Two hours ago I tried to go to my daughter’s website, and all that was presented was an error message from my proxy server saying (113) No route to host. D’oh. Is the server down again? The website is hosted on an OpenVZ VPS on VPSLink running Gentoo Linux, and VPSLink has been very stable and fast over the last 3 months that I have been with them.

So I logged into VPSLink’s control panel, seeing that my VPS is still up. So it is probably a network issue. It wasn’t the first time network outage has occurred since I had this VPS with them. Network was down for about 90 minutes a month ago due to some routing issue. So not surprisingly there’s an outage thread on VPSLink’s forum. Seems I am not the only one that has been affected. That’s comforting, not!

What I have noticed is the lack of communication during these outages. Servers appeared to be down. Routing is not working. Customers submitted tickets and reported onto their forums. People started to speculate what was happening. Furious ones threatened to change host and ask for money back. No one has any idea what’s going on — because there simply lacks information feeding the desperate customers. Sure, there’s an announcement after outage has been resolved, but I believe customers would much prefer up-to-date communication throughout the outage! A simple public acknowledgement stating “we have identified that there is an issue” would be sufficient.

Not that I have important sites there though. Off-line for two hours ain’t going to hurt me — I probably won’t even notice if it is not at this time of the day. However I am sure there are many who have their revenue-generating sites on these VPS, and to those whose livelihood depends on their online presence, “downtime” would be a totally different story. Frequent communication would surely help in these situations.

On the topic of openness and communication during outage, Matt from SliceHost impressed me with this blog post. I have no idea how the communication is taken place, as the outage only lasted 30 minutes. However he was totally open on what was going on and what had been done. I am sure all his customers would appreciate that.

Now, web hosting companies — do utilise your blogs to keep everyone up to date, and forums are not just a place for customers to chat amongst themselves. Most people are fine with occasional outage, especially when they have been acknowledged that these have been taken care of, and they are in safe hands.