Brit colo outfit Alphadex offline all weekend after attack British data centre provider Alphadex has been hit by a weekend-long outage. Users report that everything they host with the company has gone down, along with Alphadex's own control panels and management interfaces. Details of the incident are sketchy, with Alphadex offering only Tweets to explain the situation. Customers …
"This is awful customer service and just makes us look bad as website designers if we can't keep our sites online. This is so damaging for business."
Feeling insecure? I was down voted for saying what's in the title, but reality agrees with me. Welcome to my arse.
The full details are hackers exploited unsecured WordPress scripts which allowed them to install a UDP relay service on the customers virtual server. This UDP relay service then sent traffic between itself and other compromised servers on the network, the traffic proliferated until it hit it's capacity.
So they'll know better for next time then. Buy a service with a proper paid-for 100% uptime SLA. Otherwise you draft T&C for your customers stating that 100% is not guaranteed ('cos they're not paying for it). If it's that mission critical then the onus is on end-user customers to insure themselves against commercial losses and not be so daft, and also it's on the web designer/ agency to research and source a host appropriate to the level of client mission-criticality and uptime needed. This kind of stuff happens all the time, same old story of responsibilities being pushed down the line.
Yet another addition to the list of casualties. Why people believe all the hype that a service can be delivered for peanuts whilst offering high SLAs defeats me. This sort of problem is going to occuring. The underlying issue is that people are in denial about the real cost of providing services or servers. If they can host a server or provide a VM for nex to nothing and people buy into it, the customer gets what they deserve. Virtualisation does reduce costs but at the end of the day it can and will go wrong. With so many eggs in one basket it is only a matter of time before something goes tits-up in a spectacular fashion.
Speaking as an Alphadex customer, not only was there no telephone or email support throughout this entire incident, but there has been none since either bar one telephone call, when the guy was incandescent with rage at my temerity to complain about three days of downtime.
This company is proud to have no SLA, offers an inadequate and legacy service at an exorbitant price, and compounds their errors with an arrogant and bullying attitude. The only saving grace were the occasional plaintive tweets of the one guy left in the office at weekend and his cries of "I'm not technical"...
However, raise any issues for all to see and they'll bar you from their Twitter too, leaving you effectively with no support whatsoever. Strange way to do business, huh?
Speaking as an Alphadex customer, not only was there no telephone or email support throughout this entire incident, but there has been none since either bar one telephone call, when the guy was incandescent with rage at my temerity to complain about three days of downtime.
This company is proud to have no SLA, offers an inadequate and legacy service at an exorbitant price, and compounds their errors with an arrogant and bullying attitude. The only saving grace were the occasional plaintive tweets of the one guy left in the office at weekend and his cries of "I'm not technical"...
However, raise any issues for all to see and they'll bar you from their Twitter too, leaving you effectively with no support whatsoever. Strange way to do business, huh?
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