Yesterday between the hours of 1:39pm CST and 5:14pm CST all of my sites were down. It seems that my new VPS (Virtual Private Server) may not be sufficient for my needs for as long as I had hoped. I figured, I would not have to upgrade to a full dedicated server until the Fall 2007 or early 2008.

But, a process reached a critical level and killed many other processes, and halted everything. All that seemed to have been needed was figuring out how to “correctly restart the named/bind services”.

It was almost comical (with a touch of me wanting to bang my head on the keyboard and desk) trying to figure out the whys and hows of what happened and secondly, what was needed to fix this.

YES! I want to know everything I can about the VPS system, but I also want to win the lottery. It’s just not possible for me to get everything I want. I know that.

However, I NEEDed the system to be rebooted, and for some reason the support guy would NOT reboot the system for me. Now, this is a total guess … but, I think he either wanted to “teach me how to fish” instead of just feeding me a fish and rebooting my servers for me. I felt that this particular person was really BAD at teaching me anything, and was inadvertently giving me bum advice .. because for some reason, besides not solving my problem – he was giving me distress!

Fortunately, a second tech support came in to just FIX the problem and correctly restarted the named/bind services. So, now I know what to do the NEXT TIME .. if the same problem happens again.

OR .. I could upgrade to a dedicated server now so this particular problem never happens again.

It’s like a dark cloud hovering over me at this time, because if I start to go crazy with new postings on all the sites .. this might be pushing my plans towards upgrading this network sooner than expected for me. Bottom line – is that because of the cost involved in providing an effective solution to this potential problem .. (and since I’m on summer hours) .. I’m wondering if it’s probably better to just continue with a slowdown and have less postings – than risk having sites that are down and unaccessible being offline.

I need to do more research. And, be prepared for what will come.