Communication improved? I think not.

[rossbug]

I think this is the last straw.

An account that has servers for a client of ours recently ran out of credit (they are the billing contact so I had no idea that this happened). The servers didn't shut down cleanly so after I topped up the credit this morning I tried a kill command. Half hour later, its still 'stopping'. Although fairly used to the unresponsiveness of kill commands by now I ring tech support and am told to put a ticket in and they won't do anything until then.. Time wasted. I put a ticket in, and hour later, no response. I check the status page, no problems reported. I ring tech support, 'oh, they are doing maintenance' and servers can't be started or stopped. So why wasn't I told this an hour before? And why wasn't the status page updated?

I have already suggested that xcalibre should allow people to subscribe to have email status updates, but even this is no good if the status isn't updated.

The clients are supposed to be running a test at 12:00 that uses the servers on flexiscale.

So again, I have to go to them and tell them flexiscale is down. I've had this conversation with clients one too many times now.


*UPDATE - Client has ordered a couple of dell servers so they can move the service in house.

[tonylucas]

Ross,

Just to follow up on what I said in my e-mail.

There is currently a known issue where our internal database loses consistency and needs to undergo a rebuild process on an occasional basis. We can usually pre-empt and arrange this, but sometimes it causes a fault which means that we have to do it immediately. While this rebuild is going on (and it doesn't usually take as long as it has so far today) servers are unable to be stopped and started but existing servers run normally.

I have told the operations team today to ensure from now on if this work is ever being undertaken that it is always posted to the status page, even if it is only for a few minutes.

I apologise for the confusion in regards to your problems this morning we are working extremely hard to improve the level of service we offer, and we believe we are making great progress, but unfortunately some problems still do occur.

Regards,

Tony Lucas
Chief Executive Officer
XCalibre/FlexiScale

[Diane Hardie]

Hello Ross

Just to follow on from what Tony said.

With the communication side of things I'm currently working on building a XCalibre/FlexiScale community of which part of this will be up to date server status reports which you will have the option to sign up to via RSS feeds etc.

At the moment this is still in development stage (although I'm hoping to have something out soon).

I am interested in customers opinions of what they would like to see on the community site and also any ideas you may have regarding better communications.

Feel free to drop me an email.

[Diane Hardie]

Hello

Just a quick update to let you know the stop/start function has now been re enabled as of earlier today.