Many dedicated server customers at Fasthosts are offline today due to a hardware failure in a core network switch. The downtime is the latest in a series of performance problems at Fasthosts, one of the largest UK hosting providers. In December a system-wide password reset caused problems for Fasthosts customers, many of whom found their websites disabled when they couldn't access databases or control panels. The reset was prompted by an earlier security incident. Fasthosts also had extended outages in July 2007 and June 2006. Fasthosts was acquired by 1&1 Internet in May 2006.
The details of the incident appear similar to an outage at Globat in February, in which a switch failure knocked all the company's services offline for eight hours. In response, the company said it would purchase a backup switch to create an automated failover option.
Here's the statement the company provided to The Register:
A number of Fasthosts dedicated server customers have experienced network connectivity issues this morning as a result of an unexpected hardware failure in one of our core network switches. The fault resulted in an outage of a number of dedicated servers within the affected network segment early this morning. Fasthosts engineers are working speedily to bring all affected servers back online, a large proportion of which have been rectified throughout this morning. Fasthosts will make every effort to ensure that affected servers are returned to normal as swiftly as possible. We apologise to affected customers for any concern or inconvenience caused.
