From the desk of: Sam C. Chan

Bravo/Mach 4 Network Advisory: Client Options, Hosting Outage

Monday June 2, 2008 6:50am EDT (GMT-4) Addendum below      

The latest assessment of the situation is that we could see FELI back online as early as end-of-day today, and almost certainly by tomorrow. Of course, it is still possible that unexpected obstacles might appear, even though it is very unlikely.

Depending on how critical your web site and email are to your operations, you might choose:

  1. Proactive emergency re-routing to our redundant server
    (works transparently, no announcement of change required)
    • involves a delay, for work to be carried out, and DNS settings to propagate.
    • requires access to your domain registrar account
    • all email programs need to be reprogrammed
    • Optional:
      • You can also opt for permanent hot/warm standby redundant architecture
      • This will render any single-point outage a non-event
      • Keep in mind: doing so would increase complexity & on-going costs
  2. Evaluate and implement work-around solutions in the interim
    (all of these options here require announcement of changes to the world)
    • web: Temporary sub-domains for your web sites. (e.g.: clientname.bravotech.us)
      • no propagation delay, available after we program DNS records
      • require upload of your web content to newly created site
      • can arrange to keep it indefinitely for future for redundancy
    • email: Use externally hosted email (existing/newly created)
      • Be advised: Regulatory compliance for your industry will rule out use of free consumer-oriented services for business activities.
      • Your personal email boxes with ISP at home are generally compliant with regulatory requirements.
    • Request temporary complimentary mailboxes under bravotech.us domain
  3. Passively wait for eventual recovery.
  4. Switch your hosting elsewhere permanently.

In all cases, the work involved is not covered by the hosting fee. They are considered normal IT services and therefore billable at applicable rates.

Separately, per hosting terms, you're entitled to a pro-rata refund of hosting fee when the 99.9% uptime guarantee is not met. For simplicity sake, I'll credit the entire monthly fee  (instead of $0.17/day of down time, or $0.33/day with $10/month plan).


Addendum: Bravo Options

Tuesday June 3, 2008 11:05am EDT (GMT-4)

Current Bravo policy is to switch to alternate server wholesale, affecting all sites, if one of the conditions below is met:

  1. consecutive 14 business hours (1.75 days) of outage
    • outages w/ gaps less than 4 business hours count as continuous
  2. cumulative 28 business hours of outage within previous 30 days

We have 2 options in making the switch:

  1. a different datacenter at The Planet, which maintains the same admin control panel and other settings. We're at H1, there's H2, also in Houston, plus 4 other
    Dallas facilities.
  2. a different provider all together:
    • 1&1 USA where our redundant server is currently located, which means we'll have to add yet another location for future redundancy, or
    • another major provider

Until then, clients should evaluate their options as listed at the top of this page.


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