How to Prove Scheduled Maintenance? (Expected downtime)

[WINIBY]

As an Internet user no one likes downtime. But we can't decline the downtime due to scheduled maintenance and server installation. So what is the best way for you to inform your clients before the downtime happened?

In case your clients claim you that the downtime is unexpected instead of scheduled, how you going to prove this?

Please talk about your opinion and experience.

 

[Snat]

Well you could e-mail all your clients and say that there is a scheduled maintenance at this time on this day.

 

[Decker]

Almost impossible, if you e-mail clients they may not read it in time (for scheduled - that would be regular security or whatever updates) and unscheduled is a pain but required, so no interaction with clients is required (seems harsh - but it's to protect them too - awaiting a real bashing for that statement).

Each client does not have the ability unless justified to stop maint work - it could be anything and effect thousands so no discussions required.

To be honest we have had outages that has had one server down for 20 minutes in the past year and all other work was a service restart or even a reboot (which with our systems takes around 45 seconds from service stop to start for the reboot).

This is not normally communicated to client/users as why burden them with the worry of 'waiting' for it'

 

[krakjoe]

Decker that's a ----in stupid way of looking at it, you're just coming across as lazy. Just as maintenance can cost you thousands of dollars you could just as easily be costing one of your clients the same if not more.

You're paid to provide a service, if at anytime that service will not be available then you should be informing your clients with enough time so as not to interrupt the service your clients may be providing, it's called courtesy ...

 

[Decker]

Decker that's a ----in stupid way of looking at it, you're just coming across as lazy. Just as maintenance can cost you thousands of dollars you could just as easily be costing one of your clients the same if not more.

You're paid to provide a service, if at anytime that service will not be available then you should be informing your clients with enough time so as not to interrupt the service your clients may be providing, it's called courtesy ...

Eh? What do you mean.

 

[Decker]

Oh ps - your free client is a mail spammer.

 

[Galaxy-Hosts.com]

If it is a simple service restart or a reboot with downtime of less than a minute, nothing is required. If it is a planned downtime of longer than a minute, you should email the clients in advance. If they do not check and read their emails then at least you tried.

 

[Robert]

When I use to run a web hosting company, we would schedule maintenance far in advance, like 2-3 weeks ahead. And we would perform them when that particular server was less used (based on mrtg graphs). We would notify our clients 3-4 times before the scheduled date. Never had any complaints.

 

[RavenServers]

You're paid to provide a service, if at anytime that service will not be available then you should be informing your clients with enough time so as not to interrupt the service your clients may be providing, it's called courtesy ...

You hit the nail on the head. You simply mail your clients within at least a working week of the scheduled maintenance. I don't understand the confusion here?

 

[Decker]

You hit the nail on the head. You simply mail your clients within at least a working week of the scheduled maintenance. I don't understand the confusion here?

That's great - you know when everythings going to happen,do you?

Clients worry when told that hosts have to do things - it's not their fault or problem, nor can they help in any way.

Unless it takes their site out - real web hosts don't do that - then there is no problem.

 

[Wojtek]

I'd have to agree with Decker here.
If it's only a server reboot then I wouldn't mass mail the clients to notify them of such a thing.
But if it's an HDD replacement or anything that will take the server offline for a longer period of time, then it's just natural to inform the clients.

 

[AvailNetworks]

I'd have to agree with Decker here.
If it's only a server reboot then I wouldn't mass mail the clients to notify them of such a thing.
But if it's an HDD replacement or anything that will take the server offline for a longer period of time, then it's just natural to inform the clients.

agreed. unless it is something beyond a reboot then don't bother.

 

[RavenServers]

That's great - you know when everythings going to happen,do you?

Obviously you can't predict non-scheduled maintenance - you would need to obviously remunerate the client in severe cases, as "real hosts" do that too.

Clients worry when told that hosts have to do things - it's not their fault or problem, nor can they help in any way.

That would be 100% correct, let me just highlight the following words from the first post though:

scheduled maintenance

I definately know when scheduled maintenance takes place. If I were a client, I would want to know when these take place.

Sure, I do agree that if it's a reboot or a really minor thing you won't need to issue a notification, though.

 

[Decker]

Obviously you can't predict non-scheduled maintenance - you would need to obviously remunerate the client in severe cases, as "real hosts" do that too.

Keep saying that and you'll be paying out more than your charging. Define 'severe'

I definately know when scheduled maintenance takes place. If I were a client, I would want to know when these take place.

Sure, I do agree that if it's a reboot or a really minor thing you won't need to issue a notification, though.

What the hell does your

scheduled maintenance

involve that clients would need to be informed about?

Don't know about you but ours is always transparent to clients - that means doesn't effect them.

 

[RavenServers]

involve that clients would need to be informed about?

Don't know about you but ours is always transparent to clients - that means doesn't effect them.

Great - I'm happy you have empty servers available to clone all the accounts, etc for when you install more memory on the relevant server you will be working on for the 10 minutes downtime.

I see no point in us arguing over this anymore, as it's to do with a company-to-company policy and I'm pretty sure the OP got his/her answer, lol.

 

[Decker]

Er what?

 

[serverorigin]

/shrug Depends on what you want I guess.

Our business is based around uptime....If the server or network routing/network is down then we seriously impact customers. If a server reboots, then all of their services go down. Ones that are not on cron, have to manually be restarted if our restart jobs don't hit it.

We email on EVERY downtime that occurs. Scheduled maintenance, we provide a 72 hour window. Emergency maintenance, we send an email before and after. It depends on the business but we don't cluster our webhosting accounts....So if we reboot, they do see a short outage. Maybe we aren't a "real" webhost because of that

Our customers seem to be happy with it. We receive tons of email just saying thank you for keeping them informed and when we have an unscheduled outage, we have found that the customers deal with the downtime much better.

 

[Darknight]

Decker, that could mean many things that hurt clients site uptimes, Like hardware upgrades etc...
Id rather be informed about a hardware upgrade if it ment my site being offline.

 

[Decker]

If a hardware issue was involved then it would only be for an upgrade as any other issue would be a fault, we start our boxes up with what they will end up with, rather than plug bits in as they start to sweat

Hope I'm clearing up my points one at a time at least

 

[utcrazy]

I email clients about 15-25 days in advance. I also usually have a maintenance page on the site with scheduled maintenance listed there.