Scheduled server reboots?

antic

antic

Perch
Hi, how is everyone? :)

I have a specific question - my current reseller host has great service and support and I'm largely content, and yet a major problem persists, which is in a way their fault, but mostly Microsoft's. :)

The problem is, they have to reboot their Windows servers EVERY NIGHT. All of them, every night. This is partly because I believe they overload the servers and also because Windows is none too stable to begin with... especially with all the bad ASP coders out there. :)

It's a major issue, since I'm in Australia so - you guessed it - all servers reboot smack in the middle of every day! So I'm wondering what the reboot situation is with JodoHost:

1. Do you have scheduled Windows server reboots and, if so, at what time and how often?

2. Generally speaking, how many accounts/sites do you allocate per Windows server before you consider it to be enough for one machine?

Thanks in advance!

-A-
 
1. Do you have scheduled Windows server reboots and, if so, at what time and how often?

We only reboot when required for windows or software patches(mostly just backup software updates in this regard). We post most reboots in the status forum.
However, when I have the "night shift" reboot, it is typically between 3-4am, but as I said, this is not very often.

2. Generally speaking, how many accounts/sites do you allocate per Windows server before you consider it to be enough for one machine?

It depends on the machine, as we have some P4's and some Xeons, on P4's we start watching close once the server hits 350 sites, "350 sites" can vary greatly, as even subdomains are counted in that, so we start monitoring RAM and CPU usage on when to put sites on a new server. For the Xeons we start at 850-900 with that process.

Not to kick you off now, but I am about to start a forum upgrade that I had scheduled, and the forums might be down for a few miutes, if this happens, just know I had posted this as planned, and check back soon :)
 
Thanks Stephen.

Realistically speaking (bottom line and all that), how often do you end up rebooting your Windows servers? Once a week? More / less?

Cheers,
A
 
Generally once every 14 days, it seems MS comes out with patches at about that rate :)
 
Well that's an vast improvement over every day! Thankyou!

One more thing... like another poster here, I also run web applications which use email fairly regularly, though not to any mass-mail extent, just a members-only situation. But it just needs to be *reliable* for the professional clients I deal with.

I read about a blacklist problem you had a little while ago, which was a problem with using "localhost" as the smtp server, so I understand the issue... which leads me to the other major problem with my current host...

They have one *central* mail server, which mail from other servers gets forwarded to before going out. Whenever that one mail server gets blacklisted, everything stops. Then they switch it over to a new IP (I assume they've gone though a few) and wait till it happens again.

I don't know if that's best practice or not, but IMO it's like crisis-management. Prevention, if possible, is always better. Perhaps they have a lot of mail misuse going on among their clients.

So (after all that:)) I need some assurance that apps which function around email communication will work reliably and not be subject to servers being blacklistedor other frequent problems.

I understand it happens in this industry from time to time, but it's important enough for me to find out what your history has been with this kind of issue.

Bottom line... how often does blacklisting occur there, and how quickly does it get resolved?

Secondly, what is your policy on spammers - how are they tracked down (smtp authentication?) and what action do you take?

Cheers again,
A
 
Bottom line... how often does blacklisting occur there, and how quickly does it get resolved?
It happens to every host at some point for some reason, it has not big a big issue recently, but it did happen for a few hours back last week. We work very closely with the major RBL providers and respond to them quickly, they in turn respond to us quickly.


Secondly, what is your policy on spammers - how are they tracked down (smtp authentication?) and what action do you take?

Many methods, SMTP Auth is one of them. We have no tolerance for spam, and suspend the accounts. For resellers, we suspend only the end user account(we need proof, joe-jobs are not that had to see are fake), if a reseller contually has "customers" spamming, we are forced to also suspend the reseller account, but this does not happen to much.
 
Thanks Stephen.

Sounds like it's one of those hazzards of the territory then. If I can just get an idea in general figures though... how many times a year will a blacklist problem occur, and how quickly on average does it get resolved? You said just a few hours?

Cheers,

A
 
On average a few hours, I know of 3 listings this year off the top of my head, only one lasted longer than 24 hours.
 
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