Recent Events At Astahost, The Hosting Server Problem, And The Xisto Corporation Everything is related it seems.

Well, the last couple of days have seen some pretty odd behavior from the server. Files won't upload, files won't edit, and then of course there have been a few server outages all together.Well, I have the reason behind the issues. In an effort to better enable himself to offer all of the services that he provides, OpaQue's company has aquired another hosting companies assets. That is Xisto - Web Hosting has bought shothost.com which means that he basically took over the hosting accounts for shothost.com. As a result, all of the shothost customer hosting accounts are being transfered to the Xisto servers. Since OpaQue already has the needed servers, there wasn't any reason to keep the overhead the shothost had invested in servers. The strain of transfering all of that data to our servers has caused a few issues to pop up. In the first place, during the transfer, in order to reduce data errors for everyone's account, the server goes into read only mode for the "ACTIVE" accounts. Believe me, this is best for all of us. We don't want new data that we thought was saved being discarded in the process. Once a set of transfers is complete, I believe that the server has to restart or at the very least, the server has to re-catelog all of the domain information for the accounts as well as other file association tasks. Now, thus far, all of these transfers have been performed at non-peak internet times and has provided irritating but generally harmless outages. So if this is for Xisto - Web Hosting, then why is Gamma server effected. Well, it seems that some of the paid hosting accounts are being hosted on the same server as the free accounts. This shouldn't effect us in the end nor should it bother the paid accounts. So why is Xisto buying another hosting company? Well, Xisto is really just paying the previous shothost owners for the hosting accounts they had. These accounts will now pay their monthly hosting fees to Xisto and this really effects our free hosting account in a very positive way.The advertising on the forums doesn't come close to covering the cost of our free hosting accounts here. As a result, the "PAID" hosting customers are the ones paying for our hosting here. So the more paid accounts Xisto has, the more free accounts we can offer here and the more likely we are to keep all of the great hosting features we have.I'm not sure how many accounts were aquired nor how long it will take for the server to be back to normal operation but as stated before, these operations are being performed at a time that should impact as few users as possible. vujsa

Not bad deal at all, I did findout something about how many accounts that were picked up.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

as of Nov 05 2006 their where 24 domains on that account. Now I would assume that could be just domain names being pointed to their servers and not actual hosting accounts. It could be hosting too I dunno.

But from what I saw about the Xisto - Web Hosting accounts though makes me wonder but I won't go into that since it's OpaQue business and not anyone elses.

But I am seeing OpaQue doing alot of smart business, He should try and get a few more run down hosting sites and pick up their accounts. That would be some smart business right there.

Pretty sad to see shothost go like this, but it's probably for the better. I use to do a lot of word of mouth for shothost to NZ clients, but had a falling out with Will, due to his false marketting of word of mouth. I don't mind word of mouth marketting, but being the owner and pretending to be a customer of your servers just to promote it is not something I would like to be associated with as it reflects the owner and the people who promote it, in my case, it was spam so I dropped promoting him to NZ clients.If Xisto can match the NZ pricing plans or at least keep it reasonable, I would be happy to promote NZ clients to them, the problem however was that Will is in NZ, and telephone support for NZ was the key factor.Cheers,MC

But I am seeing OpaQue doing alot of smart business, He should try and get a few more run down hosting sites and pick up their accounts. That would be some smart business right there.

Well, that would be good and it would be bad. First off, Xisto would have a larger NET profit, but their servers would bbe overloaded with clients, forcing them to buy a new server. Its good to expand but expand slowly. Also, the fees to pay staff to provide techincal support, and manage dedicated servers is pretty expensive. A Xeon server costs serveral hundred dollars, depending on who you get it from and if you want it to be manage.

Questions:
Are the Xisto servers networked together through cPanel?
Will xisto be offering vps service soon?

The strain of transfering all of that data to our servers has caused a few issues to pop up. In the first place, during the transfer, in order to reduce data errors for everyone's account, the server goes into read only mode for the "ACTIVE" accounts. Believe me, this is best for all of us. We don't want new data that we thought was saved being discarded in the process. Once a set of transfers is complete, I believe that the server has to restart or at the very least, the server has to re-catelog all of the domain information for the accounts as well as other file association tasks. Now, thus far, all of these transfers have been performed at non-peak internet times and has provided irritating but generally harmless outages.

You would be correct, vujsa. See, when CPanel is moving accounts from other servers, there's too much data loss risk if everyone was permitted to continue writing to the server hard disks. Not only would files be fragmented, but lots of data (both incoming data from the other servers and yours) would potentially be lost. Plus, as new accounts are added, Apache's httpd.conf, the FTP config, the name servers and all have to be restarted causing downtime.

Don't complain. Be HAPPY the server is doing this for the protection of YOUR DATA! Just wait it out!

[N]F

I agree it would need to be done over time, just to see how the current servers are handling all the info. I made mention in post on trap that with this purchase maybe we could see an increase in space maybe up 200mb of space or something. The extra money s/could cover it but that would just be a matter of time to decided all that good stuff.

the server is back up and running.xboxrulz

It's up and running indeed, but it still won't let me edit/upload files. Ahh well. Guess my hope to release Wordpress themes will have to wait a while.

Don't complain. Be HAPPY the server is doing this for the protection of YOUR DATA! Just wait it out! smile.gif

You know, I was just about to complain. But seeing as this is reason why, I guess it's not such a big deal. Sounds like a nice deal for Xisto though.

It's up and running indeed, but it still won't let me edit/upload files. Ahh well. Guess my hope to release Wordpress themes will have to wait a while. :DYou know, I was just about to complain. But seeing as this is reason why, I guess it's not such a big deal. Sounds like a nice deal for Xisto though.

See? Either you or someone else would have been complaining about data loss later on if it wasn't for that protection!

[N]F

Last I heard Files where still being moved over it should be complete by now, unless something came up.

See? Either you or someone else would have been complaining about data loss later on if it wasn't for that protection!

 

[N]F

 

you know, it piss me off when i cant see my test site due to disk problem with the server. then i realize that i am on a different timezone.. stupid me..

good thing i read this thread before.. and yes this is helpfull..

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anyway.. i dont care now if the disk will lock or not, i am doing my test now locally on my pc and by the time i finish the test site.. the new accounts have been moved completely..

 

though on the lost files and data.. i lost some data and files..

 

 

seems that there must be a warning to be sent or a timeframe for a non safe updates of file..

 

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my files was gone, around 7 of them and mySQL database have rolled back a few minutes [3-4mins] and lost some database tables..

 

the server seems to have a time delay before it locks the files and the SQL database.. on the part of the SQL database.. some rollbacks do occur..

 

no worries anyway on my side since it was a test site.. the other users may have been affected though and have symptoms like mine.. by the way.. i am on smarty engine and part of my templates are on the database.. this may also contribute..

On our important production sites, each one of us should have efficient backup procedures, in order to recover from system crashes. There is no real system which is guaranteed free of crash possibility, so we should always be ready to recover from a disaster.As SI, backups is our job. When I forget backing up my own files, I cannot complain if they disappear, it's my responsability. By the way, of course, if Xisto is able to do some important migrations without any data loss, thank a lot, good job folks!

I figured something was going on. This is not a complaint but a funny story.I have a program that runs updates from my Xisto account. Basically it reads a directory and if the files there are newer than on the client, the files are downloaded and installed. Last night I kept getting one file that was always downloading and I couldn’t figure out why. After spending 3 hours in my debugger I finally went to that directory and found something strange. The file modified date was November 18, 2006. It is now November 9. I guess I warped to the future and updated the file, lol. As I said this is not a complaint but more of a story of weird things that can happen when debugging.

The file modified date was November 18, 2006. It is now November 9. I guess I warped to the future and updated the file, lol. As I said this is not a complaint but more of a story of weird things that can happen when debugging.

You should read the other growing topic at Xisto talking about the fourth dimension, and travelling along the time axis.

You should read the other growing topic at Xisto talking about the fourth dimension, and travelling along the time axis.

that time warp made my compiled directory clean..

i have templates generated 7 days in the future which my moded smarty treats as invalid and keeps on trying to wipe it out..