[Gomjaba]

If your data is that valuable, a proper backup system is a more cost effective risk reduction measure.
If you do get the disks, start out by trying ddrescue to make images then work with the images. You need a lot of luck too.

That is even more important when using budget servers. Never leave all eggs in one basket. It goes without saying that if you do backup only once a month you need to make sure the backup actually works.

I know - I am not helpful, but I have been there and I can tell you that OVH don't care about your data / support - you are on your own, so make sure you don't need them in case of an emergency (And host mission critical data / servers offsite / somewhere else).

My "play" server, which still has important data on it, even uses an overkill backup system lol

I got one server with website / mysql backup data on a folder which is synced using owncloud - which is running on a second server ... The second server runs Windows and in addition to that dropbox .. so I keep basically two copies.

My production servers are different obviously - but that is a whole different topic here as I doubt anyone is hosting proper / decent production servers at OVH ...

How does the saying goes - every 9 after the comma in availability adds a 0 to the price ...

[NeddySeagoon]

... I need to get the data from the disk and my best chance is with a recover specialist. ...

Oli

If your data is that valuable, a proper backup system is a more cost effective risk reduction measure.
If you do get the disks, start out by trying ddrescue to make images then work with the images. You need a lot of luck too.

[LawsHosting]

Although it's an old model, there's no proper SLA on Kimsufi's - we all think that is ludicrous but fat squiddly-squat we can do. Disk changes can be done in hours to days.....

Just my 2p's worth.

[olib]

Thanks for getting back to me,

I'm not holding OVH liable for the data loss, or failure events on the server or hardware.

What I do expect from OVH to provide the server in good working order. I would expect that when a hardware fail event happens the matter be investigated thoroughly and professionally and the customer informed of any actions which are required.

I don't really want to drag this out, the most important thing right now is to take action to fix the situation. Fact is the server is not operational and needs fixing. The disks have been faulty for over a year and have meant they failed catastrophically where it should have just been a matter of replacing a raid disk. I need to get the data from the disk and my best chance is with a recover specialist. In light of this it seems like the sensible and decent thing to do is to have someone take 5 minutes to pull the disks, put them in a jiffy bag and post them to me. If this is done I can at least try to salvage something from the situation and hopefully everyone ends up happy.

Hope that seems like a sensible course of action,

Oli

[Neil]

Hi

The servers are unmanaged so it would not of been possible for us to check the disk array and I do not see any incident ticket requesting you for us to do this, as you can see from the terms and conditions we are not liable for the data loss.


Supplier's liability
5.1
The Customer acknowledges that the Supplier shall not be responsible for any
failure or malfunction of the Dedicated Server.
5.2
The Supplier shall have no liability to the Customer under the Contract in the event
of:
(a)
any act, omission, fault or negligence of a third party not connected to the
Supplier, and in particular any unauthorised access to the Website or the
Content;
(b)
any act of piracy, viruses, worms, trojan horses or other harmful codes that
affect or may affect the Dedicated Server, the Website and/or the provision
of the Dedicated Hosting Services;
(c)
any actual or suspected security breaches in connection with the Dedicated
Hosting Services;
(d)
any loss following the uploading of the Website to another server or IT

6.
Customer's obligations
6.1
6.
Customer's obligations
6.1
The Customer shall be solely responsible for:
(a)
managing the Dedicated Server, and for
any loss or damage to the Dedicated
Server, and shall put in place appropriate insurance cover to cover the risk of
any such loss or damage. The Customer may not claim any reimbursement,
replacement, or compensation from the Supplier in any circumstances;

[macole111]

Based on the evidence I would expect to receive a refund for this server from the point of misdiagnosis as I have not been receiving the service I've been paying for.

The disks are to be removed anyway so I see no justification to charge me for them. There is cost involved in shipping the disks so this charge can be deducted from the above credit.

Thanks

Oli

Don't hold your breath is all I am saying.

-macole111

[olib]

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately my backup runs at the start of each month and the last backup failed. The disk failed right before the end of the month so I'm without 2 months of data.

It sounds like my best course of action is to have the disks returned. I'll restore from the last backup I have and attempt to recover the missing data from the drive myself.

The facts here are:

08/2012: Automated reporting of disk failure
08/2012: Customer contacted OVH asking to check the disk array is healthy
08/2012: OVH incorrectly said array is healthy, does not need replacing and disk replacement is not an option
12/2013: Total RAID failure reported
12/2013: Customer discovers disk array has been faulty and out of raid since 08/2012 when issue was initially raised.
12/2013: OVH confirm both disks have faults and need replacing

Had this hardware of the disk array been checked properly as originally requested and the proper course of action (disk replacement) been taken this event would never have happened.

Based on the evidence I would expect to receive a refund for this server from the point of misdiagnosis as I have not been receiving the service I've been paying for.

The disks are to be removed anyway so I see no justification to charge me for them. There is cost involved in shipping the disks so this charge can be deducted from the above credit.

Thanks

Oli

-----------------
OVH Dedicated server terms of service
http://www.ovh.co.uk/support/termsof...TED_SERVER.pdf
4. Supplier's obligations
4.1 The Supplier shall provide the Dedicated Hosting Services with reasonable care and
skill and in accordance with best industry practice.
4.2 The Supplier shall provide the Hardware and Software necessary for the provision of
the Dedicated Hosting Services.
4.3 The Supplier warrants that the Hardware, Software and the Dedicated Server shall
perform in accordance with the specifications set out in the Order.
4.4 The Supplier shall use its reasonable endeavours to ensure that:
(a) the Hardware and Software is maintained in good working order and in
accordance with best industry practice;
(b) any defect, error or malfunction of the Hardware or Software is remedied as
soon as is reasonably practicable, and the Client is informed immediately if
such repair or replacement requires the Dedicated Hosting Services to be
suspended;
(c) any disruption to the Dedicated Hosting Services which does not result from
any breach by the Customer shall be rectified as soon as is reasonably
practicable following a request from the Customer;
subject to Conditions 4.5 and 5, the Customer shall have access to the
Dedicated Server via the Internet 24 hours a day, 365 days a year on the basis
of the level of activity on the Website specified in the Order. If the level of
activity on the Website exceeds that specified in the Order, the parties shall
meet and agree an increased bandwidth usage and the corresponding
additional fees.

[Neil]

Hi

We can replace the disks and once they have been replaced you have the option of having them sent to you so you can take them to a data recovery specialist (there is a charge for this). I can see the previous tickets and the one in 2012 you mention about, the server crashed and did an fsck which reported okay we did not do any further checks. The servers are unmanaged and you are the administrator of the server, so are responsible to monitor the disks and raid of your server. Do you not have a backup you can restore from?

[olib]

ks310425.kimsufi.com
Datacentre: rbx3
Rack: 41E11
Number: 102509
System (OS): debian50_64
Bits: 64

Hi, I would like advice to resolving an issue with the hardware on my server.

I have a Debian 5 server with a RAID-1 disk array with ext3 partitions. Specifically chosen for it's redundancy. The server ran fine for it's first 2 years.

OVH then reported a disk failure notice on SDA in August 2012. I queried OVH about it but was told that the disk was fine so they would not replace it.

On 31st December the disk array failed reporting SDB failure and causing the array to be read only. An inconvenience I thought but at least I have SDA which the engineer had assured me was ok. I would get SDB switched out and re-sync and be back to normal.

I booted into rescue mode but on mounting the disks one at a time to inspect the state it has turned out that SDA (or it's controller) did fail when the fail notice was issued so it dropped out of raid 16 months ago making it's data useless.

The server has therefore been very dangerously been running on a single disk since then. I'm now in the situation that the only data is on SDB and it is unmountable and reporting random errors if you force a read.

I don't know what I could have done to avoid this hardware failure of the OVH server. Despite the failure notice and my inquiry I was told that the disk would not be replaced and was assured the disks were healthy.

I am sure the engineers at OVH will know what to do but I think a sensible first course of action would be to mount the drive on a different machine and disk controller. If that does not work I would expect a data recovery specialist to be able to recover the data so that it may be cloned onto a new disk to be re-inserted into the server.

I feel OVH organising this would be more than reasonable as it is OVH hardware failure, a failure by OVH to maintain their servers to their own terms of service and I was misinformed by the engineer a year ago.

I would very much appreciate a swift response with:
* details of the course of action which will be taken
* an indication of time lines
* how else OVH are going to help rectify their mistakes

By the way, the incident ticket has been open for 4 days now and the last posts have remained unanswered for over 16 hours.

Look forward to hearing some good news soon!