What Happens When 100% Uptime Isn’t 100% Uptime

Rackspace provides expensive, managed hosting services. The company charges as much as double what other providers in the market charge. What makes them different is their 100 percent uptime guarantee and “fanatical support.” I’ve been seeing less-than-fanatical behavior over the past year, which Rackspace has been made aware. Today two of my servers (and this website) were down along with most of Rackspace’s customers — if the numerous other people complaining on twitter that their site was down are to be believed. No small comfort that the company’s site was down as well. Details provided by the company came late on twitter, adding “No details yet.” My sites were down for at least 40 minutes.

Well, now the proverbial shit has hit the fan, and we will see what Rackspace does about it.

I was unable to get a hold of anyone by phone during the entire hour I attempted to call during and after. Rackspace added to twitter: “Phone support is not down at Rackspace. Heavy call volume, but no issues with those systems.”

I did get through to a sales person who wanted to sell hosting. I baited him by asking about his 100 percent uptime guarantee. He said the company tries to offer 100% uptime. I left a message for my support team to get back to me as well as opened a ticket. I will keep you posted on my outcome.

My ticket to Rackspace:

I was down at least 40 minutes that I know of. Please advise. I can get my sites hosted elsewhere for a third of the cost (or less if I want to go into the cloud). However, I pay a premium to be up all the time.

Please advise why this downtime occurred, why you failed to provide adequate updates (twitter message was a joke), and what remedy you will be providing.

This article is written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases (http://www.ereleases.com), the online leader in affordable press release distribution. To subscribe to PR Fuel, visit: http://www.ereleases.com/prfuel/subscribe/.