Just received this email from the host of the very blog that you are reading on:
Hello –
Sorry for the short notice, however we will be rebooting the server you are connected to tonight to apply a new version of our kernel tonight. During the reboot, your website will be unaccessible for up to 10 minutes.The maintenance window is scheduled from 10:00PM – 11:00PM Eastern.
Thank you for your business,
-StableHost
The email was sent at 5:51pm to be fair, but no prior announcement was made.
So basically, the idea is, you have 5 hours to be ready, move your database or wait for the website to die in a few hours.
And to make things worse, they actually called it “scheduled maintenance”. If they have scheduled it, why can’t they announce a few days in advance?
I like Stablehost in general, cheap price and great service, but this is definitely something I will take into consideration when considering whether to renew another year of hosting with them in April.