I was working on this blog on Monday 30th March 2009, having installed Apture on 28th March 2009, when suddenly I got a 404 error when I tried to go to a certain page. I checked the rest of the blog; which was initially for the most part working; but piece by piece started returning the same 404 error.

It was as if my blog was being taken down piece by piece.

I rang Fasthosts Customer Support to ask if they knew what was going on.

I was informed that a ticket had just been raised on the matter a few minutes ago; and that my blog had been taken offline by the abuse department. I tried to enquire further; but was told that an email was being drafted by the misuse department as I spoke explaining the issue. All I could get from technical support was a brief overview of the situation.

Ten minutes later I received the following email:

“Dear Sharron,

Re: Your website – kkomp.com

We have recently become aware that your website, kkomp.com, was causing performance problems on the shared webserver on which it was hosted. Our monitoring system detected a resource problem on the server and we are confident that that your site has been contributing to this issue. More details as to the nature of the problem will be found below.”

It gives the impression that they’re still using 386s with 8MB RAM as servers.

“As a result of this problem we have acted to move your website to our probation servers, these servers provide a separate hosting environment that we maintain specifically to allow our customers to diagnose and resolve performance issues with their sites. This action on our part gives you the opportunity to alter the site as required so that we can then consider moving it back to the standard hosting environment without affecting the performance of the other hosted sites.

While your site is hosted on our probation servers you are likely to experience performance below the levels that we normally provide to our shared hosting customers.

The move has meant that the IP address associated with your website has now changed to 2**.***.***.*** “

Thanks: I really needed that. ‘Much unappreciated!

“The problem is:

Your site was found running a number of php processes, using up excessive amounts of memory. At one point we suspected it on Sunday but were unable to gain sufficient evidence. However, today your site was caught running 5 php processes, each using up over 50MB of RAM and on a further check just now, we found 7 php processes using similar amounts of RAM each, plus a further 8 php processes using up around 28MB of RAM each.”

WOW: 574 MBs of RAM: – Big Deal! That’s on a 64-bit quad-core Linux server serving 26 customers I believe. That means that if everyone was using the same amount of memory as me there’d be 14 GB RAM fitted to cope with the load. Assuming that you have 4 RAM slots with 4 GB DDR2 cards in each then that’s 16GB RAM in total… But you clearly don’t have 16 GB  RAM fitted: Which means that you have 2GB sticks, fitted making a total of 8GB.

I find it astonishing that you’re too tight to spend less than £100 on 4 x 4GB sticks and fit them so that I can use the server properly, considering the fact that you bring in over £250 a month from that server alone!

Oh I almost forgot: It’s a British hosting company. What did I expect? Charity? Is this yet another example of rip-off Britain?

“In a shared hosting environment, this sort of RAM consumption can cause severe performance problems.”

It sounds a bit like British housing: We have 28 flats in your 20 x 12 metre-cubed tenement block, all sharing a single pipe. Since 45% of the residents are also geeks, please be considerate of the needs of others and don’t hog bandwidth or you’ll be disconnected. A limit of 1 GB per day at an expected speed of 512Kb/s is the maximum you should expect, despite the advertised 8Mb/s speeds. If you have any problem with this, RTFM including small-print.

“Beyond the description of the symptoms given above we are unable to offer assistance in diagnosis or resolution of the problem. We cannot advise you on how your site should be changed to resolve the problem. If we have been able to identify a particular script responsible for the problem then this information has been included in the notes above. If there is no indication of a particular script that we believe is causing the problem then you should assume that we have not been able to identify one. We will not take any further action to diagnose this problem.”

Ah I detect British Workman syndrome here:

“We didn’t find exactly what the problem was as it was time to clock off. You sort it out yourself, as we’re not getting paid for overtime.”

“While we recognise that this move may be inconvenient for you we would like to remind you that, when you opened your Fasthosts account, you agreed to be bound by our terms of service and to be responsible for the domains in your account. We feel that we have fulfilled our responsibility to you as a customer by providing this alternate hosting environment and giving you the opportunity to resolve the problem.”

What a weird way of going about things. Why not just email me and say “There’s a problem with your site overusing server resources. WE can’t be bothered to work out exactly what the problem is as we’re clocking off shortly. Please do our diagnostics for us and then fix it, or we’ll remove your blog from our servers.”

“We regret that we cannot allow your site to remain on the probation server for longer than 7 days. To prevent the suspension of your site you need to contact us within 7 days and tell us what steps you have taken to resolve the problem. If we do not hear from you within 7 days of the date of this email we will act to suspend your website and associated services including email. This step is not reversible and so it is imperative that you act quickly if you wish to continue to host your website with Fasthosts.

Should you require us to remove any unacceptable data and related services in order to resolve this problem we will require your explicit authorisation to do so.

On receipt of your reply, we will assess the situation again with the aim of moving your website back to the shared environment.

Once we are confident that the problem has been resolved we will move your website back to the shared hosting environment. Any further performance issues caused by your website will result in the site being permanently disabled and so we strongly advise that, in future, you actively monitor the resources used by the domains that you host with us.”

That seems a bit draconian!

For further information please refer to:

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/knowledge-base/?article_id=1115

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/termsofservice/

.
Regards,
***** *****
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd.”

Bloody heck: What a palaver!

Well it didn’t require a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist to guess what was causing the issue: Logically, since the Apture plugin was installed on Friday, and the issues had initially come to the fore on Sunday; just after I had configured a number of posts and pages to fully utilise the Apture plugin; it was logical to assume that the Apture plugin was the cause of the server memory usage issues. – So I removed it and rang up the host to check that the problem was resolved. There appeared to be no further problems, so the site went back onto the usual server.

I was getting 404s still; so I also asked them to check that the site was getting out. It was, so I flushed my DNS cache and everything returned to normal.

Now then; I want your opinions readers please: -

1) Do you think my host is tight-fisted and draconian, or is this normal behaviour for a web-host in your opinion?

2) Do you think; in your honest opinion, that I should find a better web-host?

3) If yes to #2; who would you recommend?

Please comment below.