On 9 November 2010 13:44, Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk wrote:
We had a specific problem a while back that I no longer recall, but the server was responding to ICMP packets but that was about all it was responding to; we couldn't SSH in, the reboot option wasn't working from the web management thing (or if it was it was rebooting to the same state), and all we could do was wait until Monday (the problem started Friday evening I think).
That to me sounds as though the miniserver ran out of RAM. Since we do not supply our VPSes with swap (as the combined shared I/O of VMs swapping out to disk thrashes the disk of the miniserver node something chronic and reduces the the performance for all). It's possible that the reboot service was functioning but, as you say, probably getting into the previous state. I assume that SSH and other services had their init scripts set to boot up on start via the update-rc.d system (or done manually)?
Looking at the support matrix, there's plenty in the £40/mo that justifies it, but we don't need or want almost anything that's ticked in the managed support column. After all, "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" handles most of the updates to the core components, and if we do it ourselves we can pick the time to do it and schedule it to suit the customers out of hours. Paying someone else to do it is fine, but we'd have to be around at the same time (to test and handle any application issues) so just arranging for a third party to run a couple of apt commands for us isn't a good use of your time or our money!
I quite understand. I think what you'd probably want above this is some form of serial access to the miniservers so that you can remotely connect and resolve these issues yourself. We are working on making this available, but I can't give any definite timescales as to when this is going to happen. We already provide full serial console access to our dedicated servers (which also now come with DRACs which kind of negate the need for that), it's only a matter of fixing a few outstanding issues and we can provide that functionality to our miniservers too.
I have, and it's kind of "sorry, this is how we do it". I have no complaint about that; Memset have no obligation to offer a service I need! But it has lead me to look at alternatives. I like Memset and want to continue using them, but I'm not able to justify paying for a range of support services I don't need just to give me access to emergency cover on the rare occasions I need it.
I do understand, and hopefully we can resolve this issue for you in a technical capacity rather than on price or the availability of having a human being working odd hours on standby.
Regards,
Martyn