A Bronze Star for (mt) Tech Support
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I spent most of my day yesterday on the phone with Media Temple (or MT for short) on behalf of Justine Ezarik (or Justine for short). I was helping her move her blog, tastyblogsnack.com from DataCities (darn near the worst host I have ever seen) to MT. Now, before I get too deep in to this little story, I want to bring extra attention to DataCities and how crappy they are. Recently they removed all contact information except email from their website and made it virtually impossible to call them. I did extensive searching via Google and whois to find very bleak information. Eventually I found a phone number and when Justine called it, it went to some guy’s voicemail that wasn’t accepting messages because the mailbox was completely full. Needless to say, with the massive and frequent downtime that she was having, this just further enforced the reason why it was time for a switch.
With my recent and successful switch to MT, my recommendation was for her to go with them and I would stick around to help her get things moved over. Honestly, in the nearly six months since my switch, I have called them for tech support maybe two times. So, the process has been wonderful! How was I suppost to know things would go horribly awry for Justine? Leave it to Murphy and his laws to throw the entire book at us when we don’t need him to the most. Add into the mix that yesterday she was featured on the home page of Yahoo.com and you have a 5 alarm Internet disaster.
So, let’s back track a bit… Several months ago, Justine was having issues with her host and, initially on many recommendations, decided to set up a MT grid server (gs) account but never got to moving the files for her site. So it just sat there for a bit waiting to get traffic. This basically set up tastyblogsnack.com on MT’s DNS servers. No big deal right? Since Justine’s DNS is elsewhere. No big whoop!
Well… fast forward to Tuesday night and Justine’s decision to go MT Dedicated Virtual (dv) instead of (gs). This was a great decision, but evidentially you can’t just upgrade a (gs) account and it takes quite a bit of effort for MT to remove a (gs) account from their servers, so we have to start moving the site to MT with both services still in Justine’s MT account.
“They are two completely separate systems, they won’t conflict with each other in any way, don’t worry about it.”
- MT Support Tech
Great! We set up everything just as perfect as it could be, copied the files and database, quadruple checked everything and checked one more time just to be completely sure. It was finally time to move the DNS and kick this thing into gear. All things left to the powers that be on the Internet, we wait till the next day…
Yesterday morning, I check the site and find my self welcomed by the default MT “Welcome to the future home of…” screen. CRAP! What happened? We put in the right IP address, didn’t we? I’m on the phone…
“Don’t worry sir, the DNS is still propagating, everything will be working shortly.”
- MT Support Tech
So I decide to head to work, and check every once in a while to see when it comes up. By noon, there still was no change and I was starting to get concerned so I contact Justine. She now informs me of her article on the front page of Yahoo. Whoopee! And I am on the phone with MT in less than a minute.
“Oh, I see. Your IP has been mixed up. One of our servers has the correct IP and the second one has the (gs) IP. I will reset them and everything will be fixed in 15 to 30 minutes.”
- MT Support Tech
Excellent! We’re ecstatic and all is right with the world once again. Or so we thought. One hour later, still no change and I’m back on the phone…
“I see what happened, for some reason the last tech’s request never went through to reset the IP addresses, so nothing ever took place. I will reset them now and it will be back up within about an hour.”
- MT Support Tech
Justine calls in as well and receives the same story. Within a few minutes of hanging up, she gets an extremely friendly call from a nice man in MT support informing her of the same information I had been given 20 minutes earlier and a personal guarantee that all was going to be right very shortly. We compare our stories and feel a suddenly stronger sense of comfort, so we both go back to our lives in anxious anticipation of the resolution.
Two hours later, we find ourselves once again IM discussing how the resolution still hadn’t happened and, wouldn’t you know it, I’m back on the phone with MT support.
“Let me explain. If you don’t do the reset just right, it will unset itself immediately afterwards. I’ve seen this a million times before. I will reset it myself and watch it to make sure it takes. You have my word!”
- MT Support Tech
Makes perfect sense. Of course it will unset right after. You forgot to bribe it with a Twinkie didn’t you. This time, he’s gonna wear the pink bunny suit, call the DNS servers Grandma Ethel and Grandpa Wilbur, sit on their soft, warm laps and sing the songs of yesteryear. That’s what the last guy forgot to do, of course! How could he have forgotten that? Anyway, this guy definitely seemed to have some initiative and it really sounded like we finally had a solution. Our fingers were crossed whilst we held our velveteen rabbits close to our hearts in anxious anticipation. Ahhh! Indeed we did have a solution! The bunny suit must have worked. Give that tech some warm milk and tuck him in he’s been a very good boy today. Within an hour tastyblogsnack.com was back up but we still had to throw some crazy meta refresh code in that freaking (gs) site, that was supposed to have been deleted, so that it would send stragglers to the right IP. Yes, we still had to forward people to the static IP address and change some settings in Wordpress, but she was mostly up, finally! We lost nearly the entire day and she missed a metric ton of traffic from Yahoo, but the move was finally complete, or so we thought…
Today brings us yet another Murphean saga. Come to find out that as I can see the site responding perfectly to my DNS requests here in Phoenix, Justine (in PA) and who knows who else still can only see the site via the IP. So we are still awaiting the mighty Internet DNS robots to finish their bedtime stories and get this IP crap all sorted out so we can finish this thing. I totally can’t believe how utterly crazy this move has been. I don’t think I would curse my worst enemy with this much frustration. If you are thinking of moving your website (anywhere), please rethink the ambition… Is it really worth it? Really?
Okay, so here’s my sum-up… Honestly, in all this frustration, amazingly I don’t completely hate MT. I can look back and see that it was truly a series of unfortunate events, but man, it really sucked! I’m not by any means ready to ditch MT and move elsewhere and I know that the last thing on Justine’s mind is to attempt another move any time soon, I’m sure. My only hope is that if you actually read this far in my post, and if you host with MT, that you would learn from our mis-adventures should this crazy scenario ever rear it’s ugly head in your world of hosting and you will conquer the beast much faster than it took us. MT, you’re still my friend, but maybe we shouldn’t speak for a little bit so I can cool my head and settle down. After that, we can hang out again and have fun like we have done so many times before. You did your “nearly” best and things just got out of control, I understand. Lesson learned, we’re all better people because of this experience. Blah, blah blah…
Or something like that…
Until next time,
Brent
Aside from the ip showing in the address bar and the images in a few instances failing to show up everything looks fine.
And thanks to you I learned a very valuable lesson, don’t move from GoDaddy unless I absolutely have to.
I think it’s a prerequisite for tech support anywhere to make things harder than they need to be.
I’ve been happy with (mt) for the most part, and I’m using the (gs). One of my friends is using a (mt) (dv) and finds a lot of FTP downtime. He finds himself calling (mt) quite a bit. I’d like to try out a (mt) (dv) myself, and at one point, I was about to make the switch, but I never did. I’m happy on the (gs) for now
I find them a little expensive for the service that they are offering
But if they have a better uptime than the other it’s ok
I’ve been thinking about making that same switch, from a (gs) to a (dv). You just motivated me to hold off as long as possible.
That must have been a fun day….
I’ve been happy with my (mt) service so far. I recommend it to all of my clients. If I eve have a issue, (mt)’s support is one call away. I can see how though with havening a (gs) account and then a vps at the same time would royally mess up DNS settings.
I have been with too many hosts to count and you get what you pay for. Sure you might get less storage or bandwidth but most places will cancel your account, or force you to upgrade if you ever come near reaching those ridiculous quotas. Like who is gonna use 100GB and 1TB of transfer on a $10 a month account?
I use GoDaddy for my domain names and (mt) mediatemple for my hosting. Together it makes my life soooo much easier.
Honestly, I don’t find them expensive at all and the service on my (dv) account has been nothing short of stellar. Just for some reason, the right set of circumstances aligned for Justine and the switch was extra cumbersome. It seems that most of the DNS issues have been ironed out now (I hope), so we can all put this crazy experience behind us and move on. I am still a HUGE (mt) fan and don’t intend on ever leaving them. Honestly, the shenanigans were just too crazy to not blog about.
Update: I received an email this morning from Alex Capehart saying:
Which, in turn, makes me feel bad. I didn’t want to come across as an (mt) hater. So… touché Alex. The bullet holes might have been a bit over the top, I’ll give you that. Sorry Everyone…
Brent
Update: We just got off the phone with Alex and all is well in the world. Who knows? Maybe all of this will result in some interface upgrades in the (dv) account center. Whatever happens, we’re happy and feeling amazingly taken care of by the team @ (mt) despite the hiccups in the account center or the tech support department this week. That said, I think I at least owe it to them to “patch up” the header image a bit to reflect the outcome of our conversation. But just in case you didn’t see the original one, you can see it here.
Thanks again (mt)!
Oh, nice patch job.
Brent,
Just thought I would let you know about our service: http://www.gogrid.com
GoGrid is a Xen hosting platform
Provides instant scalability through a web-based, graphical multi-server control panel where you can add/remove/modify servers and administer load balancers, full root access to standard operating systems, static IP addresses, snapshot backups, flexible utility-based billing, backed by an SLA.
Let me know if you would be interested in the platform..
Paul
so what makes these guys better than say godaddy? just curious because thats who I use and I love em.
I haven’t had a lot of luck with GD, their support really has hacked me off many times in the past. I do have a couple small sites with them, but mostly, I just use them for purchasing domain names and host elsewhere. (mt) support really is stellar, this is the only time it has wavered and it wasn’t that much of a waver at all. I mean, it’s not like they were impossible to get a hold of (i.e. DataCities) or put an idiot on the phone with me (GoDaddy) who didn’t even know how DNS worked. The circumstances were just crazy and they have done everything (and more) in their power to make the situation better. I gotta hand it to ‘em, they really put their back into this issue and made a loyal fan out of me, for sure. What a day this has been!
Good luck.. MT is pretty good, i do small web design, graphics (im only 17, and still learning)
I’ve heard many good things about MT, infact. They are like my hosting idols. I’ve recently set up a reseller that i hope to model after MT (wont happen for like 20 years). But good luck with them, they’ve done great with the other Major sites.
In fact they web host to most major retail stores and major sites. Thats one of the reasons their support is fantastic.
-Raymond
Oops, tastyblogsnack is still turning into ip numbers for me in nyc. (My junk is also on MT, but on the super slow for wordpress gridserver. Any suggestions for speeding it up?
The IP issue for TBS is just because Justine hasn’t had a chance to set wordpress back to tbs.com so that’s not a (mt) issue. As far as your speed of WP on (gs), it should run fast as any other over there. We’re both with (dv) servers because the (gs) is a whole different beast. I switched from (gs) myself because I had a lot of issues with it, but that was when they were first getting it up and running. It’s really solid now so I’m not sure what your issue might be. Have you tried a fresh install of WP? It also might be a good idea to ask a tech over there if there’s something special they recommend for running WP on (gs).
Hey Brett,
Sorry to intrude here on your Blog, but I noticed that you were helping a client in a bad situation with DataCities. FYI - The DataCities.com assets were purchased on November 1st, 2007. See the Press Release
I know my post is commercial in nature, but I figured I was safe since we’re a Mac shop and buy lots of them! Let me know if you or Justine still need anything from DataCities as your support experience will be much improved. I did notice that she still has a Web site hosted there. I apologize for the past DataCities experience.
My current Web host doesn’t have a telephone number in the United States that I can call - their servers are in California, but their offices are in Mumbai, India.
The company won’t solve issues over their live chat, instead telling me to submit a support ticket. In most cases, the responses come and go on a daily basis.
I want to switch to 1&1 for hosting (I do currently have domains with them), because of their presence in America. During the one phone call I ever made to them, I spoke to an American woman who seemed to be doing all sorts of stuff in an attempt to solve my problem. It was a much better experience than working with the Indian staff of my current host who can barely write in English.
Michael,
I gotta be honest. I’m not a fan of 1&1 at all! Admittedly, I do not have extensive experience with them so I don’t want to bash, but the experience I had with them on behalf of a client was not pretty. This is mostly due to the fact that I found their email and hosting backend so non-conformative to what would IMHO logically be what a backend would want to be like. I’m not “Captain UI” but it was so vastly different from what other hosts are doing and the crazy application settings I had to do to make my client’s software communicate with their servers was out of control.
Now their hosting environment and pricing seem to be great and all that, but I just don’t want so many steps every time I set up a site. But that’s just me.