Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime • Hacker News Board

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#11

Post by andrewvc » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:28 AM UTC

I remember trying to get a quote / get a few details about buying large quantities of bandwidth from Joyent a couple years back.

They consistently took days to answer simple questions via email. I generally take it that if a company can't even get its sales people responding quickly there's a snowballs chance in hell it's techs will.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#12

Post by jefe78 » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:29 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #6

kylecordes wrote: post #5

I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness: It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that leg…

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

+1 for Linode. I've literally never had a problem. I'm a huge fan and I'm picky as hell.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#13

Post by netik » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:37 AM UTC

joyent had this sort of failure regularly about 4 years ago and continues to do so. Avoid.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#14

Post by gaoshan » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:41 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #6

kylecordes wrote: post #5

I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness: It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that leg…

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

I was hoping to not see a comment like this. I, too, bought the lifetime account back when I was active with Textpattern CMS and joined in as part of a drive they had to raise funds (managed by Dean Allen, the originator of Textdrive and then at Joyent, who has seemingly disappeared into the ether since then). At the time I knew it was a bit of a risk but I had my fingers crossed that their word would be good. So far, my sites (on the Pendrell server) have been doing fine but I always worry about it... thus my fear at seeing a comment like yours.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#15

Post by chuckmcknight » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:41 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #6

kylecordes wrote: post #5

I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness: It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that leg…

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

Hmm, Joyent migrated my TextDrive lifetime account to their newer stuff at no charge. Did you ask Tech Support if there was a migration path for you?

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#16

Post by frankwiles » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:42 AM UTC

I have one single client who refuses to move off Joyent. My experience with them has been less than stellar. Frequent problems with no explanations, ask a support question like "How does one do X on your system?" and often get "oh you want to do Y I see, here is a link to the support forum for that." and the link isn't at all related to X or even the Y.

They aren't horrible, but I would never use or recommend them to anyone.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#17

Post by abc3 » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:50 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #6

kylecordes wrote: post #5

I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness: It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that leg…

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

I purchased a lifetime account when TextDrive put out its initial call for VC200 investors. That was many years ago, and I still feel like I'm treated well on the rare instances I need tech support, even though I'm still using one of TextDrive's original servers. They always encourage me to move to a Joyent Accelerator, and at some point I may, but I don't need much from my shared host and TextDrive/Joyent generally exceeds my expectations. Of course, a lengthy down time would change all that. I hope this serves as a wake up call for them and no one else has to go through what happened to the OP and others on Howe. My sympathies.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#18

Post by jasonhoffman » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:54 AM UTC

I get the frustration. I really do and I apologize for any bump like this. I'm the founder of those old textdrive "share hosting" servers (they really have nothing to do with Joyent's current product line). These servers are ~6 years old and they're largely populated by "lifetime" customers who have tricked out various bits of their accounts enough that an automated migration has been basically impossible. We've been telling everyone for 3 years to really get off of them, we've been offering free upgrades for 4 years, including you btw, you got a free upgrade back in Nov 2007, and there's even support tickets detailing it (which you've participated on). So now we're piecing together everything that was left but those good ole FreeBSD UFS file systems take awhile.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#19

Post by jasonhoffman » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:55 AM UTC

iskander wrote: post #6

kylecordes wrote: post #5

I generally like Joyent, and use them. So I offer this tip with a tinge of sadness: It looks like these message are from a problem with their Howe server. That is one of their old servers, which came over from the Textdrive merger years ago. I used to have some sites hosted on that same server, and was likewise not very happy with things. It appears to me that Joyent as a company doesn't care very much about that leg…

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

We never pressured anyone to repurchase anything. And switching from a shared hosting product from 2004 to a VPS at Linode. Makes sense but it's not a side-grade.

Re: Joyent: 54+ hours of downtime

#20

Post by jasonhoffman » Mon, Feb 28, 2011, 12:57 AM UTC

gaoshan wrote: post #14

iskander wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a lifetime account with TextDrive. I don't know if it was official policy at Joyent to neglect the old customers, but I certainly felt like I was being pressured to repurchase services I had already paid for. After several outages, data loss and extremely slow responses from tech support I switched to linode. No problems since.

I was hoping to not see a comment like this. I, too, bought the lifetime account back when I was active with Textpattern CMS and joined in as part of a drive they had to raise funds (managed by Dean Allen, the originator of Textdrive and then at Joyent, who has seemingly disappeared into the ether since then). At the time I knew it was a bit of a risk but I had my fingers crossed that their word would be good. So far…

Hi. This is Jason Hoffman, Dean's co-founder of Textdrive and current founder at Joyent. If you're worried about your sites on the old Pendrell, then go over to support and take the upgrade that's been offered and migrate off.