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The importance of Alpha aware hosting

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    #16
    Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

    Thanks ids-Dave, I will check those tools out. Many people have seen me use sqst.com as an alternate email address or a dummy login account for my applications. The 'sqst' stood for SurveyQuest and was an IVR application popular before handheld devices were cheap. It was used by field sales reps to 'touch tone' in their daily sales stats and was as close to real time as it got back then. I used a combination of ProVide IVR software, dBase/Clipper5 and a 4-24 port Dialogic card. 'SQ' also stood for SKU, the name for the barcode for inventory tracking. It was an effective solution as long as handheld devices were over $500. Sales Reps didn't like it because it was rather hard on their fingers.
    Steve Wood
    See my profile on IADN

    Comment


      #17
      Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

      Originally posted by nlights View Post
      There are other, easier monitoring solutions. I use West Wind Web Monitor (http://west-wind.com/webmonitor/) and it will alert me via email and/or text if it doesn't see what I expect to see (such as a web page, or certain text within a web page.) I've set it to run as a service on my office desktop computer, so it is always up, watching...
      Yep - lots of great monitoring tools are available and often cheap.... but email and text don't wake me up at 3am when I have a loud snoore going. Also, my IVR will keep calling all my numbers until it gets a live answer. I have it coded to recognize answering machines, voicemail, and no answer so it'll keep calling until a real pick up is detected.

      Comment


        #18
        Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

        I cannot fault Zebrahost, great for serious commercial use. Fantastic customer service and reliability.
        Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
        Albert Einstein, (attributed)
        US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

        Comment


          #19
          Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

          I am with you on that one Pete.
          I have noip.com that monitors and will email me if my site is down 99/yr for every 15min testing and 149/yr for every 5min testing.
          I am not sure who you have the website registered with but the service is out there that's for sure for some of the hosting companies.
          Last edited by chadbrown; 03-10-2012, 08:03 PM.
          Chad Brown

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            #20
            Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

            Hey David was perusing the posts looking for a little insight into setting up 10.5 DL and Server on Windows Server 2008 rd....I have worked through and got things up, got A5 server up with port 80 by removing the IIS web page had trouble with getting FTP but maybe that is me, it just would not finish. I saw a video by an A5 guru that showed him putting the DL on the (windows 2008 server) and running it to get things up...I did that and it worked but then my (windows 2008 server) started hanging everytime I opened up the A5 DL application and I had to reboot (windows 2008 server) to get things stopped.

            Seems like if I open my A5 10.5 DL on the windows server it hangs trying to install some "snap-in" component? That also hangs the entire windows 8 server....I can hardly get any commands to work so to reboot I have to go into GoDaddy and power cycle it. I saw some posts about how to eliminate all IIS conflicts but I don't follow...

            so my question is, did you learn a few tricks to getting things up on 2008 that you could share? I am on go Daddy as well...VPS

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              #21
              Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

              Rod, I don't recall any snap-in components related to launching Alpha or the server hanging up. I didn't encounter any IIS conflicts either but Plesk was an issue as mentioned earlier in this thread. Installing a full copy of A5 was straightforward and using it works fine. Is there anything in the event log that gives you an indication of what's happening when the server starts locking up?

              The only "trick" I learned probably has nothing to do with your server hanging issue. Not really a trick and is actually more of a habit... when you're making changes, whether it be administering users and security, port forwarding, firewall rules, etc, watch for any screen that has a "Save" button and an "Apply" link. If you click save without doing the apply first, your changes may not actually get saved. I went in circles a few times before getting the hang of this and there's lots of blogs/forums that point this out

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                #22
                Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                Wendy,
                http://www.freewebmonitoring.com/ Will notify you via text and/or email if a site is down and when it comes back up.

                Comment


                  #23
                  Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                  Crazy me...I have alpha5 at my place check to see if my websites are operating as expected.
                  If not, it documents it in a log, then sends me an email.
                  In the event the site comes back before I do anything, I have it set to document that in the log as
                  well, and as you might guess, it also sends me an email.
                  The hostavailable() function is my friend.
                  Gregg
                  https://paiza.io is a great site to test and share sql code

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                    #reignpanel: I had a lot of trouble getting FTP to work after I changed servers. My server guy finally pointed out that you sometimes need to delete the FTP service and re-create it, and while doing it make sure you check the "Do not isolate users" -option as you go through the setup wizard. Once you've set the site up, you can't change this option (I' don't think you can even SEE how it was set.)

                    As for A5 up/down notifications, I've found AlwaysUp to be an invaluable tool. Even more than notifications, I really, really, REALLY like the fact that AlwaysUp will very reliably start the A5 server if the main server reboots for some reason. This way I will can rest assured that my A5 server is up as long as the rest of my server is up. Money well spent on that one. I still use another external monitoring service (such as freewebmonitoring.com) to alert me if the file server goes down and doesn't come up.

                    Pertti

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                      Originally posted by billamidon View Post
                      Wendy,
                      http://www.freewebmonitoring.com/ Will notify you via text and/or email if a site is down and when it comes back up.
                      Sign up today and receive our premium website monitoring service absolutely free for 7 days (only $24.95 every 3 months thereafter). Select a Password, then enter your Name and Email Address below. After you click the Sign Up button and create your account, click the button provided to register for your free trial at Paypal.

                      Free for a little while.
                      Chad Brown

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                        Uhhh... That's pretty pricey for such simple service -- $100/year.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                          Actually, I don't find that crazy expensive. If you think of things in terms of value added, not simplicity or not - for someone who doesn't know how to set something like that up themselves...
                          Wendy Welton
                          Architect
                          past & future Alphaholic - deliberately falling off the wagon!

                          http://www.artformhomeplans.com/

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                            While it is true that the true value of a service is whatever the customer thinks the true value is, I still think that this particular service is way overpriced given what it takes to set one up and maintain it. I could write this type of application in less than a day and host it on my servers for pennies a month. Heck, if people are interested, I hereby offer a similar service for a flat $20/year.

                            Pertti

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                              #29
                              Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                              Try this http://www.paessler.com/ 10 sensors free.
                              I think that will do for most hosted A5 websites.

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Re: The importance of Alpha aware hosting

                                Sorry Pertti, I didn't think someone else would make an offer -- I wrote an Alpha based PING service last night, a couple of hours after reading this thread.

                                So anyone with an IADN Account (free) can go to their MyAccount and click the PING TEST tab, and set up two domains. It will send an email and/or text message if your site is down, and send another message if/when the site is back up.

                                Go to http://alphadevnet.com/myaccount.a5w. Create an account if you don't already have one.
                                Steve Wood
                                See my profile on IADN

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