Blog Herald — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:00:05 +0000

[...] Since then, I have worked with over 2 dozen hosts (not counting copyright issues) and have set up a variety of sites and blogs for me, my friends and my clients. Most of my experiences have been good though I have, on a few occasions, been severely burned. [...]

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:03:44 +0000

@Christina Warren - This is a great idea! Thank you very much for sharing this. I don't think I'm going to stay with MT because my databases seem to be constantly in "burst" mode due to the volume of this site (even with Super Cache on in many cases) so a VPS will also be less expensive. However, I definitely could see how this script could be modified for any host, as you mentioned. I'm going to give it a closer look this weekend. Great work on this.

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:03:44 +0000

@Christina Warren -
This is a great idea! Thank you very much for sharing this. I don't think I'm going to stay with MT because my databases seem to be constantly in "burst" mode due to the volume of this site (even with Super Cache on in many cases) so a VPS will also be less expensive. However, I definitely could see how this script could be modified for any host, as you mentioned. I'm going to give it a closer look this weekend. Great work on this.

By: Christina Warren

Christina Warren — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:17:42 +0000

Jonathan,

Enjoy your trip! I was partially inspired by your post to put together a guide for making nightly backups of files on the Grid to Amazon S3. The post (which includes a generic backup script) is here http://www.christinawarren.com/2008/06/24/s3-backup-media-temple-gs/ — if you decide to stay with Media Temple (though it would work with any host).

I don’t know what kind of solution you are using now, but I know that the $1.50 a month I spend for S3 (and I don’t just use it for my website, my photos are what take up most of that space) is worth the peace of mind, knowing I have a backup every day.

By: Christina Warren

Christina Warren — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:17:42 +0000

Jonathan,

Enjoy your trip! I was partially inspired by your post to put together a guide for making nightly backups of files on the Grid to Amazon S3. The post (which includes a generic backup script) is here http://www.christinawarren.com/2008/06/24/s3-ba... — if you decide to stay with Media Temple (though it would work with any host).

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:10:38 +0000

@Christina Warren –
Somehow, I feel much better knowing that others have experienced this kind of epic fail before. Thank you very much for posting about your experience as well.

I’m on MT right now, using the GS, the same as you. I’m relatively happy with the performance but I know that, if I combine all of the sites I have responsibility for, including at least one shopping cart site, I may start to go over the GPU limits. VPS will actually be a cost saver for me.

I took a quick look at Slicehost and really liked what I saw. I’m going to do more looking up on them when I get back to the States (In England now, the reason your comments took so long to go up) and see if everyone fees as you do. However, the price is very fair and the TOS looks quite good.

Thank you for the suggestion!

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 04:10:38 +0000

@Christina Warren -
Somehow, I feel much better knowing that others have experienced this kind of epic fail before. Thank you very much for posting about your experience as well.

I'm on MT right now, using the GS, the same as you. I'm relatively happy with the performance but I know that, if I combine all of the sites I have responsibility for, including at least one shopping cart site, I may start to go over the GPU limits. VPS will actually be a cost saver for me.

I took a quick look at Slicehost and really liked what I saw. I'm going to do more looking up on them when I get back to the States (In England now, the reason your comments took so long to go up) and see if everyone fees as you do. However, the price is very fair and the TOS looks quite good.

Thank you for the suggestion!

By: Christina Warren

Christina Warren — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:48:10 +0000

Jonathan,
Wow, that sounds pretty sucktastic — glad you were able to come out of it relatively unscathed and with some new skills. I experienced my own bout of epic faildom (though it was completely, totally my fault — http://www.christinawarren.com/2008/04/05/when-your-blog-goes-down/) back in April and understand the frustration and importance of backups all too well.

As for hosts — I’m with Media Temple and I’m quite happy (I’m on the (gs) and I manage my dad’s business site on a (dv)) with the performance (after some issues right after I joined with the Grid, they appear to have almost everything worked out and are transitioning to a new system and the support (supremely helpful and nice). Having said that, I have heard nothing but wonderful, fantastic, like mind-blowing things about Slicehost (http://www.slicehost.com) if you want to manage a VPS by yourself. They are just going to spit you at a command line (you choose the linux distro, you get the vanilla minimal install and then install whatever server or stack you want to use), but if you are comfortable with that, everyone I know who uses them is supremely happy.