Whirlpool

MD Web Hosting seems to be down at the moment (well I can't connect to my e-mail or to their site).

Is anybody else having the same problem?
Does anybody know if this is a planned event or not, and if so how long we might be without e-mail?
Does anybody have a contact phone number for them?

Thanks.

wiseone writes...

Does anybody have a contact phone number for them?

1800 600 934 - Good Luck

The one site I have left with them has been down all morning. Email is down and DNS is down. Their own site is down. My bot traps caught a lot of Rumanian IP addresses last night. The trap emails the details to an external email address. I also noticed a lot of unusual activity yesterday from Rumanian IP addresses. I'm pondering - after the recent spate of Russian attacks.

I just got this off of their web site:

MD Web Hosting Service

We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties. We hope to restore service as soon as possible.

Hi there,

We are having an unexpected hardware issue on one of our Australian racks which is causing several servers to reboot.

Technicians are already on site and working with the datacenter to identify the cause of the issue.

Kind Regards,

Tom
MD Web Hosting

As noted in the previous post, issues started to happen last night.
At the time, DNS was not resolving.
This morning I logged a call. The help desk replied that it should be up in 4 hours (logged at 8:30am).
Now, MD themselves are not resolving.
I would suggest they have some major problems.
Cheers

Tom,

Thanks for the prompt answer.

According to my FTP log (5 min uploads) problems for me started around 10:30 this morning. All sites are down.
But they seem to make progress because 30 mins ago MD's web site was not reachable and at least now they got a brief message up.... :)

I guess we shall have to be patient. ...

Definitely going somewhere else after this is over. I've just been having problems non stop with md

I was wondering that myself. Loss of data on server transfers, and other issues im not sure I can post on here. Is this just a bad period for MD or is it the standard?

I have had a share of problems with DNS not resolving, and creating a new account for a customer will never resolve when its created with WHM, changes I make in WHM never seem to propagate either.

Hosting wise though I have had a few outages over the last 2 years, mostly relating to DNS, and the all to frequent Romanian/Russain attacks over recent months which have wiped out 3 websites I host. Fortunately 2 of them are created offsite with Frontpage, but one was created with the online SohoAdmin program. The last hack they left the website alone and hacked the SohoAdmin login, the only fix was to reinstall SohoAdmin, which of course wiped the site - with no backups of course on a reasonably sized site...

But then if everything went smoothly we would have nothing to complain about would we?

Just hope this latest problem is resolved quickly, need my email in a hurry....

Just over a year ago there were (and I experienced) considerable problems with MD Webhosting. So much so that I started looking for another company.
But then things improved and the last twelve months have been relatively trouble free with the exception of the occasional hiccup - but I guess that happens with every hosting company.

The last couple of days things have been really bad. Due to outside attacks MD says.

But I wonder what they can do to prevent this. IMHO the people at MD Webhosting sit on their buds until someone complains instead of actively monitoring their systems for abnormalities.

I also wonder if they have 24/7 monitoring going because whn in the middel of the night I happen to be on line and check and see something and report that in a ticket the reply only comes in the next morning.....????

I'll give them one more chance.

Just my luck. I only signed up with em for the first time 2 days ago!

Now I cant even work on my website!

Sometimes doesnt pay to go cheap!

hto writes...

Just over a year ago there were (and I experienced) considerable problems with MD Webhosting. So much so that I started looking for another company.
But then things improved and the last twelve months have been relatively trouble free with the exception of the occasional hiccup - but I guess that happens with every hosting company.

Same here, but since then:

They shut off the php mailer without telling their customers. I wondered why nobody was joining my forums.
My website overnight became three weeks old. It looked like a 3 week old backup had been dropped over it. I never requested such and maintain my own.
I'm on ADSL 1, but 10 minutes for the Control Panel page to load is ridiculous
Several major unexplained outages (to be expected)
The MD log in account panel keeps sending their replies to the wrong address event though I have the correct email address in the panel (not CPanel)
Several major hacks and outages over Christmas
They configured their firewall so that it was impossible to perform FTP downloads.
Along with DNS problems (which they fixed fairly quickly)
Double billed on renewal

Need I say more. I also have web hosting with another company (ClicknGo) for slightly more per year than I pay MD and in the 2 years that I've been with them I have never had one issue nor outage that I have noticed. They even email their clients and tell them about issues with the server.

Luckily my one remaining web site with MD, is almost ready to move. Then I'll be free....

without entering into the debate about md's service can tomn please advise when he believes things may be up.

Its kind of impossible to contact MD through other channels and I am getting way to much abuse from customers to stay happy and content.

We beleive that MD Webhosting are having major issues at the time

MD Web Hosting Service

We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties. We hope to restore service as soon as possible.

We have been unable to access there website at present. Have you attempted to contact them via the contact details or contact Phone number, i know this is never good for business, but things can happen and it could be beyond control. I hope to see my partner sit up soon as well.

Tom can you keep all of us upto date please.

Thanks

Hi there,

Just to update customers: our technicians have isolated the probable cause of failure.

The 11 servers that were constantly restarting were all connected to the same power-rail which was supplied to MD by the datacentre. It seems as though that rail malfunctioned and delivered a power surge to those servers.

Hardware replacements may be necessary, however it looks like all the data is fine.

Several on-site technicians along with both the datacentre reps and people from our hardware supplier are working hard to resolve the issue.

All other Australian and US services are operational.

We do of course apologise for the outage but it was unexpected and nothing we could have foreseen or planned for.

Kind Regards,
Tom

Tomn

thankyou for that feedback.

do we have an eta for resolution.

Mine has just come back up.

At least it was good to see that the customers sites came up before the MD site itself

Nope, all of mine are still out for the count.

But thanks Tom for the feedback, I know its not really necessary, but its good to hear the technical cause of the problem. Good luck to the techs working on it, hope they get it resolved quickly.

No joy yet... all six of my sites are still down. But glad to know it is hardware. These things happen - and according to Murphy's law - usually at the worst possible time.

Hope things can be fixed soon. Good luck MD and keep us posted, please!

A failed power rail is the culprit.. someone plug an extension lead into mine :P

Looks like their main website has just come up

Thanks Tom, I'm always impressed by MD's openness and honesty. Obviously if you can get things back up prior to tomorrow that would be fantastic.

Cheers
(Long and loyal MD customer)

;-( My 5 sites are still down.

Main MD site up, but MySQL errors.

Is there an ETA on this?? A client (which I inherited) who uses MD is screaming (at me) because his site has been down all day and that I have'nt been able to do his updates. It's still down by the way.

I also really need an eta on this. I have a number of clients websites hosting on MD and the phone calls have started.
I have tried calling MD , but everyone else must be trying the same.
Any update would be appreciated.

Yeah site seems up now which is good but im still unable to connect to my account (sql errors as mentioned by others)

Also, i noticed that my site has lost some of this updates, like it reverted back to a week or so ago and im missing a folder i uploaded too. :S

Hey everyone,

The power surge actually fused capacitors on every power supply and parts from Taiwan will need to be ordered.
We expect to have the following servers restored today from spares:

Gasgiant, Meteor and Sun.

We are also restoring our company services on our new dedicated cluster.

Other servers will take longer than today to complete.

Kind Regards,

Tom

An ETA.. ok.. Early hours of the morning.. That is, 8th of FEB morning. The fault is not something thats quickly repaired. So your looking at another 5 to 10 hours.

rockcod writes...

Also, i noticed that my site has lost some of this updates, like it reverted back to a week or so ago and im missing a folder i uploaded too. :S

If everyone else finds the same issue, it'd be safe to assume that the whole 'power issue' is a bunch of bs. They probably restored your account from an old backup - you don't do that when there's a power failure.

One of my sites was restored last week, without warning, and the backup ised was 2 months old!!

Hope this is resolved soon.

My sites are on Centauri. What does "longer than today" mean, Tonight, tomorrow, next week....?? Power supplies are for sale on every street corner.

You'd be surprised what else is on Centauri.

Longer than today.... more than 12 hours. Specialized hardware in rack systems arent common place

Taiwan???????????? I'm having trouble believing that the fastest way to fix the problem is to order some parts from Taiwan.

So, for the benfit of customers, when is the likely return of services?

Just for example if you order the parts and they take, say 48 hours, we'll be lucky to see anything working before next week? Is this really the timeframe?

And can we likely expect parts from Tawan in 48 hours? Surely there's another option????

If they have to order parts from taiwan to restore service, you can expect downtime to be measured in weeks, not hours or day.

we have about 100 domains with md If Im not up and running very shortly they wont be with MD within 24 hours.

Tom can we ask at the very least that those sites that are effected actually get redirected to a message stating that the server is undergoing maintenance or something.

"Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Most likely causes:
You are not connected to the Internet.
The website is encountering problems.
There might be a typing error in the address. "

Is unacceptable

intarwebman writes...

power surge in a datacentre ???

The fault was caused by a defective power rail rather than a poor quality power feed. The datacentre we use has high quality facilities to cope with our demanding power and cooling needs.

The technical explanation:
The fused capacitors caused the servers to restart. After a few minutes of operation, a certain voltage was hit which caused another fail-safe reboot. The continued reboots caused havoc with the file-system and kernel and therefore it was a lot quicker to restore sites from the weekly backup on a fresh image.

We will of course endeavor to put clients onto new servers as quickly as possible (that is, we won't leave them in the lurch as we wait for replacement parts to arrive).

That is as much information as I have for you currently.

Kind Regards
Tom

hotsaab writes...

One of my sites was restored last week, without warning, and the backup ised was 2 months old!!

Hmm So im not alone. Wierdness

hotsaab writes...

One of my sites was restored last week, without warning, and the backup ised was 2 months old!!

This was the case for my client too. A number of updates done to his site in early December were gone... DB was OK though.

I think I'll be strongly advising them to change host.

I have over 100 sites hosted with MD and every one of them are still down.

The phone calls have been hot all day but thankfully most customers understand that there is a problem that we know about and are trying to resolve asap.

After 12 months, I've had 6 sites totally hacked and lost 1 customer to another host ( because he was 1 of the 6 hacked ).

I'm also glad to know it's technical rather than hacker related.

Overall, i'm happy with the product / price but if the hacker problem continues much longer, i'll be renewing all my customers through other hosts as each one becomes due.

Over the christmas period same issue.....

Site replaced and database missing that months entries. Some pages missing.

Im kinda new to this. Is this something to expect with hosting? Should I be doing daily backups of my own?

Freo writes...

Im kinda new to this. Is this something to expect with hosting?

No. Only with incompetent hosts.

Should I be doing daily backups of my own?

Maybe not daily, but yes - on a regular basis, if the data is important to you.

Old backup? - Me too!

It seems all of my sites were replaced last friday night.

Thankfully most of my sites are static and I have a backup but most required me to log in and ulpoad the newer versions that were deleted and replaced with old pages.

Some sites were totally interactive. All of them supply time sensitive information and can't be replaced. Fancy having a TV guide displaying 6 week old session times!

Not good...

Freo writes...

Im kinda new to this. Is this something to expect with hosting?

No, not from a reputable hosting provider.

Should I be doing daily backups of my own?

If your data changes daily, then I would suggest that you create your own backups.

WPS writes...

This was the case for my client too. A number of updates done to his site in early December were gone... DB was OK though.

Same, Sites are old but the DB is running up to date.

Hi all,

It seems like we may have to restore our own backups if we have made our own backup more recently then the one which MD will restore.

I made a backup via the cpanel, for my oz site about a week ago.

The message the cpanel gives underneath the 'full backup' option is "Note: You cannot restore these backups, they can only be restored by your administrator." (got it from my USA based site)

I assume the administrator would in this case be MD ?

I left the backup in my root directory. MD will be able to get at it won't they ?

What day / time of the week do MD backup the servers ?

I've tried that QContent. Check the reply i got couple of posts up

Just tried my clients website to see if it was back up as yet. It is, BUT it's not their website - it is another businesses website TOTALLY...

Mine are all still down, although I was under the impression they were on the Gasgiant server which is supposed to be back up now?

Freo writes...

Im kinda new to this. Is this something to expect with hosting?

Only with this company

Should I be doing daily backups of my own?

I backup up all the databases each night, and I have a master copy of all of the source files (HTML, PHP etc) on my home machine. I also have backups of these stored elsewhere off site.

You can schedule a cron job to run at a set time and backup data on the server. I then have another cron job here that retrieves it.

How can I get in touch with these people?? Their phones are only to 7pm, their ticket support page throws sql errors as does their chat.

As mentioned, my customers domain is back but it is someone elses website which leads me to believe that it was more than just a power failure.

I think it was more than a power issue.
When I first noticed there was a problem one of my sites had no web access (as was the main MD site) yet POP, SMTP and FTP were still working for that domain. That didn't last for long and then all services went down.

Not sure how some services could be working if it was power related and all services are on the same hardware.

I don't think we are not being told the full(true) story.

Well it's 8:15pm and it seems it is still not working. No email, no sites, can't even submit a support ticket. When I clicked account log in, it gives:

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql4/mysql.sock' (2) in /shared/home/httpd/vhosts/mdwebhos­ ting.com.au/httpdocs/myaccount/au/­ include/misc/mod_adodb/drivers/ado­ db-mysql.inc.php on line 354

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Session: connection failed

Session: connection failed

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In relation to back ups: IMHO users are responsible for their own back ups. If you have frequent changes to your web site a daily backup is mandatory - or a mirror on your test server like I have.
As long as FTP works OK I can restore anything from my test server within minutes.

My sites (on Centauri) are still down. Hopefully MD Webhosting will find a spare server for me soon.... I understand te problem and these things can happen unless clients are prepared to pay for 100% redundancy.... But you cannot expect that for a couple of hundred dollars a year.... What you can expect is prompt action when something goes wrong. 24 hours is a sort of acceptable time limit to get it going again. So we'l wait and see where we are at 10:30 am tomorrow......

hotsaab writes...

When I first noticed there was a problem one of my sites had no web access (as was the main MD site) yet POP, SMTP and FTP were still working for that domain. That didn't last for long and then all services went down.

Not sure how some services could be working if it was power related and all services are on the same hardware.

I've noticed this before after reboots of the server. The other services tend to come up quicker than Apache in most cases.

hi all,

firstly thanks tomn for your assistance when i was extremely heavily spammed and not getting alot of understandable stuff out of tech support (steep learning curve there- must change nickname soon - I now know a lot more about sites, scripting, etc)

a quick query.

I'm wondering what the issue has been with Centauri. If memory serves me correct, the issue with the major hacks/spam was announced as being with the other servers (not Centauri) and Centauri seems to be one of the last one to get back up. My site is on Centauri

tech_dunce writes...

I'm wondering what the issue has been with Centauri. If memory serves me correct, the issue with the major hacks/spam was announced as being with the other servers (not Centauri) and Centauri seems to be one of the last one to get back up. My site is on Centauri

Centauri was as much spammed as the other servers. And that issue was resolved a couple of days ago.
This interruption has got nothing to do with hacking or spammers. It is a hardware problem as I understand it (see Tom's posts) .

We (Centauri users) just seem to be less important than MD's own site..... that is why we are not back on yet....

In one of the marketing courses I had to enjoy I was told, that it was "bad marketing" to have your management parking spots closest to your front entrance.... That is where the customers should park. Management and staff should come last in the parking pecking order..... Maybe MDWebhosting management should go to that same course.... :) :) :)

My Web Site still down. Unable to contact MD.

I joined this forum because of this thread, I too am a disgruntled MD Client who's site has been down all day, was restored from a backup from early Dec (loosing hours and hours of work), who have a huge project starting this weekend and cannot modify my damn web site!!!!!!!!! MD is costing me money every hour!

When MD restored my web site (after saying it was hacked?????) it became 2GB bigger than what it was, so then I was over my Quota and couldn't do a thing! Infact cpanel reported my web was 1800mb over quota yet when you added up what was in file manager it was 3000mb less than quota, go figure???

MD helpdesk was less than helpful with their standard replies to logged jobs! I have 3 other web sites with MD that are fine, MD please move my web site of excaliber please!

Anyone suggest someone better than MD?

Thanks

They claim that they have 99% uptime. . . .or your money back!

Well, pay up please!

A back up from 15th December from a few days ago. . . .now this . . . .

WPS writes...

No, not from a reputable hosting provider.

What are you implying here?! ;)

Sorry... should have added that I am aware that this current problem is a power/hardware problem.

Spam/hack issue was over christmas.

Two different problems/time. Same server to be one of the last back up.

Cool, BR0WNC0AT where did you see that on their web site (if its up!) becauce that's what I'm going to be after, pity I can't get them for damges to my business as well! Because there has been heaps this week!

can anyone advise if they know anything pertaining to the 'titan' box.

All my websites and my clients are still down. I have spent the day searching for a new host which is the last thing I wanted to do. Finally found jumpline.com non aussie however MD's internal controls just don't seem up to it. Not happy at all.

Sadly it has been 5 hours since we last heard from tomn [MD WebHosting] posted Today at 5:41 pm and still every one of our sites [centauri] is down.

It simply does not take 5 hours to replace capacitors..

Take your pick...

- they have not got spares
- its not the real cause of the problem
- their techies have given up and gone home for the night
- no-one gives a s...t

If MD are not being attacked by the ruskies (or so they say), they are being attacked by the gremlins.

Either way... lots of very disgruntled customers!

actually Ripefruit...... I'll take answer D thanks cause it matches the service they have provided since joining them

Im going with a multi-option. C and D for me please

RIPEFRUIT writes...

It simply does not take 5 hours to replace capacitors..

As i mentioned, the parts are beyond repair and will need to be replaced with new components from the Taiwanese manufacturer.

We have 4 techs still working on the issue (and they have been since 1030am). Staff have so far managed to find replacements for almost every server and will be rolling out the backups progressively.

Kind Regards,
Tom

Tom - why rolling out backups if not data was lost? As I was told when I called the 1800?

Thanks

DigitalRealism writes...

why rolling out backups

Please read forum-replies.cfm?t=913594&p=3#r42

Pity your helpdesk didn't say that at 6pm when I called, hours after your post! Seems to be typical of the helpdesk, uninformed?

Plus may I add why is it that you can revert to a weekly backup, yet this weekend when they restored the server I'm on it was from mid Dec 07??????

Really appreciate your help Tomn.

tomn writes...

replaced with new components from the Taiwanese manufacturer

don't we sell anything in Australia ?

I might have the wrong idea here but would it not be a good idea to get anything that is cheap, but works, to get your customers up and running and then plan a full maintenance rebuild when traffic patterns dictate the quietest time.

also Tom, can you advise what is happening to the titan server as an important portion of our content was on that server, (I would like to confirm this but obviously I cant).

tomn writes...

The fused capacitors caused the servers to restart. After a few minutes of operation, a certain voltage was hit which caused another fail-safe reboot. The continued reboots caused havoc with the file-system and kernel and therefore it was a lot quicker to restore sites from the weekly backup on a fresh image.

Tom,

I'm sorry to tell you, but this is a complete crock of horse crap and deliberately lying to your customers.

You can cold reboot a linux machine many times and still not cause issues with the filesystem or kernel.

If it doesn't boot you simply put a recovery disk in, run fsck and about an hour or so later it'll be completed. Reboot and you're back in business.

I have seen this happen with servers many times and it's never had an issue.

At worst case you simply rebuild a stock kernel from yum, or even worse case, migrate customers data from this hard drive to the new servers hard drive with a fresh cPanel install.

All of these processes are actually quicker then restoring several hundred (or thousand) tar backup files.

CJ.

tom, just a question which should be fairly simple to answer;

I have a friend that had their sql databases restored to a december backup a few days ago, prior to your current "power surge capacitor problem".

There also seem to be many in this thread that have had the same thing happen to them.

Is there any reason why that occurred?

In a disaster recovery situation like this you move hell and high water.

If it means contacting other ISPs to borrow equipment or cannibalise your own equipment or physically move the disks in to new boxes or you do it. If the capacitors are burnt out go to Dick Smith or Radio Parts and spend $20.00.

I imagine the MD Disaster Recovery Plan is 1 page. "Please Turn Over" printed on the front and "Page Intentionally left Blank" on the back. Restoring out of date backups is going to cause knock on effects for sys admins for weeks.

It sounds like this whole course of action has been decided by a business rep rather than letting a few technicians sit down for 30 minutes and calmly make 2 simple decisions - what to do now & what to do later.

Instead they panicked and the business rep abrogated his responsibility by calling his supplier so he doesn't have to break the "Warranty Void If Removed" sticker.

If MD intends to move more servers from the USA to Australia they are going to have to step up their technical and business skills exponentially.

I am still waiting for my sites to go back online, I have to do this as I know I will be having to update everyone with current back ups, hopefully before my clients are back to work this morning. Is there anyone who can please give me an update on work in progress to fix this issue?

Still nothing going yet.... (Centauri based sites). Would appreciate an ETA.

Yes an eta would be much appreciated, I have about 1 hour before the phones start ringing once again for a 2nd day.

I Must admit..... I'm getting a little frustrated myself, my sites are sitill down also.
I wonder why MD don't have there own forum, to keep their customers informed?

I wonder why MD don't have there own forum, to keep their customers informed?
In your MDWebhosting "My Account" home-page is a link to "Server Status". But at the moment that is full of errors with the last entry somewhere in December. The information on that page is usually very "selective" anyway.

We're losing thousands of dollars each day with our web store offline. They couldnt even put a catchall dns route to a page that says "we are experiencing technical difficulties". Because our email is on their DNS and their only redundancy was moved to the same premises (STUPID!!) we cant deal with our international contacts anymore. This is almost on the brink of legal action, the excuses are exactly that, no solutions except wait, wait and wait. I'd be down the local store building a high capacity temp server just to provide that "we are down page". MDwebhosting, we are going to chase compensation like it or not.

That page really a one sided thing, and doesn’t tell the whole story, (IE. when the Hacking first occured) and as you stated, it’s not functioning at the moment.

I would like to see something on their site informing us when they expect to get things running again, and an email when things are back up and working.

AND.... if they restored from a backup.
So we know wether we need to change anything on our websites.

Hi all,

We have checked the www.mdwebhosting.com.au site, We have been able to load the site, then click on MyAccount Link, We are able to logon to the My account site. Then click on get support.this is when it will fall over and bring up the errors, My wife has been nagging me , why her online store has been down now for over 24 hours and she started advertising again. She said she is losing alot of money and spent all this money on advertising, Which is not going to look good to new customers. I hope we have our servers back online today, or i have to find another web hosting service provider.

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It appears the domains are all there but the data isnt, looking at www.ting.com.au just comes up with the default folder structure cpanel sets up

Just saw this on MD Website under Server Status!:

Australian Servers: Downtime
Posted By: David P On: 08 Feb 2008 08:56 AM

DetailsDue to a severe power issue, multiple Australian servers are down for the time being. We expect servers to begin coming online tonight.

Tonight is just not good enough after been down most of yesterday as well. I will be moving my clients today.

mickisa123 writes...

DetailsDue to a severe power issue, multiple Australian servers are down for the time being. We expect servers to begin coming online tonight.

It's the next day now and the universe server is still not up. I'm glad my website was ready to move. I'm interested in what happens after the restore. Will it be a 3 month old backup of my website or someone else's website? It's like a lucky dip.

Having moved my website, I have a new one planned for my old MD webspace. ;)

Yesterday was the last straw for me with MD, so thank goodness I changed provided last night, if they are out again.

As a business based online trying to get off the ground and having an MD disaster (Hackers with Trojans, MD putting up old backup, MD being offline, MD removing some of the usability of the site) co-incide with every marketing campaign I have launched over the last couple of months,
(the latest email marketing campaign about 10mins before MD went to hell yesterday) I'm struggling to get off the ground. The saving in hosting costs cannot repair the spoilt customer relationships... "I'm not going near you , you have a virus!", nor the hours spent trying to rectify the problems.

I pray that my new hoster lives up to expectation... else I may as well have held a bonfire with my start-up money, and gone back to working for someone else.

Also, thank goodness I found this forum and discovered I wasn't alone yesterday... this forum gave me the knowledge it was time for change.

So thank you!

I am even certain that our site was down Wednesday evening!
We update our weather station every 10 minutes to our site - so no data going out!

If only there was access to the emails, our site would have been migrated elsewhere already. Murphy's Law - there were a couple of very important emails we were waiting on. Trying to have the companies resend to another account.

After so many issues over 2 years of being with MD I finally got fed up last night with the lack of information once again with problems and no eta when would be up again. I quickly found another host (ixhosting) and moved my servers. I was up and running again within half an hour. Beats waiting for MD to pull their fingers out. They have lost my business and I suspect their will be a lot more that will follow. A 2 day outage is totally unacceptable. They obviously have no proper procedures in place for disaster recovery.

DigitalRealism writes...

Anyone suggest someone better than MD?

I used to use MD but changed to TPP Internet. Haven't had any problems since and they actually answer the phones when you ring.

Cameron writes...

It appears the domains are all there but the data isnt, looking at www.ting.com.au just comes up with the default folder structure cpanel sets up

A traceroute to www.ting.com.au shows that it is infact hosted by Hosting Shop in Brisbane!

Yes I agree thank goodness for this forum as MD has deserted us. Where I have been up for over 24 hours now trying to do everything I can for my clients it seems MD contacts ran off home as soon as it struck bed time. It took MD nearly 24 hours to even put up a message on their own site let alone contact their customers. Is there only 2 people working for MD or something?

lewra writes...

Where I have been up for over 24 hours now trying to do everything I can for my clients it seems MD contacts ran off home as soon as it struck bed time. It took MD nearly 24 hours to even put up a message on their own site let alone contact their customers. Is there only 2 people working for MD or something?

Then why are you still with them?

This is not the first time they have done this, it's about the fifth time in the last 12 months that I can recall.

Stop supporting a business with practices like this. There are plenty of good quality Australian based hosts who offer similar or better value with far more competency and support.

Here is a few:

www.unlimited-space.com
www.jumba.com.au
www.netlogistics.com.au
www.gdwebhosting.com.au
www.serversaustralia.com.au

CJ.

Hi All,

We have MD support email address, this is only way you can contact these guys. we have attempted to contact them via there contact details, keeps saying we are experecing issues at the current time, we are unable to leave a voicemail. I would suggest emailing them with your concerns. sound like they dont want to speak with any customers, more emails they recieve , more they might do something about the issues they are causing.

Email Address: support@mdwebhosting.com.au

Good luck all, We hope they can get there service back on line soon.

Our companys website is back online. And has been rebuilt with our last backup from Dec 16 when we did last changes... the same damn backup that for two days before this issue they were telling us was corrupted and couldnt be restored when we suddenly found our website reverted to a 4 month old version.

At least i can salvage all our backups now and shift somewhere else

Hi all,

i have recieved a reponse from one of the staff from MD web hosting and i have posted what has been said via email.

Hello,

We are facing slight network issues with our servers. Our admins are working hard to get resolved the issues. It will take couple of hours to get resolved the issue. Thank you for your patience.

Kind Regards,

Martin
support@mdwebhosting.com.au
MD Support

As least we have a email from them, but doesnt excuse them from what happening and leaving customer with no updates to there issues they are experecing.

have just spoken with client of mine who is with MD a few minutes ago. He has has been told all the techs have gone home and they expect it will be back up Monday !!
My client is reliant on his email receiving up to 100 legal documents every day. When he asked what will happen to his email he was told ithey would bounce. He told them this is not happening otherwise his phonme would be running hot. MD said they dont know !!! He asked for the names of the owner and who he was speaking to. MD said they cant say for privacy issues. He is now preparing legal action

My sites are all back up and working, however, my own site has been restored from a backup from around Christmas, just after the SohoAdmin program was hacked, which in fact has helped somewhat as it was one from back when the site was working.

It has, however, also brought back the russian/romanian hacked SohoAdmin pages, which are a real problem.

Does anyone have any experience in transferring a website created with sohoadmin (creates in PHP) to Frontpage or Dreamweaver? (bearing in mind I can not get into sohoadmin at all)

Now at least that I have a working web site again I would like to save it. The only way to fix SohoAdmin is to reinstall it, which wipes the web site (I know cause I just did all this a month ago...)

My clients site (the correct site) is back now (after some other site was at their domain) but some pages won't display as it says that "Zend Optimizer not Installed". Is this something that is normally installed as it use to work before all these problems.

SeaComms writes...

Does anyone have any experience in transferring a website created with sohoadmin (creates in PHP) to Frontpage or Dreamweaver? (bearing in mind I can not get into sohoadmin at all)

This would not be possible as it requires files from the soho software itself so you would have to create the site from scratch in FP or DW

Can anyone explain the process of going from one host to another? I have a domain that I registered through MD, as well as being on one of their plans. How would I jump ship to get all that transferred out?

It seems that the passwords have been changed again, or is it just me? I can not log into cPanel or FTP anymore.

Easy way is to go to ixhosting.com and signup for one of their plans. They offer a third party option for US $49 that will move your site for you and recreate everything. I guess you just need supply the passwords. There are probably others around that offer a similar service.

I cannot FTP to my site either, yet CPanel works fine.....

SeaComms writes...

Does anyone have any experience in transferring a website created with sohoadmin (creates in PHP) to Frontpage or Dreamweaver? (bearing in mind I can not get into sohoadmin at all)

Now at least that I have a working web site again I would like to save it. The only way to fix SohoAdmin is to reinstall it, which wipes the web site (I know cause I just did all this a month ago...)

Try the soho website. See if there is a way to just overwrite the hacked Sohoadmin pages? Had you updated the soho software on your site. The current install via CPanel is so out of date its not funny

Does MD charge a pro rata rate for leaving early, or do they charge the entire year's worth?

lewra writes...

MD contacts ran off home as soon as it struck bed time.

Four technicians have already spent 26 hours straight fixing various services.
We will of course continue to work on the situation throughout the day and hope to roll out each server progressively.

Earth, Gasgiant and Meteor are functional, as are most MD site assets. Eight servers remain affected.

This situation has been an unfortunate "force majeure" and was not anything that we could have foreseen or protected against. We are already discussing with the data-center to see what measures can be taken to prevent further occurrences.

Updates will be posted as they become available on the server status page, available from www.mdwebhosting.com.au/...t/updatedsupport
We suggest that affected clients check the status of their servers there.

Kind Regards,
Tom

So Tom, do we have a decent eta, rather than "tongiht"

Also the backups you say are weekly? Will they definately be weekly as a lot of clients are reporting that they are months old.

All I know is, I'm still out and I still have clients screaming at me down the phone, if I do not receive a satisfactory answer as to when my websites are back Up I will have to seek legal advice, as my client are threatening the same to me.

shnl writes...

Can anyone explain the process of going from one host to another? I have a domain that I registered through MD, as well as being on one of their plans. How would I jump ship to get all that trans