Forum Down, Host Problems?

Joey what happened to the forum, it is down for the last hour :confused:

its wierd, my freinds site, and my server was down about an hour yesterday...still unexplained... :confused:

my site was down for ~ 20 minutes, at the same time... i'm hosted at a small orange

Funny, ASO's hosting site was up, so we will have to wait to hear from Joey or Noppid.

Joey....Noppid :confused: :confused:

I go through ASO and my site was running when VBW was down.

*Shrugs*

Funny, ASO's hosting site was up, so we will have to wait to hear from Joey or Noppid.

Joey....Noppid :confused: :confused:
yeah it was, i read the forums while both my site and vbw were down.. oh well ! maybe only one of their servers crashed..

yeah it was, i read the forums while both my site and vbw were down.. oh well ! maybe only one of their servers crashed..

Alex, you beat me to giving the same answer you gave above :wave:

Now we are still waiting for Joey or Noppid to give us the real reason :eek: :confused:

I aint talking because no one will like my answer. :D

But it was not me and my efforts to get it fixed were of no use.

Well it would not be the first time a forum was down, even Google gets shut down from time to time.

We still want answers Joey......Noppid :confused: :wave:

Well it would not be the first time a forum was down, even Google gets shut down from time to time.

We still want answers Joey......Noppid :confused: :wave:


A beta situation arose. I can't say any more then that or then the "If I tell you, I have to kill you" clause kicks in.

PS: :wave:

Sorry, the members demand answers :eek:

Joey this is a forum for forum owners and we want to know why the forum was down, Noppid is not talking :eek:

Sorry, the members demand answers :eek:

Joey this is a forum for forum owners and we want to know why the forum was down, Noppid is not talking :eek:

I think there was an extension cord involved! :eek:

Joey tripped over that cord again, you guys should have hard wired the forum by now :mad:

Joey tripped over that cord again, you guys should have hard wired the forum by now :mad:

He aint wired, he's sleeping. :D

WTF am I up for?

Oh I know, beer! :wave:

:wave: Beta :D

= good

I can safely say that all of Joey's sites have been acting up at least a little lately.

Which sucks for me because it means I'm out of any car fix I need to get my hands on :-\

Geeze, cant I guy take a little nap around here? :)

Are you sure it didn't have anything to do with this?

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(Spry.com also uses Apache)
IP Address: 70.84.150.72 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: - Texas - Dallas - Theplanet.com Internet Services Inc


Read this: Blacklist theplanet.com - haven for hackers and viruses (http://www.bandofgonzos.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1881)

Are you sure it didn't have anything to do with this?
Read this: Blacklist theplanet.com - haven for hackers and viruses (http://www.bandofgonzos.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1881)
Erm, what is that, and how did you find it? O_o

Interesting --- I forwarded to Tim at ASO

If ASO is a division of "The Planet" you all better move your sites quick because "The Planet" is a criminal organization. :eek:

No, its not. ASO just has some servers there.

You mean they have space in "The Planets" data center :confused:

You are sure that there is no connection Joey?

Yes I am sure - People buy servers at the planet all the time

So you are happy with ASO?

This is not the first time I have seen the forum down Joey, I have also reported lost posts to you and that has never happened on other forums, so they are having problems with uptime.

That is not acceptable if you expect the forum to grow.

The only lost posts there have been is when I have moved from one server to another, which will happen on any hosting comapny in that situation. We just gont on this server a short time ago and the bugs are still being worked out of it.

These are 'growing pains' for me. I had to upgrade my servers due to the popularity of my other sites.

Minstrel is correct, I pulled a report that confirms what he said.

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.vbwebmaster.com

Joey we are not trying to give you a hard time, but maybe it is time to look at the hosting situation a bit closer here.

Have you thought of doing the same thing as DP? Buying your own servers and putting them in a secure data center in your city (Chicago)?

http://www.peer1.net/en/location.asp?city=509

http://www.peer1.net/en/datacenters.asp

I am sure you could do better there.

http://www.peer1.net/en/serverbeach.asp

Minstrel is correct, I pulled a report that confirms what he said.

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://www.vbwebmaster.com

Joey we are not trying to give you a hard time, but maybe it is time to look at the hosting situation a bit closer here.

Have you thought of doing the same thing as DP? Buying your own servers and putting them in a secure data center in your city (Chicago)?

http://www.peer1.net/en/location.asp?city=509

http://www.peer1.net/en/datacenters.asp

I am sure you could do better there.

http://www.peer1.net/en/serverbeach.asp
Woah, this is quite weird i guess. So are we going to be looking into differing hosting alternatives? I'm glad we found this out now because i was planning on purchasing some hosting at ASO now, but i guess i'll have to inspect some alternatives.

*Heads off to "Choosing a Web Host"*

See the link on www.Page-zone.com in the directory, they got a great review.

It really depends on if you are going to buy your own servers and locate them in a data center or if you are just going to buy shared hosting.

You have to base your choice on the above facts and your needs.

I have been bitching for weeks, now maybe he'll listen. :)

Well it is a money thing Noppid, if Joey had an extra 20 grand I am sure he would buy servers like DP did and put them in a data center in Chicago.

Anyone got an extra 20 grand laying around.....Joey??????

Or he could simply switch to www.page-zone.com and pay by the month, Jim the owner over there is great and got a good review.

Joey knows him because he was in a thread with me over there.

http://www.page-zone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2291

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

It's not that complicated at all. This issue is paramount that your guys bring up.

I have my own list and it's not good either, I have been trying to keep my mouth shut on the forum, but since these articles expose, well you judge it.

I have my opinion.

Joey can take the heat so let the **** fly.

Joey has his future on the line, so I don't think he cares more about ASO versus himself.

The integrity of his Web host directory and the future of all of his sites is at stake.

So Noppid, let's get your opinion on what should be done, Joey has never censored anything here and I don't thnk he wants members or administrators holding back either.

Joey can take the heat so let the **** fly.

Joey has his future on the line, so I don't think he cares more about ASO versus himself.

The integrity of his Web host directory and the future of all of his sites is at stake.

So Noppid, let's get your opinion on what should be done, Joey has never censored anything here and I don't thnk he wants members or administrators holding back either.

My review would be so poor, like I told Joe, if I wrote it, he'd have to remove it.

I've stated my opinion emphaticly in the back office. Joe has to deal with in though, it's not my call.

You don't have to go from being on a bad neighborhood server to buying your own -- there are still numerous reputable servers you or your host can rent space on -- it's just that theplanet.com is clearly NOT one of them.

That place is a haven for hackers and virus purveyors -- and even many of the honest people on those servers are infected. They've made it plain they have no interest in weeding out or shutting down the bad guys or even in spending a bit of extra cash to increase security on the servers.

I'd suggest that people avoid them like the plague - because they pretty much are the plague.

Joey is not stupid Noppid, look for him to move quickly on this :o

I am sure you will be of help in getting these issues solved also :cool:

PS: Let's not forget Minstrel's help in all of this going back to when he and I started the thread on "Forums being attacked" when the worms and traffic bots shut down many forums.

Minstrel was instrumental in doing research for the community that exposed "ThePlanet" in the above scam and attacks on the forums.

Again Minstrel, thank you from the community at large for your extensive research and effort to expose these criminals.

Seems to me the ONLY solution is to move from that data center.

I've said this before, do not trust your web business to anyone that rents a server.

Get your hosting from the company that owns the data center and actually has a staff there that has coffee in the same room, not the cybercafe on IM.

MY host has never told me, "I"m tired, we'll have to deal with this tomorrow".

Again Minstrel, thank you from the community at large for your extensive research and effort to expose these criminals.I can get behind that... "Thanks Minstrel." ;)

Watch out guys, make sure you save this thread because this is like when Nixon erased 19 minutes of the critical tapes in Watergate......

Joey would never do such a thing :confused: :p :wave:

Boy - you guys are tough. :D


First, I just changed IPs and am not changing again anytime soon. I moved all the sites to a brand new VPS and all the bugs are being worked out. Every day things get more stable, and in a few weeks this whole conversation will be moot. Right, wrong or otherwise I moved to where we are at and moving again would just do more damage. Im still getting used to the whole VPS thing myself. Its called growing pains :) Like I said, in a few weeks, this will all be forgotton and things will be super smooth. I have already noticed things are alot faster and crisp on my other sites.

As far as The Planet (http://www.theplanet.com). They are a Data Center that hosts thousands of reseller accounts in three seperate facilities. I dont know of any datacenters of that size that can boast having 0 spam/hackers floating around. And even if they can, they cant promise they never will have in the future. I could easily move to another datacenter and

As far as ASO -- I chose ASO because they have great customer service. My account is being handled ONLY by the owner of ASO right now. This guy tweaks the servers for VB, which is one of the things I like about him. This is a little bit of trial and error to get it working just right. The downside there is that the regular techs dont have access yet, which sometimes means we're not monitored as close as normal. ASO has 2000 customers on shared hosting and just expanded into the VPS stuff so they dont have to tell customers like me that I have to go elsewhere (lunarpages did that to me - kicked me out as soon as I got busy)

I may have goofed moving all my sites at once. Maybe I should have left my bigger sites where they were until things stabilized, but its not like I can really undo things.
No matter what you choose for hosting, what company, what datacenter, dedicated or shared, there are always problems from time to time. If not now, then at some point in the future. You gotta learn to roll with the punches a bit in this business.

Joey the question is, why are you hosting all of your sites and forums on the same host :confused:

Do you know that we have complained to the FBI about "The Planet" when some of the hacker sites they host took out many of the forums, you remember that Joey :confused:

Yes it would be in your best interest to move on to a host that does not operate in that data center. I gave you links to other options to look at, ASO is not the only one that understands how to host a vBulletin forum.

If you choose not to I am sure we all wish you the best, I guess it is not the end of the world, but if "The Planet" is shut down one day because they host terror sites or sites that are a threat to the internet itself don't say that we did not warn you in advance.

PS: Hell yes we are a tough crowd Joey, but it is for your own good that you consider these things, fact remains that you are being hosted in reality from "The Planet" no matter who the front man is for them.

We're not THAT tough... (well, maybe noppid is -- he can be brutal...)

Besides, you'll thank us for it when you're older :D

We're not THAT tough... (well, maybe noppid is -- he can be brutal...)

Besides, you'll thank us for it when you're older :D

Yeah, it's tough being the only guy on the internet that speaks his mind.

But the funny part is, people are offended. I mean come on, I'll engage someone that ticks me off, but if the beer is colder in the other room, I'll walk away and forget it. I'll never lose sleep over it.

It's wierd how people only want to hear the good stuff, regardless of the negetives that may influence that. It's called calculated risk. But damn, people it's not something to be affraid of when pointed out. A simple I considered that and it's not a big factor for me would surfice. If it's all new and messes up your plans, consider it, don't be mad at me for pointing it out if it is in fact an issue you missed.

I'm not directing this at Joe, just in general. Joe knows what he's doing.

I'm already a member of the Brother Nop Fan Club.

I was actually kind of flattered when I was desacribed at DP as:

Pro: doesn't mince words
Con: doesn't mince words

or something like that. I've never understood the value some people place on mincing words...

Hey that is enough of this "Lovefest", now back to bashing Joey :eek: :wave:

Hey that is enough of this "Lovefest", now back to bashing Joey :eek: :wave:



After the last few weeks --- with all thats been happening --- all I can do is giggle --- Im about to schedule an appointment with minstrial!

Joey we are all with you, but you need to address the questions in post # 41 :o

Shhhhh - Im trying to dodge those questions - :D

Ive changed IPs twice in 6 months - I need to stay put for awhile.

I guess we will leave you alone Joey, but you better tell ASO, since they are hosting from "The Planet's" data center that none of us will give them high ratings.

Keep us updated with your status if you decide to change hosts or if ASO moves their servers from "The Planet" :eek: :wave:

I forwarded minstrial's thread to them.

Well forward this one to him also, because now that the word is out, unless he moves from "The Planet" it is going to hurt him long term and that is a shame because he seems like a good guy.

I guess we will leave you alone Joey, but you better tell ASO, since they are hosting from "The Planet's" data center that none of us will give them high ratings.

Keep us updated with your status if you decide to change hosts or if ASO moves their servers from "The Planet" :eek: :wave:

"You better stay away from him, he'll rip your lungs out Jim.
Huh, I'd like to meet his tailor."

OK Warren Zevon :wave:

As I promised, I sent this thread to the owner of ASO -- Here is his response:



Ugh, I hate this argument. The Planet has one of the most populated
set of data centers on the planet. There are 10's of thousands of
servers hosting millions and millions of sites. They only way for
them to prevent problematic sites is for them to individually approve
every single one that comes in on a case-by-case basis. They have
always been responsive for us in the case of security issues, and
give us 24 hours to respond if something comes up. Of course, for
some people, not being responsive is responding after more then a few
hours. I personally think if they get back to you within the day,
that's good enough (and they always have responded this fast for me).
In fact, they've gone to the extent of logging into my servers and
removing Pay Pal scam sites that remote hackers have put up due to
sites running insecure scripts.

Which brings up the fact that it's impossible for even ASO to
maintain all the scripts on all the sites we host. We can't audit
everything and stuff gets through. We can't upgrade sites for people,
just like we can't upgrade your sites for you. You have
customizations, special settings, etc that we can't change and
maintain. It's irresponsible to call The Planet a harboring data center
when they do the best with what they have and with what they can do
legally (again, they can't touch customer data without opening up a
whole can of worms or they are *absolutely* sure of what they are
touching).

-Tim


I can tell you that Tim is a good guy, and from what I know, I agree with him.

Joey, while right now I can get on to the forum every so often I get an error. About thirty (30) second ago I received this error:


Warning: halt(./includes/functions_log_error.php): failed to open stream: Too many open files in system in /includes/db_mysql.php on line 389

Warning: halt(): Failed opening './includes/functions_log_error.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /includes/db_mysql.php on line 389



There seems to have been a slight problem with the VBulletin Webmaster database.
Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Well I think he needs to think about the sites they allow to stay up that attack other forums.

You can't bury your head in the sand on issues like this, nor can Tim.

What bury your head? WHat would you have me do? What will is solve? And what problem is The Planet causing for me right now?

The Planet was the host for most of the attacks out of Turkey that nearly destroyed the entire forum circuit.

We did a thread on it at DP Joey.

Tim is the one at great risk if he bases his future on serving sites out of their data center.

Why not have him join this thread since it is so important and he can answer these questions directly?

The Planet was the host for most of the attacks out of Turkey that nearly destroyed the entire forum circuit.

HOW could The Planet have prevented that?


How is he at great risk? --- and isnt there 10s of thousands of other sites at that same risk?


Come on guys -

I emailed support at theplanet.com several times during those two fiascos (the hack attacks and the Santy worms). I didn't fly off the handle after waiting a few hours. My initial email got a response that they would look into it. I sent back a request for an update after about 3 days -- no reply. I waited another week and emailed them again asking them to let me know what action they would take (the hackers from theplanet.com were still attacking during this time, although we were blocking them) -- again no reply. I emailed them one final time requesting a response before I took further action available to me - no reply. Copies of all that correspondence were then forwarded to a number of people, including an FBI agent.

Now admittedly, I'm not a customer of theplanet.com and obviously I never will be. But this was a serious and concerted attack originating from their servers and they seemed remarkably unconcerned with that -- and mind you I wasn't complaining about something vague -- I gave them IP addresses and all other information I had.

Only a month or so later, when the Santy attacks started, again my logs showed that a substantial proportion of these attacks were originating with theplanet.com - apparently, they were not even willing at that time to upgrade their version of PHP which would have prevented some (though not all) of the problems.

I'm not trying to make decisions for you, Joey, or for your friend Tim. You do what you think best. But I can tell you that after my experience with theplanet.com servers last fall and over Christmas, I have taken and will continue to take every opportunity I can to warn people about how theplanet.com does business. And the bottom line with those people is they don't give a damn about how you use their servers as long as they get your dollar in their pockets.

Look at the threads on the internet about "The Planet", they are a major host for fraud websites and hackers (the Russian Mafia), the FBI is watching them, rest assured of that.

This can only damage ASO if they stay with "The Planet".

How could a US-based datacenter be responsible for attacks out of Turkey? :confused:

There is no "great risk" every datacenter has had one of their servers compromised. I would challenge you to find one that hasn't. ThePlanet originates more attacks because they have more servers. Percentage-wise, they have the same numbers as everyone else. *Our* servers are secured properly and to the best of our ability, so I fail to see how we are at any sort of risk. We're behind a Tipping Point network IDS, Cisco Guard XT, and server-level firewalls, so we've got "all shields up, ensign!", as you might put it. Unless you have some sort of evidence to this fact, I don't much appreciate your baseless attacks on what is a reputable company. :(

Hee hee - I gotta ask.......... How many vBulletin Forums were affected?

Only a month or so later, when the Santy attacks started, again my logs showed that a substantial proportion of these attacks were originating with theplanet.com - apparently, they were not even willing at that time to upgrade their version of PHP which would have prevented some (though not all) of the problems.

It's not "their" version of PHP, it's their customer's particular install. For obvious reasons, they cannot log into all the servers underneath the datacenter and upgrade PHP. That would break machines left and right. They block the Sanity attacks with the Tipping Point equipment and anything else at the network level, but the securing of a server is left up to the client themselves. ThePlanet's policy in the past, that I have experienced, is to inform their customers of the compromise of their system and a 24 hour time limit to rectify the issue before disconnection. I think that's pretty reasonable, since they do not directly manage all their systems.

How could a US-based datacenter be responsible for attacks out of Turkey? :confused:

There is no "great risk" every datacenter has had one of their servers compromised. I would challenge you to find one that hasn't. ThePlanet originates more attacks because they have more servers. Percentage-wise, they have the same numbers as everyone else. *Our* servers are secured properly and to the best of our ability, so I fail to see how we are at any sort of risk. We're behind a Tipping Point network IDS, Cisco Guard XT, and server-level firewalls, so we've got "all shields up, ensign!", as you might put it. Unless you have some sort of evidence to this fact, I don't much appreciate your baseless attacks on what is a reputable company. :(


How can a Russian data center be responsible for crimes that American criminals commit Tim?

If I am from Turkey and have a site served by "The Planet" in the USA that sends worms to forums then "The Planet" lets it continue after they are given notice, who's fault is it?

Really Tim, you need to do more research on the folks you are doing business with, not us.

If I am from Turkey and have a site served by "The Planet" in the USA that sends worms to forums then "The Planet" lets it continue after they are given notice, who's fault is it?

The Planet was the host for most of the attacks out of Turkey that nearly destroyed the entire forum circuit.

You said out of Turkey, so that would be where they originated. In any case, I haven't seen any article or evidence to the effect that this has even happened. That's not to suggest I don't believe you, I just would like to read about this for myself.

Really Tim, you need to do more research on the folks you are doing business with, not us.

I did. ThePlanet is not a babysitter for every server they host. Neither is EV1, Nocster, Managed.com, Equinix, or any other datacenter that isn't doing complete management. If a server gets hacked that a customer has been running insecure software on, is that the fault of the host or the client? If this site got hacked, would you blame ThePlanet or ASO for that? No. So, why would you blame ThePlanet for servers getting compromised due to customers not maintaining their own software? ThePlanet has and continues to react when notified of security issues, but they cannot be 100% proactive about several million websites all at once. ASO can't even be 100% proactive about the several thousand sites we host, regardless of who we use for a DC.

popcorn

If you came to eat at my restaurant, you wouldnt blame the farmer for one of my cooks spitting in the salad bar.

The Planet just sells server space. Period. They are very limited legally as to what they can do. Where the hacks come from are 3-4 levels away from The Planet.

The group was based in Turkey -- some of the servers were also in Turkey -- some of them were on theplanet.com.

As for vBulletin, Joey, the Turks weren't just targetting phpBB they weren't even just targetting forums, as I recall -- that was the later problem with the Brazilians and their Santy worms, which by the way exploited a PHP vulnerability rather than phpBB itself -- most of the damage done by Santy wasn't by penetrating phpBB forums but by launching DoS attacks on phpBB forums looking for PHP vulnerabilities. None of the worms got into my forums but that didn't mean they didn't cause a lot of havoc by overwhelming the servers until we got them blocked. FYI, DigitalPoint, which as you know is vBulletin, was also hit by Santy.

As I recall - and admittedly I didnt pay that close attention - wasnt it only PHPbb forums that were affected because the code was unsecure, and forum owners didnt update with the latest security patches???

Addendum: Tim and Joey -- I am not trying to attack or criticize either of you here. I am simply relating my very unhappy experience with theplanet.com.

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/santy_a.shtml


Santy is a worm was found at December 21st, 2004. It uses a vulnerability in popular phpBB discussion forum software to spread and it uses Google search engine to find vulnerable servers. It does not infect end user computers.

Google has started filtering requests made by the worm at December 22nd, 2004, in order to stop the worm.


Detailed Description

The worm is written in Perl scripting language. When executed, the worm uses the Google search engine to look for hosts that have phpBB software in use. It does this by searching URLs that contain string "viewtopic.php". In order to get different results with different searches, the worm uses a random string in the search as well.

After the search has been performed, the worm parses the resulting page and attempts to exploit a vulnerability in phpBB software. This vulnerability, known as Highlight Vulnerability, can be used to execute arbitary code on the server running vulnerable version of phpBB. Further information about the vulnarbility is available from phpBB web site at:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=240513

If the worm is able to exploit the vulnerablity, it will attempt to transfer itself to the victim host in 20-byte chunks. If any of the chunks is lost during the transfer, it will cause the worm to get corrupted, which can render the worm disfunctional on the victim.

The worm is written to a file "m1ho2of" on the victim. After the transfer is complete, the worm will use the exploit once again to execute the code using the system default Perl interpreter.

Santy contains also a generation counter that is increased every time the worm is executed, i.e. once per infected host. If the number of generations is higher than three (3), it will execute its payload. The payload attempts to replace all files with the following extensions ".htm", ".php", ".asp", ".shtm", ".jsp" and ".phtm". The result is the these files are replaced with a HTML page that contains the following text:


This site is defaced!!!
NeverEverNoSanity WebWorm generation X

...where X keeps growing from one infection to another.




http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum103/281.htm

http://www.geeklog.net/article.php/phpbb-worm


These also talk about the hackers using Google to find the sites. How about Google? Lets hold them responsible too.

As I recall - and admittedly I didnt pay that close attention - wasnt it only PHPbb forums that were affected because the code was unsecure, and forum owners didnt update with the latest security patches???
If you mean the Turks, no.

If you mean Santy, again no. The worm LOOKED for older versions of phpBB that allowed it to exploit a flaw in older versions of PHP (not phpBB) but it attacked vBulletin forums as well, including DP, and of course updated and secure versions of phpBB. It was frankly a dumb worm -- it hammered away at non-vulnerable forums for days without apparently recognizing that it couldn't get in. Ironically, this ended up causing more havoc than if the worm had been more intelligently written.

It was not just one IP at theplanet.com --in both cases, it was several.

Read the thread referenced at the BoG for more info.

Gotta run.

And remember -- I'm not posting all this stuff to attack Joey or Tim, or even to change their minds about theplanet.com -- but stuff originating from their servers caused me a huge headache last fall and last Christmas and I am still ****ed off with their lack of a response to my complaint - it sure wasn't for lack of information from me because I gave them everything.

Look at this published by a blogger, look at the sites hosted by "The Planet" that spammed and attacked Lycos and other sites.

Maybe they will wake up and take matters serious as they should because this **** is being watched real close.

Just an fyi, the planet is down the road from me, cool place...and everyone that I know well that have used them, left a few months ago, there serivices went downhill dramaticly I am told.

We are trying to warn Joey and Tim at ASO to look at other options, I think it would be in ASO's best interest to move on at this point.

I have said all I am going to say on this issue, there are other things I have found but I will not post them in fairness to ASO and Joey.

Thanks for listening to our concerns guys and best of luck to ASO whatever direction you go in the future.

popcorn:beer

Just wanted to pop in and say I love a heated argument :)

I've been on both sides of this type of thing with The Planet and RackShack (ev1servers) and about two dozen other data centers over the past 12 years of the hosting business. There are limitations on what they can do with servers, and most times a disconnect is what they acknowledge as the "accepted" answer. Most places today do provide some sort of troubleshooting advice when issues pop up, you get 24 hours to resolve it, or you pay them to resolve it.

Compromised boxes happen everywhere, you don't have to be at a data center for that.

We have had bad experiences with The Planet about 6 months ago when a Denial of Service attack was launched against our IPs at our data center. The attack was blocked on our end, however since their attack was not waiting on a response, they continued a 32MB/s attack for 9 hours. We had notified thier staff when we narrowed down what data center, and IP number was causing the attack, but it took until the next morning when a server admin showed up to disconnect the box. A lot of ****ed off people in the process.

At the same time, this sort of thing happens at a number of places - it's all about service and price. If you want more service, you pay more money. We had about 40 servers with ev1, all but 3 of them are now at our own place. We had 30 servers with Rackspace, also, those machines are with us. We still have servers at datacenters in Boston and London, but the majority we keep in house in California.

Options are available, but time, money and risk are the deciding factors. As long as there is a current backup of the sites hosted at ANY data center, then there is minimal downtime. Sure we'd like to see ZERO downtime, but for that, you need clustered servers etc - sometimes out of budget for people. If it's a business, and a lucrative business, then there's no reason NOT to have multiple servers in different locations (or at least Class C's), but when it comes to forking out money on a personal level, sometimes a backup is a better option.

Just stating an opinion - I love to pop over and watch the sparks fly and this one caught my eye :)

As far as our downtime lately, we moved to a brand new VPS server. It has take a little time to tweak the bugs out and Tim at ASO has been very responsive in this regard. I have several busy VB forums (VBW is the slowest of the three) so it can be tricky since I have members doing all kinds of different things at the same time. Its hard to tweak a server under these conditions except by trial and error, waiting for a problem to come up and then adjusting things so that problem isnt a problem again. Our down time has been less and less daily.

Welcome to the forum Conor, we had issues with "The Planet" long before we knew that VBW servers were at their data center.

You give some sound advice in your post and we are thankful that you are here.

What do you know about hosting vBulletin forums and how should they be handled properly?

We have a few threads here and a web hosting directory that you can submit to and post in to help us, so feel free to do so.

Anthony's right -- we've always had issues... :eek:

The only issue I have is a lack of venture capital, I have great ideas, just not enough money to carry them out.

I guess this is a common problem :(

Venture Capital is definitly an issue I can relate to! :) Throw me 50k, and I'll have 55k back to you in 6 months. The web hosting world grows so fast a few dollars can go a long way when you purchase your own equipment.

We just switched recently to vB and haven't had any issues (of course it's on a dedicated server with limited/no usage). The biggest factor with vB and phpBB and any other php/MySQL related script is Swap Space and Memory. Most hosts have a temporary swap space of 256MB - we make ours at 2MB (twice the memory in the machine). This allows enough space to store cached calls to the database, image cropping etc. As long as you have memory in the machine (1GB minimum) then things should run fairly smooth.

I did find with phpBB that it liked to make MySQL calls and forget to stop, so we had extra tweaks on the server that if a MySQL call was runing for longer than 5 minutes, to kill it. This helped the speed on the server greatly.

For the price, VPS is ually pretty good (between $40-70/month), but a dedicated server offers more control, tweaking of the php.ini file, removal of needless crap and just all around access to the root of the server. You also have the peace of mind that only YOUR programs can cause a slow down - with VPS while you're seperate from the other users on the server, if someone decides to run an intensive script and hog the CPU, well, you're sharing it, so your site degrades. I like the concept of VPS, but have never found it practical - in terms of regular sites, it's no different than a larger shared hosting account.

Conor, if you are not careful Joey and Noppid will ask you to join management here shortly :D :wave:

hehee - one more hat to wear.. I have problems balancing the 10 hats no my head as it is ;)

Right, one has to focus on where the money is, I have the problem of not doing this, but you have to go after the best opportunity you have and not waste time doing things that will never pan out.

Until you find that cash cow one tends to go in different directions in life :o

Joey the forum was down for an hour or so today!

The last few days I have been having problems with error pages when clicking on the forum!

Do you have too many sites on the same servers or what :confused:

It was a problem with ASO. My site was down this morning as well. I submitted a support ticket shortly after a woke up. This was the reply I received....

Hello,

At this time we are experiencing technical difficulties at the datacenter. Our
staff is working as fast as humanly possible to get this issue resolved in a
timely manner. We appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.

Then it has been happening for the last few days as I have been having problems getting online here, so it was not just this morning! :eek:

ASO has been having their share of problems lately. This is the first time (to my knowledge) that my site has been down in quite some time. But I have had other problems, such as no email replies from subscribed topics, or activation email notices, hell, no emails at all. They have fixed those problems though, and they did fix the downed sites. (obviously)

All though good about their service, I am beggining to question the reliability of ASO as of late.

Read this thread again, I do too!

Just got this message, looks like Joey is going to ban me!



Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /forums/online.php on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.vbwebmaster.com Port 80

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /forums/showthread.php on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.vbwebmaster.com Port 80

Warning: vb_error_handler(/home/vbw/public_html/forums/includes/functions_log_error.php): failed to open stream: Too many open files in system in /home/vbw/public_html/forums/includes/class_core.php on line 2894

Fatal error: vb_error_handler(): Failed opening required '/home/vbw/public_html/forums/includes/functions_log_error.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/vbw/public_html/forums/includes/class_core.php on line 2894

Fatal error: Undefined class name 'vbulletinhook' in /home/vbw/public_html/forums/includes/functions.php on line 4322

Servers go down from time to time anthony.

Anthonys get banned from time to time, too :D

Minstrel, I have not been able to get on www.bandofgonzos.com (http://www.bandofgonzos.com) today either! :eek:

I know. It's not down but it is very slow so you're probably timing out... not sure why yet - I notified Steven and asked him to check it out.

The last couple days it has been like that!

Maybe he needs to move it to a server with less sites on it! :eek:

Uh, no, that's not the problem. I'm not sure what is but that's definitely not the problem. First, it's a new server, only a few months old. Second, there are only a half-dozen sites on it. Third, PsychLinks is fine and it's on the same server.

Well just as things were heating up too, man you just can't win sometimes.....

You have a good base that will hang in there for you, that is one thing you have going for you for sure!