Netfirms is DOWN

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Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 12:39 PM
Netfirms is completely down.
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 12:48 PM
yup, all my sites, the netfirms sites are down and their phone number automatically disconnects
Posted by The Stealthy One, 02-23-2008, 01:00 PM
Whoaaa - not good. I have some of my high-traffic sites hosted there. They've been down a couple of hours now. Not good at all.
Posted by 18ouch, 02-23-2008, 01:14 PM
Have just managed to get through to them on 1-877-399-9909 [its actually their billing line] Apparently there 'appears' to be some 'major network issues' but they expect it to be back up in no longer then an hour (that was at just gone 5pm GMT) ...lets hope they get back up soon!
Posted by kovos, 02-23-2008, 01:17 PM
actually, i heard that they got sued for hosting illegal content on one of their servers, and they got a 1 week server removal while all their servers are checked for more illegal content
Posted by 18ouch, 02-23-2008, 01:18 PM
well thats what the netfirms people told me... they best not be making excuses up!
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 01:19 PM
i just called them at the above number, and got the same info bout the network issue
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 01:38 PM
this is horrible, I alone am responsible for 38 domains and 22 websites all hosted on netfirms(clients, big companies etc) wtf!
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 01:52 PM
I am not happy with them lately. I am seriously going to move at least my critical sites elsewhere. If anyone can confim that '1 week server' thing with a link it would be appreciated.
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 01:56 PM
I called the billing number above (THANK YOU for posting that as I was unable to find a phone number in any documentation that I have) I was on hold for over 20 minutes and gave up... anyone have an ETA?
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 02:00 PM
wow, 504 views in a little less than an hour.... netfirms hosts over a million domains... this is bad.
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 02:01 PM
I can't believe that they host their support site on the same servers and why does their support phone # NEVER work when they go down. Very unprofessional. I am done with these guys. As soon as they are back up, I am moving.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 02:04 PM
Its obvious that they have a serious problem ...that means I have one too...I think its time for me to move my domains if and when they get back up
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 02:07 PM
I am going to move my domains to charmingweb.com if I have a problem I can actually talk to someone who cares
Posted by eclouds, 02-23-2008, 02:09 PM
How long has it been down for now?
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 02:11 PM
atleast 3 hours
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 02:11 PM
at least a few hours
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 02:14 PM
tell me more about this company... also does Netfirms go down alot?
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 02:17 PM
Netfirms used to be very good but I think they just got too big...this outage is very serious....I've used charmingweb.com for design and they are very responsive and talented and I think I will start to use their hosting now
Posted by VN-Ken, 02-23-2008, 02:20 PM
This would not cause their network to be down and is unrelated. And how do you know they were sued? Unless they were just so reluctant to remove the content, I don't see why they would have been sued. I think its safe to say that any host with over 500+ domains is bound to receive abuse complaints for illegal content of some kind, so for them to get sued doesn't sound right (again unless they just didn't remove the content)
Posted by bryonhost1, 02-23-2008, 02:26 PM
Hi! I am aware of it being down since I tried to login at 11:00AM EST Today. Happily..I don't use them for hosting ( and would not )..still..this brings up several concerns. To answer some of the other questions..no..I found a more than year old thread on here about another outage..and it has never been down before when I tried to use it. I do not use their control panel..or godaddy's for that matter very often...and the only reason I used them yesterday was that god-awlful slow as syrup CP of godaddy's. At least it was never down...soo...? I tell ye..whot's a poor person to do? Bryon
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 02:35 PM
who do you use?
Posted by richardxthripp, 02-23-2008, 02:43 PM
Not working here... richardxthripp.com is still nowhere to be found. Shame on Netfirms; I certainly won't be renewing.
Posted by asciii, 02-23-2008, 02:44 PM
Yeah, I'm done with them as well... the slow downs lately, the crappy webmail and now this outage... done done done. time to shop around for a new host.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 02:51 PM
I agree....they are not like they used to be and the length of this outage proves that they are not prepared for problems - goodbye netfirms
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 02:54 PM
Still down
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 03:00 PM
like i said, over 40-50 domains total with them, and I plan on pulling all of them once they are up. Thats thousands of dollars of business out of one guy, and imagine all the people also leaving.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 03:05 PM
You would think that they would post something to let everyone know what's going on - but NOOOOOO.....Seems to me that they take us all for granted or just don't give a damn....As soon as they get back up I am moving my domains....this has cost me alot of money
Posted by RobertVJ, 02-23-2008, 03:06 PM
I've used them for 2 years with no problems. I host a few church/charity sites. Price is right $9.95 USD a Month. For all those complaining about critical business sites, I would NEVER put a critical business site on a hosting service that didn't have a non collocated mirror. For that you need to spend more than $9.95 USD a Month. Cheers
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 03:10 PM
and WHERE would they post? They are down, remember? If this is a rare issue, then I don't plan to do anything. We've had our web site hosted for a couple of years without issue. I just want to know an ETA if anyone has been able to get through...
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:12 PM
WOW! big disappoint come on netfirms!!!!
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 03:13 PM
They said one hour...two hours ago This is nutts, I am fully willing to do registrar transfers of all my domains to godaddy or someone else.
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:14 PM
u called them? I tried their 416 number but it goes to voicemail.....
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 03:16 PM
I have been hosting with Netfirms for several years and the problems have been getting worse lately. I can live with outages of up to an hour, but am bothered by the inability to get any support or response from them. Combine that with the MySQL errors I am starting to see, and I have a bad feeling that they are not able to keep up with the volume they have.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 03:17 PM
They could post here
Posted by asciii, 02-23-2008, 03:17 PM
anyone know about omnis.com ? I think I'll move there for my hosting...
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 03:18 PM
lol - I wish they would just read here
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:19 PM
Netfirms been out since the late 90's... they probably won't go out of business BUT I AM SURE THEY WILL UPGRADE THEIR SERVERS n SERVICES!!!!!
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 03:22 PM
I can get to netfirms.com now but not my sites...
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 03:22 PM
I am starting to get the feeling that Netfirms has a very serious problem that won't be fixed for quite some time. I am going to move to charmingweb.com...their prices are reasonable, they have won awards and you get to talk to real people.
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 03:24 PM
Can't do anything useful yet on netfirms.com, but hopefully a sign that they are starting to come back up.
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:26 PM
hopefully this means the other servers hosting the domains will be back up soon.
Posted by RobertVJ, 02-23-2008, 03:30 PM
I just got through to the control panel. Couldn't log in. My guess is that they are being overwhelmed with traffic so it will likely take some time to clear the queue.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 03:33 PM
I for one would like to know what happened....did they have a complete system failure? Was this caused by hackers? If so, was any of our billing or other information compromised? What caused this?????
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:36 PM
Those questions are for the staff of NetFirms. I don't guarantee the truth to these questions though.
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 03:38 PM
looks like it's up...
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:38 PM
I get incorrect log in...-.-
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 03:40 PM
spoke too soon.. THEIR SITE IS UP.... CONTROL PANEL LOGIN PAGE IS UP, BUT I CAN'T LOG IN Our site is still down.... maybe they are getting close
Posted by asciii, 02-23-2008, 03:41 PM
all of mine are still down...
Posted by ostudioo, 02-23-2008, 03:41 PM
yes but did you try logging in control panel + your domains?
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 03:48 PM
I tried to log a ticket to see if they were going to post what happened on their site....but I got this message... Lore System Error Unable to connect to the MySQL database at 10.8.11.3. Please ensure that a MySQL database server is running, and check your login credentials in the configuration file. Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.8.11.3' (64) they still have a lot of work to do... I bet the techs are holding tight ones
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 03:53 PM
Posted by a1_andy at digitalpoint forums: "There was an outage notification posted to NANOG this morning related to power at where netfirms is located. quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi all, Today is Diesel Day at 151 Front Street, where the building owner shuts down all grid power to allow intrusive power maintenance to happen, and the building is fed by generator power only. At least one suite on the 6th floor has been affected by a generator failure, so far. Just thought I'd pass on the news, in case there's anybody here who is scratching their heads about equipment or sessions down in Toronto which seem to have no rational cause. Most ISPs in the building (and the TorIX) have engineers on-site; if you have equipment located there which needs some TLC and you have no immediate/regular access to remote hands, let me know off-list and I'll try to put you in touch with someone who has appropriate access: I'm not on-site, but I have phone numbers for people who are. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm just hopeing they didn't fry anything important. Reply With Quote"
Posted by asciii, 02-23-2008, 03:58 PM
my site is back up, but email is down. grr! I'm expecting an important email...
Posted by bryonhost1, 02-23-2008, 04:07 PM
Hi! Hmmm..I have not tried the control panel in the last hour: https://controlpanel.netfirms.com That's all I care about. >>I'm going to use tucubes.com to register a little *info today. >>>>Woo! We have control panel, houston. I repeat.. Bryon Last edited by bryonhost1; 02-23-2008 at 04:10 PM.
Posted by RobertVJ, 02-23-2008, 04:15 PM
You have to be kidding! They can't do maintenance without shutting down the power. Glad the building owner doesn't run a hospital.
Posted by bryonhost1, 02-23-2008, 04:25 PM
Hi! memo to Netfirms: Move to another building Yeesh. That is so wrong on so many levels..I don't even want to think about. It's about as bad as the ole "Learn swimming by throwing a person in a lake..about twenty feet offshore." Brilliant. Bryon
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 04:33 PM
I don't show their address as the one given... settle down and check facts, people....
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 05:01 PM
Looks like my sites are up but not phpBB / MySQL yet.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 05:17 PM
Looks like they can'y seem to really figure out what's going on...I've had it with them
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 05:25 PM
Posted by bdubnm at Digitsl Point forums: "Just got off call with Netfirms support. They confirmed it was a complete power loss (including backup generator). This is why phones and their own support site was down. She informed me that only "Enterprise" accounts are maintained at their backup facility, and those should be opperational. She said some sites are starting to come back online and all should be back online within an hour. She also told me to email csm@netfirms.com to ask about compensation for downtime. She said each account will be treated individually."
Posted by Aralai, 02-23-2008, 05:27 PM
That's interesting. Twice before when they have had outages their phones have been down too. You would think they would be at a different site. Thanks for making the call.
Posted by musicprocal, 02-23-2008, 05:32 PM
Their phones were not out 4 hours ago when I called! Seems like their story keeps changing plus my site is still down and its an Enterprise site
Posted by rstone, 02-23-2008, 05:41 PM
I have two sites with Netfirms and they have been down since at least 10:00am EST. Luckily for me, they are not "Money" sites. If they were I'd likely be more ticked off.. This is the first outage for me and Netfirms in over two years though. I'm going to cut them some slack for now. I work at Kodak here in Rochester and the Bldg I work in has 25 coating machines. We have had three power surges in the last 6 yrs that managed to shut down ALL of them each time, even though backup systems were in place. Murphy's Law takes over.
Posted by angela100, 02-23-2008, 07:32 PM
ours is back up...just received this notice from netfirms Dear Customer, We experienced a service interruption affecting the Netfirms corporate websites and some of our customer hosted websites and e-mail services. During scheduled power maintenance at our Data Centre on Saturday Feb. 23 at approximately 10:30 AM ET, the building's backup generator system unexpectedly failed, impacting network connectivity. This affected several Internet and Hosting Providers, including Netfirms. We would like to inform you that your web data is intact and that your e-mail messages are currently queued for delivery over the next several hours. At this time, our Technology Team is also investigating the cause of the unusual failure with the Data Centre facility in order to prevent further incidences of this nature. We sincerely apologize for this service interruption and appreciate your patience while our engineers work diligently to restore services. Regards, Richard Netfirms Inc.
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 08:23 PM
websites are down again....
Posted by rstone, 02-23-2008, 08:28 PM
Yup, My sites are down but I have no trouble FTPing to update sites.
Posted by Kovo, 02-23-2008, 08:55 PM
lol, useless!
Posted by tsavundra, 02-24-2008, 11:06 AM
Thank you all for your support and patience while we worked on restoring services and fielding inquiries yesterday. I also understand that many of you had to endure a tough Saturday during this service interruption. All websites are fully functional with data intact and your queued e-mails delivered by now. To summarize, we experienced a total loss of power at our primary datacenter facility housing the Netfirms corporate sites and a large number of our hosted customer websites. During routine power maintenance by the facility at around 10:30 AM ET, all that redundant power that was supposed to kick in did not. We depend on our datacenter for clean reliable power. Being at a facility with over 18 power generators and housing almost every major carrier in North America, this was hard to swallow. While we got normal power resumed in about an hour, it took us longer to get the network reconfigured and hundreds of servers back online, properly configured. At our corporate office, with websites being unavailable, we received a massive surge in phone calls, completely overwhelming our call center phone circuits. We had every team member from billing, sales and customer service responding to customers. There are definitely some changes we'll make to ensure we are able to communicate updates better to you. Over the past 10 years, our Technology Team has worked hard to ensure everything about our platform is more reliable, functional and redundant including web serving, email delivery, database, dns, file storage, routers, firewalls and network providers. Our Technology team will be making some changes to prevent such an extended service interruption including expanded usage of our secondary datacenter and of course our current power feeds, something we have taken for granted over the years. If you have any questions, we are here to help. Regards, Thomas Savundra Last edited by tsavundra; 02-24-2008 at 11:07 AM. Reason: grammer
Posted by makaze, 02-24-2008, 09:42 PM
At my company we run a yearly audit in which we verify the fail overs work like they should. We cut the power feed to our buildings. This is done in the middle of the night, and granted the majority of our equipment will not care if it loses power or not, it'll just come right back up. But this helps us make sure our customers do not get impacted should we drop power during the day beyond our control.
Posted by RossH, 02-24-2008, 11:02 PM
" Last edited by tsavundra : Today at 09:07 AM. Reason: grammer" *Chuckle* At any rate kudos to Tom and team for being up front with their clients. I haven't heard of any major netfirms issues in a long time so they must be doing something correctly.
Posted by Aralai, 02-25-2008, 12:37 AM
Yes - Thanks Tom for posting here. There was a lot of frustration yesterday, and it is appreciated that you communicated directly to us here.
Posted by subzer0, 02-25-2008, 12:39 AM
Yeah, or so they say. Do you believe that?
Posted by subzer0, 02-25-2008, 12:57 AM
Every major carrier in North America? You make it sound like 151 is the central hub of the entire continent! You people like to throw in a nice mix of BS with your marketing.

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