Downtime and why I love my hosting company anyway

At about 7:50 am EST this morning, the main fiber line to the datacenter that hosts my website and mail was severed by some construction people. Unfortunately, this meant that my site and mail were down all day, which was slightly nerve-wracking.

In the midst of it all, the hosting company I use – HostMySite – was able to get up an emergency page on their site (which was also affected) giving updates throughout the incident. In addition, they posted a photo gallery of what was going on, including the poor fiber cut (which looks like an OC-3).

I’ve been with HMS about 4 years now, and this was the first outage I have ever experienced. Kudos to the great job the company did. The best part was a letter they posted on the above page from a dedicated hosting customer which said in part:

I drove over this afternoon and spent quite a while watching from a distance. There were about 20 guys (from various utilities and contractors) all working purposefully around (and in) the trench. I initially looked for someone I could get a “true” update from and then noticed Lou (one of HostMySite’s owners) in the middle of them… encouraging, coordinating and passing out water to the workers. He also looked at his watch every 30 seconds or so.

Again, great job!