I had terrible problems last week with my new CS 2.0 site hosted at WebHost4Life. Lots of sporadic downtime with a SQL Connection runtime error:
An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. when connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: named pipes provider, error: 40 - could not open a connection to SQL Server)Updating the binaries and touching the web.config seemed to bring life back to my blog. Most of the time. Last night I entered a post, went back to read it, reloaded the page, and BAM! Down again.
Getting pissed now.
I fired off a helpdesk ticket to WH4L Tech Support with a "Priority 1 - Emergency Site Down" status (I usually just go with "2 - Urgent"), describing the situation (again) with a reference to FOUR previous tickets opened and closed over the last few days.
Shortly afterward a fellow named KC replied with, "Do you want us to move your account to a new server?"
"ww-Wha?"
I told him the site was just MOVED, which is when all of this bad stuff started happening! Why would I want to move again????
KC was so great. He was...REAL. You know, honest? Direct? Conversational? He was the first WH4L Tech who described to me what took place in the
move earlier in the week. "The move on sunday was mainly for hardware and the network provider, the file system and the environment was left unchanged. (which is why we are baffled why this would happen). In any case, let's move your account to a new server with a clean setup."KC said he would move the database to a new server AND the web site to a new server. The DNS of the site would require updating and the address of the SQL Server would also change.
It was 11:30 on a Friday night when we started talking about moving the site. I knew it was going to take some time to relocate my hefty CS 2.0 front- and back-end environment, but I also knew I was talking to a guy who knew what he was talking about, a guy who I could trust. I also knew I wasn't being passed off from Tech to Tech, and that KC was On Point for my issue. There was no better time to upgrade than then and there.
We exchanged several messages on the ticket over the next three hours, and if you don't believe it, the email notification trail from KC is below. Notice the last message coming in at 3:13 AM. Kind of late, but I had a good man working on my behalf. I wasn't going to go to bed. I was able to perform testing of the database, update Connection Strings, and do various testing as KC went through the process and provided me with constant updates. You may notice a message on the sidebar of
my site home page listing the site's new IP with "Thanks, KC!" I put that message online and uploaded it to the new site to let us both know when the DNS propagation took affect and the update was complete. I think I'll leave the message there as a reminder of a very positive experience with KC and WebHost4Life. To sustain me through any rough seas ahead.
Speaking of rough seas, I sure hope this move solved my ongoing SQL Connection errors...
Will keep you posted.
[tags: WebHost4Life, Community Server]