A server where I have a reseller account died and hosting had to setup a new server and restore all the data. Getting the new server setup didn't take long but it's been more than 3 days and some sites are still not back online because they're yet to be restored. Is this typical for shared hosting plans?
There is no ETA for how long the restore can take. It depends on too many factors. You should contact your hosting provider asking for more info about restore stage process.
No...there IS an ETA, and it most certainly isn't 3 days. Most good datacenters have 2-3 hour replacement SLAs on hardware. After that, maybe another hour or so to set the server up. 1TB over 100mbit connection is going to take around 24 hours to transfer, maybe slightly more. The whole process should take around 28-30 hours at the most, and that's assuming around 1TB of data on the server, which normally isn't the case. On a GigE port, that time is going to be cut considerably. Should take well under 12 hours for the whole process.
Thanks for confirming my thoughts. They must be overselling their hosting hard it's ridiculous how long it's taken to get the sites back online.
WSWD is correct, but I think there's more to this than just overselling. In fact, I doubt overselling is the real reason. It's more likely they just don't have a clue, haven't got a (tested) disaster recovery plan in place, and probably don't have an online backup system in place. 3 days is ridiculous by anyone's standard.
There are many providers out there who can't quickly recover from a bad outage. This is one of the reasons that you want to consider the longevity of a company when you decide on your hosting provider. It isn't the day to day operations but the emergency situations and the type of response that they receive that sets the armatures aparst from the professionals. But, to give credit to many hard working providers, sometimes machines can fail beyond anyone's plans or expectations.
It was actually with your company that I experienced the excessive down time lol. So it appears how long you've been in hosting means buggerall.
ROFLMAO!!! Yeah, people over on WHT are pretty pissed off by the whole thing too, and their apparent inability to do a simple server restore. I don't get it, quite frankly. Heard today that they were going alphabetically, and were only on the "i"s. After 4 days? Really? Eight letters into the alphabet after 4 days? *sigh*
It's fully restored now but it took 3-4 days. I think part of the problem is they seem to have outsourced a lot of their staff to India and other countries. You only have to look at the JPC rep above... "sets the armatures aparst from the professionals" what native English person would write something like that? That's not to say Indians can't be good at hosting they certainly have a strong IT industry, but like any country, it depends on what staff you take on. I don't want to be too harsh though, I have been fairly happy with this company overall. Hopefully this incident is an isolated one.
Oh, of course. All you have to do is look at their forum for that. Names like Sajjad, Balal, Awais, Sreejith, etc. Like you say, nothing wrong that, but when you have folks in India running the show, and apparently nobody where the datacenters are located who actually give a damn, this is what happens.