I've been asked to put a list together of UK suppliers of dedicated servers for LAMP and Windows webhosting.
The organisation's IT department wants to stop hosting different department websites.
I have companies like Rackspace, Positive Internet and Peer1 on the list.
They'd need to be companies that would pass a due diligence, secuirty and quality audit etc.
Here is a short list of grievances
1) Un-ethical pricing schemes
2) Ignoring your support calls once you cancel
3) Cancelling after confirming to show up for a hardware pickup
4) Billing you for months on end after you cancel
5) Not unracking the servers and making clients wait over 2 hours to help THEIR techs unrack boxes
6) Releasing servers to my customers directly for a fee without my authorization (I was holding onto customer's hardware as they owed me money for past due invoices- these servers became released to the client without my knowledgs who then went direct with corporate colo -- see complaint 7 below)
7) Stealing our customers by offering a lower fee to them to get them to "go direct" by saying - sure you can keep your ips, we'll just take it away from your host and let you keep them
8) Giving us the wrong box (YEP They gave us ANOTHER client's box AND called us up begging for us to return it 2 hours later ... all on my dime)
All of this is documented so if they want to come on here and argue, I'd be MORE THAN HAPPY to blast them further.
STAY AWAY FROM CORPORATE COLO - one of the most unprofessional, vindictive, childish and corrupt colocation companies out there
I'm assuming a corporate proxy cache is what they have set up. I have a client and every time I send them changes to a temporary page I'm hosting for review they can't see it.
They can hit refresh over and over but never see the new updates unless I change the name of the folder its in.
This is very annoying and it only happens with them and one other corporate client i have. They check on multiple computers and it will never refresh and load the new changes. I think this is their network cache that their IT dept. set up.
How can I get around this? I tried an htaccess trick I looked up for expiring files but it didnt work.
These files are on a shared hosting of mine on an Apache server.
i am about to take on a big account where i will be hosting-developing-designing and doing analysis. im not sure if i should get my own server or transfer this new account to my hosting company (host monster).
im afraid if my server goes down i will not have the experience to rectify it in a rapid speed. is it ok to keep a big account that relies on web traffic and business with a host like host monster and what are the pro"s and con's. i have only done web design and development thus far and the hosting and maintenance is pretty new to me.
just to give a kickback to these guys from Corp. Collo in LA. Let me first explain why we needed their service, and then what happened.
GPLHost, the company that I started in 2003, does VPS hosting from many location. We sell our service with our GPLed solution, using services from other company that we trust for taking care of hardware. As we had already a very good partnership in Florida, we started to investigate who we could host with in the other side of USA. We don't ask much, but at least, that a company knows how to open a chassis, change a hard drive or a memory, nothing more. It has been running this way for years without a glitch until...
Everything started well with them, we were charged 55 USD per month, which was one of the cheapest service we ever found, together with a very good bandwidth.
Until we had the most common issue we have: a hardware failure on our RAID1 software array. So we did mdadm -f /dev/sdb, mdadm --remove, then power off the HDD with hdparm, then ordered for a new hard drive to our usual supplier. When the drive arrived, we asked for a change, and also that the IPMI ip of the board was set, using a special CD from the constructor of the motherboard.
For your total understanding, please see this link, showing the server's chassis:
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At the time, we were using short 1U box, in order to minimize costs. Now we only use longer ones, with bigger PSU and 4 HDD hot-swappable bays like the SCT813. So if you want to remove any of the 2 embedded HDD, you need to remove the top panel and unscrew the shroud pumping air that is in the middle (one unique screw on the bottom).
It took 1:15 for the 2 operations that needed no more than 15 minutes in total. So we were charged 300 USD (150 USD per hour), which is already abnormal. It took them 30 minutes for the HDD itself because they removed the FRONT panel, which is not needed at all.
Then the server failed unexpectedly the 2nd day. I wont explain in details all the stupid things they did for us, but after 6 hours, they finally noticed that there was a red light next to a thermometer icon on the front panel that was flashing! YES, 6 hours to find this...
So, after discussions, we agreed that they would rent us the defective hardware: the same motherboard, RAM + CPU, at a very expensive rate (something like 100 USD per week, os something like this...). So we asked for the defective system to be sent to our hardware supplier for a check. Of course, it took 2 weeks back and forth. And the result is... that the air shroud cooling the CPU was facing the HARD DRIVE and not the RAM and the CPU cooler. For an unknown reason, the technician decided to make a 90° rotation of it, before closing the box, which of course nearly destroyed it.
Because we had quite some customers on this server (as it was serving VPS customers), we still paid to resume the operation. But all together, a simple HDD failure costed us at least:
- 300 USD for the first change of HDD
- 600 USD for the 2nd day trying to diagnose what happened after they destroyed the server. They "nicely" said they would charge 3 hours instead of 6...
- 2 or 3x 100 USD for renting the server
- Maybe 80 USD Shipping of our server back and forth to the hardware supplier
- The new 1U casing for the server (at least 200 USD)
At this time, they still do not agree that they broke something. Nobody, including my supplier and myself, understand how an air blower can make a 90° rotation BY ITSELF without the intervention of god.
We had, about 6 months or more later, another HDD that failed. So we asked them to change it. All together, it took more than 2 months, and there was some other issues that I since forgot.
But that's not it! Read further...
Finally, we have migrated all our customers to another collocation facility that are much more unprofessionals. Then we asked for the server to be shipped, together with a linksys switch that we provided at the same time. Victor took an incredible 2 or 3 weeks to just FIND the switch (he first told me that it might have been lost). Then, he told me he found it, but IT WAS BROKEN! Yes, again, they broke something, and this time, they agreed saying they broke it. And guess what? Victor told me he was ready to charge back on my credit card the CHEAPEST amount that I ever saw for that switch online, excluding shipping or any taxes... Incredible.
But ... THAT'S NOT FINISHED!
I once went to bank to withdraw on the company's credit card and it was over limit. So I ran to home, called the bank, and they told me that corporate collocation has CONTINUED to withdraw on my credit card. So I called the "so called" hotline (which is NOT 24x7, I can tell by experience), and started to shout on the phone that I do not appreciate the "joke". Of course, Victor said he was sorry, and that he would charge back the money for the switch, plus what has been charged wrongly this June.
All together, my company have lost more than 2000 USD with corporate collocation if I include everything. As of today, I have yet received no email from Corp. Collo saying that the money they (agree that) they own me is sent back to my credit card. Maybe if they did, I wouldn't have post here, and accept the apologizes. But that is really too much this time!
In short:
- Corporate collocation charges when they should not, they are thefts
- Corporate collocation doesn't admit they break hardware, they are liars
The only good thing is that we made it so our customers didn't feel too much about all the worries we had, and down time was quite minimized, luckily. It could have been a lot worth with extended down time.
I'm writing a review on Corporate Colocation (Corp Colo, Corporate Colo, etc). We were with them for 9 months and just recently we decided to move our equipment to Zogmo.
Background:
We signed up with Corporate Colocation in September of 2006. At that time, we wanted to find a cheaper colocation offer so we could "get out feet wet" with colocation. For a while, we only had one machine but later on we added a second one. I will go into my reasons for moving at the end.
Sales:
In my opinion, this is the only part of Corporate Colocation that I found good. Jon and Victor have been pretty good customer service wise. They seem to always be willing to do things that need to be done and they are pretty good about working with you. Although they didn't seem to be very technically inclined, they did a pretty good job overall with the sales aspect. There were only a few times we had billing issues and they have been pretty quick to fix them with some follow-up.
I would give them an 8.5/10 for sales.
Technical Support:
Minimal at best. Things seem to take days to get done with technical support and even some of the emails that I sent in with regards to some network issues (not with Corporate Colocation, but farther down) were never even responded to.
For example, I requested them to activate a remote reboot port that I had paid for and a week went by with no word. I ended up calling in and talking with Dima about it and he seemed to know about it the request and he had it setup within a few hours. When it was setup, he didn't even bother to follow my instructions and even proceeded to spell my company name incorrectly. A few weeks later I went to use the remote reboot port and it didn't work. Evidently they fixed it, but I ended up leaving a few weeks later so I didn't bother seeing if it worked.
We had some issues with their network. It's partly my fault for requesting a rate-limit on my port, but it took a few days a few emails to even get a response. He seemed to respond pretty quickly as long as there was no work involved. I can't really hold this one against them because it was my own dumb fault, but it's something that didn't sit well with me.
Overall, I wasn’t very satisfied with their technical support. However, I tend to have a little high standards. If you don’t mind having to follow-up and emails with calls (or more emails) and don’t mind a few days for support to get back to you then Corporate Colocation is for you. I just like being in the loop and communicated to, which is one thing they severely lack.
I rate them a 5/10 for their technical support.
Network:
I will stay that they had a pretty reliable network and speeds were pretty good. All I can recall is two outages (unscheduled) where the network was either down or very slow. One was where their network room lost power, so I assume all their network equipment went down. I did file an SLA claim on that one, which they did promptly pay. The other was just a few minutes (<15 minutes) where the network was spotty. I can say they have been doing some network over that past few months and they are defiantly improving in that area.
I rate them a 9/10 for network.
Datacenter:
I drove to Los Angeles to pick up my equipment from Corporate Colo (see canceling for the experience). I was escorted from the lobby area up to FastServ, where Corporate Colocation is located, and I was given access to the datacenter. The datacenter area was reasonably cooled and they had a few big fans blowing air around. The racks themselves looked a little cluttered. The server a couple U’s above mine evidently fell a U or so on to mine (It was on rails, but somehow got dislodged). The server below mine was not even screwed into the rack and when I attempted to pull my servers out it would pull the ones above and below mine. Good thing I brought a couple people to help me with removing the servers and it four of us to make sure the servers on the top and the bottom didn’t move and to make sure their server’s cords didn’t come out. I just hope that others would exercise the same caution when doing stuff with their server(s).
Overall, I wasn’t really impressed with the datacenter. There was nothing bad per se, but the servers on the racks looked a little cluttered and unorganized. I would rate them a 7.5/10
Canceling:
I wasn’t particularly happy with the way they handled the cancelation. I made sure to have a few people confirm my cancelation (over the phone and email) and I had to do some following up a few times in order to even get some answers (I wanted to have my cancelation confirmed and I wanted to confirm access, etc). After some time, I finally got answers to my questions over the phone.
When I was at the datacenter, I was told by someone from FastServ that I had an outstanding balance and I would need to contact Corporate Colocation to get it resolved.
When I called them, they were trying to charge me for another month of service. But I made sure to keep sufficient proof that I canceled well before the 30 days notice and that both Victor and Jon confirmed it. They did finally give me access to my servers, but after about 20 or so minutes a lady came out with the guy that escorted me to my servers asking my it was taking so long and she eluded to the fact that that I needed to just grab my servers and leave (She did tell me that I need to get my servers and seemed very insistent about why I was there). She then proceeded to wait next to us to finish.
I’m not sure why the lady was so rude to me as I did have a right to be there; my colocation didn’t terminate for another few weeks and I wasn’t wondering around the datacenter touching stuff that I shouldn’t have (In fact, I tried everything I could to make sure the servers around mine were left unharmed. I know it wasn’t just me, because even the security guard that checked us in commented on how rude she was.
I would rate the cancellation a 5/10.
Overall
I can say that sales was pretty good to me. They did lack in some areas, but overall that’s what kept me there for so long. I was planning on using them in the future for some non-critical (off-site, etc) stuff in the future, but the way that I was treated at the datacenter and the trouble I had canceling has made me to think otherwise. This is one of those “you get what you pay for” situations. If you need something cheap that is fairly good, then Corporate Colocation is for you.
i work for a small but fairly successful and quickly rising company. we're looking for hosting for our corporate site. we could host it ourselves but that would put an extra burden on engineering and we're stretched pretty thin as it is. we moved to bluehost on my recommendation. i've been using them for 2 years now and never had a problem. unfortunately less than two days after we switched the server is now down. it's been down for over 4 hours now and we've blown past several estimated times from tech support. i know this is a rare thing but it doesn't look good and i don't think the higher ups much want to stay with them. so here's some info about our site. requires SSI, CGI, Perl 5.8+ with Perl DBI 1.32+ and Perl DBD::Mysql > 2.1021+ Perl Modules, ImageMagick 6.0.6+ Perl Module or GD Perl Module (GD.pm 2.17+), PHP 5. small traffic with occasional spikes. approx 200 uniques daily. occasional spikes if we happen to show up in the news. we do have the possibility of showing up in all major US news outlets. it's happened once before which resulted in almost 1,000 uniques which quickly tapered back off to normal levels. we're currently using 154MB of disk space and 8GB of bandwidth last month. we need multiple ftp accounts to allow marketing and contract web devs to upload their own files. probably around 10 or so would be adequate. email not required. we have a hosted exchange server. uptime and quick response to server outages important. being a corporate site and not our application downtime isn't truly horrible but it is perceived as such. this site is our identity. we're a tech company and it looks bad when our corporate site is down. even when our application isn't.
View 10 Replies View RelatedWhat is the difference between Dedicated Virtual vs Regular Dedicated Server?
Also what are the pros and cons of going with Virtual?
to move from shared windows hosting to Dedicated windows hosting. This will be our first dedicated server and experience with dealing it too.
Someone suggested me Rackspace. But they were charging premium rates 440 USD for entry level windows server.
I am currently using a shared hosting but due to increasing traffic and server load my existing host is not able to provide reliable services and I am planning to upgrade my hosting service.
While I was searching for Dedicated Servers, I learnt about Virtual Dedicated Servers but I am not very sure about their reliability? Are Virtual Dedicated Servers useful? My website current serves over 2500-3000 visitors a day resulting in 30,000 pageviews and I am expecting the traffic to grow by atleast 2 folds in the next few months as I start some PPC campaigns and Email Marketing for my website. Can a Virtual Dedicated Server cater such needs assuming my website to be more of less dynamic website written in php?
I have Plesk 11.5 (service provider mode) on a Windows 2008 server IIS7.Most of my sites are developed in .asp and therefore i use a custom 500-100.asp error page that check s the IP of the visitor then displays either a friendly error, or if its my IP a full error of what has happened (it also emails me the error). This allows me to debug pages easily whilst developing and to keep an eye on anyone trying SQL Injection hacks on my sites (as the error and email also have session variables and IP address).I dont have root access to the server as it is a Webfusion dedicated server.I have following the Plesk documentation -
1) Switch on custom errors for the subscription
2) Look in virtual directories and navigate to error documents
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FILE - I had the data centre add in the 500-100.asp error page in to the virtual template so that my page is available in the list of virtual files - this didn't work but that maybe because its not a static page??
URL - when i add the path it says its incorrect, if i add a fully qualified address, it accepts it but it doesn't work.give me a specific example of the URL that can be entered relative to the root as the format in the documentation isn't accepted. The last step is to restart IIS which is also an issue as i cant seem to do this from the Plesk panel..It is as if it isn't catching the 500:100 error, and only catching the general 500 error??
What is the difference between a virtual private server and a dedicated server?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am going to be buying a dedicated server from kimsufi Most likely the 2XL Package.
My streamers will be using my server aswell, On weekends we will be running 3-4 streams at a time, weekdays 1-2 at a time.
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I need to know your advice on this before i go spending money.
How do i convert my dedi into a flash media server, i need red5 or something, thats all i know so far. My streamers wil be streaming to server with FME, And i also want it coded so that my streams can only be embedded on my site.
Basically i dont have a clue where to start, how long would it take me to set up etc....
In addition, what kind of server do i need, windows / linux / traffic / burstable / standard etc..
I'm expected to have around 1000-1500 users at a time after my ad compaign for my site.
currently, my setup is as follows:
VPS in UK
guaranteed memory: 256 burstable : 512
disk: 20GB
traffic: 200GB per month
price : 15 dollars a month
I would like to upgrade to :
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which is better ? to go with VPS ? or dedicated server ? which provider do u recommend ? how much am I expected to pay for my required setup ? what about CPU ?
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How can I tell if GRUB or LILO is on the server somewhere?
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View 3 Replies View Relatedi'm looking for cheap dedicated server , do you know where is good provider?
and also ALLOW IRC.
I'm very-very looking for that kind of server.
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Hard disk 250 GB IDE
RAM 2 GB DDR 1/2
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Hosting: Web / Emails / VPN / VoIP
Release 2, Release 1, Linux Plesk 9, Linux Plesk 8.4, Linux Plesk 8.0, cPanel, Extranet Group Work, Windows Plesk 8.1
Experts: raw distro
Debian 4.0 old-stable, Debian 5.0 Stable, Ubuntu Server 8.04, Ubuntu Server 8.10, Open Suse 11, Fedora 9, CentOS, Gentoo 2007, Gentoo 2008, Slackware 12.1, FreeBSD 6.2, FreeBSD 7.1, Windows 2003 Pro, Windows 2003 Basic
Virtualization
VMWare, Xen, Proxmox, Virtuozzo4
Remote desktop
Ubuntu Desktop 8.04
I have been given a fairly high spec dedicated server and I would like suggestions what I could do with it.
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I got control of some colocation resource in Taipei, Hong Kong and several cities in China (Beijing, Shanghai and probably Guangzhou & Shenzhen), and is now considering starting a business by deploying blade servers into my racks with Internet bandwidth as well as private bandwidth interconnected between the above IDC.
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I prefer to deploy VM or VPS instead of dedicated servers as space/electricity in China is very expensive and higher density should be the way to go.
So I'd like to know more what the difference is between VM and VPS in terms of customer perception and actual features.
In areas of VM and VPS, which vendor do you recommend and why?
I have one Dedicated server , with Centos 5 and Cpanel. I want with *a magic way* to have and some vps 4 -5 in the same server,
So my question is how i can install a vps in this server and also i am wondering if it any GNU vps software for my server also.
what is the difference between dedicated servers and VPS?
View 14 Replies View RelatedIs there any dedicated server providers, where you can change the whois, so you would be able to resell server, and if someone looked up or traceroute the ip it would look like you on the DC?
View 7 Replies View RelatedJust found out about these RPS Servers from my friend. They are dedicated servers without a Hard Drive directly inside of them. They are connected elsewhere for some reason however it makes them alot cheaper that way especially worth while for the need of Dedicated systems for low costs.
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I've a server with galaxyvision. they boast a 24/7 support, live chat doesn't work and they don't even answer the phone. Server's been down for 2 hours.
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Can i buy some ips from other company to use on my dedicated server? (as failover ip).