Record the painful experience of GigsGigsCloud Hong Kong VDS being down for 9 hours due to a switch failure in the datacenter.

Today, the website was down for nearly 9 hours due to a problem with the GigsGigsCloud datacenter switch. It was restored from about 4 o'clock to 13 o'clock at night, and it was only because I found the boss of GigsGigsCloud that I had the privilege of early restoration. Here we document the entire 9-hour outage, as well as possible solutions to deal with this potential instability in the future.

1. Downtime process

Background: I have several websites on GigsGigsCloud Hong Kong VDS (see the plan introduction and evaluation). To be honest, if the network is not slow, Hong Kong PCCW lines are still very fast, with 200Mbps bandwidth and VDS independent With the characteristics of sharing resources, it is stable to put several websites.

Downtime: Around 10 o'clock this morning, I saw a message posted on the TG channel of GigsGigsCloud saying that a switch in a cabinet in the GGC Hong Kong datacenter had failed, affecting some Hong Kong VDS and Hong Kong dedicated servers (news). Then I looked at my website, and it turned out that I was one of the affected Hong Kong VDS, and the website was completely unresponsive.

Then I went to Baidu Statistics to check today’s visitor records to see when the downtime started. This is the traffic record of this site today (July 26, 2019), starting at around 3 a.m. There was no traffic at the beginning, and the few consecutive visits during this period can basically be ignored:

Compare the traffic records on July 25, 2019:

Then I looked at several other websites placed on this VDS, and there were no access records at all starting at 4 a.m., so I can basically conclude that the downtime started before 4 a.m.

2. Downtime resolution

You don’t know it by looking at it, but you are shocked when you see it. It started to go down at 4 o’clock, and it actually lasted for 6 hours before the official issued a notice saying that there was a switch failure. So how long will it take to be down for repair? I went to GigsGigsCloud’s official TG group (@gigsgigscloudgroup) and asked the boss, because GigsGigsCloud’s Tickets are notoriously bad. It might be next week until customer service answers your ticket. It was less than 10 o'clock at this time.

Maybe the boss was busy repairing the switch and just said he was repairing it. I asked about three times when it would be repaired, but he didn't give me a clear answer. Because I didn't have a computer around me at the time, I couldn't transfer the website. I could only hope that the switch could be replaced quickly. Since the problem was discovered, I thought it should be repaired quickly and work again. This time it was around 11 o'clock.

Then I returned to the office after dinner and sat in front of the computer, but the website still didn’t respond. It's 12 o'clock this time.

So I started moving the website. Because of the habit of backing up, all website data is backed up on other servers. But because I have several websites on this VDS, the transfer still takes a while. During the process of transferring the website, I saw a new notice from GigsGigsCloud, saying that some VDS had been restored. However, this part did not include mine. This time it was 12:36.

I went to the TG group to ask again, how long will it take for other VDS to be restored? The boss finally got back to me and said it would take about a few hours.

There is no other way, I will continue to transfer the website. At 12:47, my boss messaged me privately on TG and asked for my IP. I told him my IP, and the website returned to normal at 12:56.

It started to go down at 4 o'clock and was not restored until 13 o'clock, which took almost 9 hours. And it was only because of the special care of my boss that I had the opportunity to recover "early". Otherwise, I might have to wait a few hours, but I don't know how many hours it was.

3. How to back up in the future

After 9 hours of downtime, to be honest, I still have a bad opinion. I used to prefer GigsGigsCloud’s Hong Kong VDS. After all, you can’t buy a Hong Kong server with this configuration and this line at this price.

Let me talk about my feelings about GigsGigsCloud. The boss is quite active in the TG group and will basically reply to any questions. However, his customer service is really bad. He will reply to the ticket every 3-5 days. If you don’t chat privately, the boss will not respond. Brought to you for processing. Then, their machine lines in Hong Kong and Singapore are good and suitable for building websites. However, after this experience, I searched for their SLA, but I couldn't seem to find it. Moreover, I was down for 9 hours, and it was regarded as Nothing happened. Compensation does not exist.

So, will I still use GigsGigsCloud’s Hong Kong VDS in the future? After being down for so long, there is no compensation or SLA guarantee, but I will probably continue to use it. The Hong Kong VDS at this price is really good.

If you are looking for a more stable server, you can refer to the Hong Kong VPS summary summarized before. For example, the SLA for bricklayers is clearly stated, with 99.9% online guarantee, which means that it is less than 1 hour in a month. There may be problems with the time line, but in fact there are basically no problems. Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud also have written SLAs. If the downtime exceeds a certain standard, a full refund will be issued directly.

• "Recommendation of the best Hong Kong VPS in 2019 and compilation of Hong Kong datacenters and merchants"

Problems in the datacenter are beyond your control. All you can do is to make backups. In response to this downtime experience, prepare the following strategies to protect website data:

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