I just thought I'd take a moment to share a few of my thoughts on my initial experiences getting set up with Pacific Rack...
It was finally time for me to take the plunge for a dedicated box, and after browsing through these forums and hearing a lot of good things about Pacific Rack, I decided to contact their sales department. I was immediately responded to and soon found myself talking to Alex and Jordan (both very helpful). We quickly found an appropriate solution for my company, and soon I was off to the setup queue.
Setup took longer than expected, but I think that was due to some custom configuration issues on my end (they had to wait for parts to come in). Support/sales were pretty good about keeping me up to date on what was happening though, and soon things were rolling along nicely.
(Initial experiences with the network...)
Wikipedia lists 14 Tier 1 networks on their article page (for whatever that's worth!), and I think PacificRack (and parent(?) company OC3Networks) sits on Gigabit links to 6 or 7 of those networks. So I was excited to see what the network would look like once I was set up.
Once my server was provisioned and I received a login to their client portal, I started messing around with things and was quite impressed. I signed up for a 1Gbps switch and I've seen several transfers in the 20BM/s - 60MB/s range (PM me if you would like a speed-test file link). These guys have got quite a network!
(Initial experiences with the client control panel)
Their client section is minimalistic, but has the basics. Server info, billing info, ticketing system, and a nice little graph showing you how much throughput your server is experiencing at the moment (or historically). I can't really think of anything it's missing, though it looks a bit bland.
(Initial experiences with the sales/support team)
So far I've sent in several tickets for a number of things (they don't set up rDNS by default), and from what I can tell a support/sales agent is usually on it within minutes. Once it almost felt like I was on a chat with the support rep. Everyone seems to know his/her stuff, and they have all been quite helpful, resolving each issue in (usually) a manner of minutes.
All in all I'd have to say these guys are great. I've only been around for about a week now, but I've been quite impressed. If anyone finds this post useful I'll probably write another one at the 6 month mark.
Feel free to respond here or PM me for further information/speed test links, etc.
I've actually had a post-it note pegged to my project board for the last two months to remind myself to write up a review of Pacific Rack. Between the holidays, life and there never being enough hours in the day...I just hadn't had a chance until now. Please allow me to apologize in advance if I go into more detail than what is needed. I have an annoying habit of over-explaining things.
Anyways - here is a bit of background:
My Industry:
A freelance designer that also provides web hosting to design clients on a dedicated server housed with Pacific Rack. My main website can be found at [url]and most of the websites displayed in my design portfolio are also hosted on the server (Caution: Those websites in my portfolio are semi-adult in nature [companionship providers], so if you are at work or have an irrational hang-up about such things, I suggest not following my portfolio links). I don't make a profit from hosting (nor do I try to) - so it's not like I'm a big, high-tech hosting company. In fact, what I know about server management is pretty pathetic and minimal - which is why I pay PSM to manage it for me. I mainly offer hosting as a convenience and extra layer of identity protection to design clients. The websites I host are mostly smallish, semi-dynamic outfits powered by my own, mysql-based, home-brew CMS solution. I host around 60 accounts, none of which are very resource intensive. My clients typically require require between 3-12GB monthly transfer each.
Server Hardware:
The server specs and package I have with Pacific Rack are as follows:
Intel C2D (2.0Ghz)
2GB Ram
250GB SATA 16MB Cache
CentOS 5.1
cPanel/WHM
2000GB Bandwidth
100Mbps port
50GB Automated Backup
Sign-Up:
I moved to Pacific Rack from Dediwebhosting in May 2008. The initial contact and transition was handled by Alex Ferrier, who was simply phenomenal. Yes. I am aware he is actually Chris so-and-so and that there was a huge controversy about him and some shady way he handled a hosting business several years back (he was a teenager at the time, mind you). Frankly - I don't care. He was not only courteous and helpful to me during my transition, but he didn't make me feel like an idiot for being such a noob. He also had a sense of humor and communicated on a level that was very personable. Knowing what I know now about his past has not changed my opinion of him or Pacific Rack in the slightest. Ok. Getting off topic. So I signed-up/paid on 5/29 and had my server up and running by 6/1. I had some issues with the new server having an updated version of mysql that broke my CMS - but this wasn't anyone's fault but my own.
Reliability:
It hasn't been a full year yet, but I've had very little downtime with my server and none that I can even recall clearly. Far less than I'd experienced with a reseller account at H9 or with my first dedicated server with Dediwebhost (neither of which were excessive either). I also noticed a definite improvement in overall server response and performance when I moved to PR - though my hardware specs were much better than where I was coming from. I'm not sure if is due to a better network, but previously my server couldn't send/receive mail with AOL accounts (yes. I'd gone through all the troubleshooters) - but this problem was resolved after moving to PR. Support:
So this is where I think they really shine. I'd mentioned above that I currently use PSM for my management needs. I think they're a terrific service but there are some limitations in terms of response times and how thorough they are in making sure things aren't broken after doing an update for you. There have been a few times in the last year when a server package install/update has caused problems with my client sites, which ... after waiting an hour or more for a response from PSM (while I'm stressing from clients yelling at me) - I'd get impatient and submit a ticket to Pacific Rack instead. In every single one of those cases, Pacific Rack responded to (and often resolved) my issue within 15 minutes. They're just darn quick with support requests. They have the pay-per-incident option (usually only $5), but they've only actually charged me a couple of times out of all the instances I've contacted them. Not only that, but as touched on above - they just don't make me feel like the server idiot I know I reveal myself to be at times. WHT is intimidating for me to post on because it seems as if most of you are big shot hosting gurus (or big companies that can afford to hire your own hot shot hosting gurus). I'm just a rinky-dink freelancer, whose hosting requirements are quite modest compared to many of the people here. Yet, all things being relative - my hosting needs are still important and significant in my own little world.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'm sure PR has much larger accounts than my small little server...yet they don't project an attitude that I'm any less important to them. Support is quick, friendly and informative. In fact, I'm waiting to hear back from their sales department about what management services they offer. I really have appreciated having PSM, but because I host so many accounts that depend on me for uptime - I feel like I need to look into more reliable management options.
Actually, 'reliable' isn't the right word...as PSM has been pretty great. I just need a service with faster turn-arounds on tickets.
So all in all, I highly recommend Pacific Rack. I realize my modest server requirements may not be the proper scale from which to judge your own performance and reliablity needs...but their support and network uptime would apply to anyone ... and that I can vouch for. I just feel like I'm in good hands with them.
This is my review of my initial setup with Pacific Rack.
After the issues with the fire at TP, I decided to pickup another server at a different data center as an additional server.
I ordered a Supermicro, which is a quad core processor. The price was well within the range, the extras were all within range as well, except cpanel, which was $35.00. I'd rather see that at $25.00, but overall that was fine. Total price as $266, right around what I expected to pay.
Setup took a few days, right at around what I expected.
When it was delivered, I asked why I couldn't log into WHM. They told me everything was fine. After some communication and about an hour and a half they said that they forgot to install cpanel... That wasn't a good start.
They failed to meet expectations because of the following:
1. RDNS was not setup at all. I shouldn't have to request it be setup. This is small, but if I didn't know to check/ask, it would be a major issue in the future.
2. The box always fails to reboot and requires manual intervention. Why can't they fix that? or even address the issue?
3. cPanel was not installed properly and when I asked for help, they told me that the box was unmanaged and I choose the configuration. If it didn't work right out of the box, the fault was my own for choosing that configuration.
Alex said, "You have received a standard Fedora 64 bit install, that we downloaded just for you. What you need must not be included in the standard install, or the cPanel install. If you want us to manage your server, then you will have to subscribe to our server management service which is $29/month with a 6 month commitment. Otherwise you can just google for the command to install an RPM, as I don't know if off hand, but I know its really simple."
Just to comment, if it turned out to be as simple as installing an RPM, then I would have just killed myself due to the shame of it.
Turns out after working with cPanel support, it was an install error, cPanel was not installed correctly. (Don't know if that is PacificRack's fault or cPanel's, but I know it's NOT my fault and I would expect the data center to get my server up and running properly so I could manage it)
My expectation was that I would be delivered a box that worked properly and if it didn't, PacificRack would help me get it working so that I could use it. It appears that PacificRack's expectation was they just install the crap, it's up to me to make it work. If the install is bad, I can just Google it.
I'm fine with managing a server, I have four years experience running serveral servers, but I am not able to debug install issues where the box NEVER worked properly in the first place.
So, in this area, they fail to meet expectations.
I also found their technical staff to be arrogant and unfriendly, though I'm personally arrogant and unfriendly, but I always am very nice to support people, no need to cut my own throat.
Overall, I'd say that my experience doesn't seem to be typical, but the fact that they were unwilling to resolve the issues really bothers me. I detest companies who hide behind "unmanaged" as a shield against providing the services that they should be providing as a data center. I also refuse to pay a $29.00 a monthly fee to get a managed server (basically a $180.00 commitment) to get them to deliver a working server, when that should be a "Free" service provided when I purchase.
The DNS servers are pacficrack work well and the connections are fast and reliable.
The server still is not working up to expectations and their support people seem to be unwilling to get it to meet expectations with out going "managed". Now, honestly, $180 would be far cheaper than any other options, but its the principle of it.
Overall, I'd rate pacificrack about average. The server is a good server and at a reasonable price. The support people where knowledgeable. The turn around on tickets was very good, no ticket sat for more than a few hours. It really seems like pacificrack is a very small operation. I think that is a big plus.
At this point, I'm not sure if I should just move on or continue to try and get this server to work properly. I'll make a decision in a week when the server is close to renewal.
I'm interested in the free control panel from pacificrack mycp. Does anybody have any experience with it? What's it's functionality like? easy to use? many feutureS? how does it compare to plesk or cpanel?
With all the high power servers/blade servers, the 40A (@ 110V) power limit is way too small. I am wondering if there is any colo space targeted for high density application, e.g. with 10 KW/cab limit for 60A @ 208V power drops. Does anybody know of such high density colocation space? East coast is preferred.
For over a week now I have had the following network issues:
- browser timing out (for me and visitors to my site)
- ftp connection issues
The server load is low so it's not server related.
Traceroute TO the server appears fine.
Traceroute FROM the server to users IP's appears to have issues over the SingTel/Optus network.
My webhost says it's an issue for SingTel/Optus.
SingTel/Optus Engineer say: "Our testings point to a problem either within Cogent's network or on a peering link between Cogent and Singtel in LA.
I'd suggest that the owner of the domain (me!) approach his hosting provider and have them escalate to Cogent. We can't escalate to Cogent as we have no peering with them."
So I've been the meat in the sandwich for over a week with no sign of a fix.
My options appear to be to either move the VPS away from the webhost and host it locally (Australia) or to somehow wait for someone to step up and take responsiblity and get this resolved.
My heart says wait as it's not *my* responsibility but it's costing me financially and professionally.
Anyone else experiencing similiar/same issues from the Asia Pacific region to the US?
I've been with XenVZ for about a day now, and thought I would share my initial impressions thus far.
I was looking for a cheap, basic little VPS to run a few simple services off of. I had raked high and low through these forums since I was looking for something located in the UK, with Xen virtualization for <£10/month.
I came across XenVZ in the advertising forum, and thought I would check them out. Started up the Live Chat, and got through to Sean right away. I asked a series of questions and received prompt and professional replies.
I thought I would start out cheap, so I signed up for the £3.99 'taster' VPS (they have a 30 day money back guarantee, so can't really lose). Signed up around 8:10, received invoice 8:12, paid invoice right away and had the server details at 8:21. Whole signup process took around 11 minutes.
Even for a tiny VPS with only 64MB RAM, it performs fairly well. I am running a Ventrilo server inside Screen, IRSSI session inside Screen and Lighttpd server (serving a simple static placeholder page), and I still have around 20MB spare RAM.
The network seems pretty solid too, I thought I would test it out with a wget from a UK mirror service, the connection capped out at about 9.5MB/s.
If your looking for a UK VPS, I highly suggest giving these guys a check, can't fault them so far.
Of course, I'll be back in a month to give a more detailed rundown of the service.
I don't run a domain off the VPS but can provide the IP on request.
I will be posting a month review after my 1st months of service. But for now, here is my initial review of Wiredtree.com
This is under my domain of aps-enterprises.co.uk which you can tell is on the Wiredtree network. OK here goes.
Placed my order on Saturday 21st as Level3hostings main site went off line and I got a really bad feeling that my VPS would go down too, a feeling which proved all too true.
After a little while, I got the Fraud check phonecall. Although I couldnt hear them, James Webb could hear me, that was quite amusing....
Sunday 22nd, got my VPS Setup. Usually they said it would take a lot quicker to get setup, but they did have a network maintainence for about 3hrs. I was stil happy.
7.16am GMT time, my VPS with LEVEL3HOSTING went down *thank god for backups!! hooray I learnt my lesson*
The VPS I ordered is a good spec and any support tickets I had to raise, all were answered and resolved in an average of 15mins!! Yep! 15mins. I used to pay an external company each month, and they resolved stuff in 24hrs. How cool are they?
So anyway, VPS is great, Uptime has been 100% one can only expect. And Support is by far, one of the best I have seen.
Only been in business with them for my 5th day, so far they will be keeping me as a customer and if I have to upgrade (which I know one day I will), then I will be ordering any upgrades through them.
This is only my initial review and I will post a 1 month one too.
Which I reckon will be a positive one, just like this one is.
Thank you Wiredtree for making my life easier for my hosting business. As they say you do get what you paid for, and believe me the services I have had from some people that saying is very true, however you guys.... I think your prices are cheap for the amount of work you actually do.
Keep it up, and I hope this review makes a few customers for you.
I signed up with FutureHosting for a managed Linux VPS. I'm about a week into going "live" with the nameservers switched over and am very happy! I was going to wait a month before posting but these guys have been so patient and thorough with the tickets I've submitted I wanted to give my initial thoughts
Overall 9.5/10 Great Host. Very patient and thorough support. Very Good response time. Surprisingly low pricing. I highly recommend for your VPS. Very Good response time on Support BUT no phone support
Signup 9/10 Signup was straightforward. I think they have a higher volume than normal with their promotion. It took a bit of time to set up the VPS (under 10-12 hours) but I'll take a few hours' delay if I'm getting a good product/support for months/years.
Speed 10/10 They publish their speedtests here [url]I just downloaded a couple test files (5-20MB each) from my VPS and I get to about 1.1 MB/sec. At that point it may be a limit from my ISP (FYI speedtest.net gives my download 14000 kbps = 1.7MB/s). No issues on speed! : Support : Overall: 9/10 Speed: 9/10 Thoroughness: 10/10 'Other': 8/10 Very good response. For NORMAL PRIORITY issues, within 5-30 minutes I get a response that someone's attending to it and soon thereafter I have a resolution. Some tickets have taken longer but they haven't been critical issues so it's really okay. You can prioritize your tickets as CRITICAL or SERVER DOWN and I'm sure they're even faster.
They have gone back and forth with me and been patient with my questions (I've never administered a VPS before) and I GREATLY appreciate that. I've had many tickets with them and other hosts may have just said "this is really not an issue with the VPS" and left me to learn it myself-- FutureHosting has been very helpful.
Sometimes (probably due to my own vagueness/lack of knowledge), my actual request/issue is unclear. I think this is where phone support would be very helpful; it's not currently offered. (and this is why Other gets an 8/10)
Reliability 10/10 I've had no downtime so far! My nameservers/DNS switch took longer than expected but that has nothing to do with FH.
Pricing 10/10 With their DoubleRAM/Bandwidth+30% off OR 50% deals, Pricing is great I think. Others had recommended WiredTree to me given their lightning quick response times. I'm sure they're amazing but they were also almost double the price. FutureHosting has had very good support at a great value IMHO
I'm not sure how you 'validate' my domain/review but just let me know and I'll PM you the information on my domain.
This is an initial review of WebNX.com. I was hosting my personal sites on a reseller account at Eleven2 which had started feeling kinda slow, so I was in the hunt for a low cost dedicated or a mid range VPS.
After scouring a lot of places for quotes, I finally came across WebNX's thread on WHT on the 17th of March.
The specs looked to be amazing, and their Value level VPS would fit right into my budget, and match my requirements. I fired an email to sales, and went on to their site to see live support online.
I spoke to their rep on live chat, and I was given a signup link in minutes (it was 11PM PST), and I was told that my VPS would be setup in a few hours.
And as expected, I had the root logins for the server, and HyperVM within 4 hours.
I logged into SSH, and ran cat /proc/cpuinfo and I was really amazed to see that the server really had 16 cores
I then moved my cpanel backups from my old host, and the speeds were really good.
Even though the server is unmanaged, their support rep helped me to move a file that was around 5GB in size, that was constantly failing during cPanel's remote SCP backup feature. They went to the extent of downloading the file for me and uploading it so that I could restore it.
It has only been 4 days, but I am extremely overjoyed with the level of service I've received so far. Infact, I feel like I'm cheating them by paying them so less ($15 for the first month, and $59.99/mo after that)
I've been through many many hosts and server providers in the past few years, and this is the only second review I've ever written on WHT. (The previous one was more than a year ago).
I've been with the host (dmehosting.com) for just 1 month now but I decided to give an initial review as I am pretty impressed with their support.
All the websites went offline and the HTTPD would not start even after manual reboot, but they provided extended support and did a complete rebuild of PHP configuration file.
Initially, when I saw their prices frankly I was not expecting or relying on great service (usually the case for low price) but I was quite surprised that they balanced it pretty well.
I would recommend them for anyone looking for very cheap servers with good support.
I was on shared hosting with Site5 and found the level of service declining the cheaper their shared hosting plans got. My site was down more often than I wanted, so I canceled my plan and went with VPSLink.
I signed up for the Link-2 plan for a few months just to feel it out and see if I could get a Debian server up and running from the command line. After signing up I was in my VPS in less than 30 minutes. Much quicker than I expected!
Following some tutorials I was able to have a lighttpd, PHP5, MySQL server installed and running in a little over an hour. I had a site up right away ! I'm used to FreeBSD, so Debian's apt-get is very simple to use. I used VPSLink DNS and it was easy to set up. To keep the load off the server I transferred my domain email over to Google Apps. I've spent more time tweaking the configuration and I'm happy with the result so far. VPSLink is much faster than my old Site5 shared hosting. That could be due to the VPSLink server sitting in Seattle while I'm in Vancouver BC, but I kind of doubt it.
My initial impression of VPSLink after a couple of weeks is positive. The price is right, the performance is good and it's no frills VPS. I like to have full control over the server and I'm glad I just took the leap away from shared hosting. For the prices they offer it's worth trying.
I am migrating my sites from a Xen based Centos 5.3 + cPanel/WHM instante to another Xen based cPanel/WHM solution with Centos 5.3 64-bit. I am having issues with easyApache now after it was successfully ran for the first time.
It does not time out however even the profile selection screen takes well over 10 minutes to get to once easyApache is initiated. Once the profile selection is made it is still slow moving to the customization screen.
The server is neither overloaded, nor out of memory. I have actually executed /scripts/checkperlscripts in hopes that it would identify something. I am planning to remove /home/cpeasyapache folder however I am not confident whether this is the right approach or not.
I have a page that is loading very slowly the first time I connect to it. After that it's very fast.
Now I did some research and found out that this could be a DNS issue and that my nameserver might do a reverse DNS lookup. I do not know excatly what that means yet, but I suppose that could be the issue.
To the my.cnf file I added skip-name-resolve in order to disable DNS lookups, but what I can do to find out if I have a dns issue?
Got a great deal on a simple server for a side project. Paying $59.99 a month for the server which makes it very affordable for medium-size projects. General:
* Setup Fee: Free * Celeron 1.7 GHz CPU * 512 MB RAM (upgradeable to 2GB) * 60 GB IDE Hard Drive * 500 GB Monthly Transfer * 5 IP addresses* * Premium Set-Up Options
The sign-up was quick and easy and I was sent an authorization email. I authorized and was able to immediately log into my account.
I processed the order a bit late at night so the next morning I received a call on my cell from my personal tech rep saying the server was already up and running (they said it would take three day, more like 8 hours)
He offered any assistance to help me get up and running and gave me a direct line to his phone in case of anything. Then he emailed his contact info and an introduction to my e-mail as I requested.
So far I am very pleased with the setup and the individualized attention, although I may not require it, it is very comforting to know it is there.
First impressions mean a lot to me and Aplus.net's first impression is stellar to say the least.
Hope this helps, I will be posting a review a bit down the line on how it progresses.
I another thread recently I done a 5 year review for another provider hover circumstance changed and I took on a couple of Gigenet servers ( relatively high end)
Sales were extremely efficient working with me to achieve what I needed at a price I was comfortable with, replies were fast and concise so I ended up with 2 new machines and backup service.
Normally I don't need a lot of support and for the first few weeks nothing bar rDNS set ups - However I ran into some serious post migration issues over the past few days that had me stumped, support has been some of the best I have ever received both in speed and efficiency -
Anyway I sincerely hope I will be coming back to this thread in 5 years time to update it.
I have 2 reseller accounts with one provider, and in the last several days I have noticed that when you visit the site for the first time, my AV software detects a trojan on the site, but the code & html files are 100% clean!
I'm suspecting that there is something being injected into the scripts from the server daemons that's either running or something else.
After considering and comparing VPS offers from Future Hosting, Knownhost, Wiredtree, and Liquidweb, I went ahead and ordered from Future Hosting.
I'll post my initial impressions, and try to update the thread over time.
I currently have a VPS at Godaddy, plus shared hosting at Godaddy, 1and1, and Namecheap.
My objectives were to get away from Godaddy VPS, set up with a 'better' provider, and consolidate sites.
I am fairly technically adept, though not an expert. My requirements are for hosting appx. 25 sites currently, with perhaps another 15-25 to be added over the next 12 months.
Most are low volume, a few are low-to-mid volume. Nothing fancy, primarily informational sites and affiliate sales sites (WP and Xsitepro), and some direct ecommerce.
I focused on the 4 providers mentioned above based on recommendations and reviews here and elsewhere. My main concerns are reliability and price.
After comparing plans and the specials listed on the 'Webhosting Offers' board, I settled on Future Hostings "Titanium" managed VPS offer. The special offer they listed was for 50% off lifetime cost.
Through live chat, I spoke with Nick to ask some specific questions. He was patient and helpful each of the 3-4 times I came back with questions.
One question I asked was how long it would take to get provisioned. He quoted me at under 12 hours - this was also mentioned on the "Offers" thread, specifically for the current special.
The "unspecial" price was $84.95 for 1Gb RAM, 650Gb bandwidth, and 50Gb disk space, with cPanel. I added Fantastico for $3.95. After the coupon code, I'll be paying $46.42 / month.
I put in the order at 10:04am. Registration was activated at 10:50am. Cpanel, Virtuozzo, firewall, etc. installed
Although the domain was registered in 4/15/08, I could find next to nothing on WHT or the ‘net in general in the way of reviews on FiveBean. Saw a lot of specials and things they have been running off and on at different venues and boards, but couldn’t find a review to save my life. I did search pretty thoroughly. No web cache on web.archive.org either.
So, I’ll be the first to post one (that I know of), with a special they are offering, it’s very affordable, if the service turns out to be good enough, then I have another node at a great price J. The more, the merrier. Win / Win 4 all. (FiveBean also offers shared hosting, so not exclusively a VPS provider.)
Hardware nodes – From their site: “VPS Nodes are built with Intel Core2 Quad Processors, Premium SATA Disks and RAID Protection powered by CentOS 5.x and MoxieVM. Each VPS server is backed up daily and we provide 2 full backups to our customers.”
Although I never rely on provider’s backups, it’s good to see them offered as standard. Could come in handy.
They offer 5 plans; I ordered the middle-of-the road “Starter”. All VPSs appear to be OpenVZ based.
Ordered Plan - 512M / 1G burst 40G HDD 450G BW 1 IP CentOS 5 for initial load
Initial order, small issue - Placed order at about midnight, got my welcome email at 7:40 AM. One issue was, I did not receive any emails from their ordering system, other than the PayPal-originating receipt. The emails were listed under the Client Area, so I still had access to read. Since I own and admin my own mail servers, I checked logs - Emails from ordering system were sent from a non-FQDN domain. From SMTP logfile: RECEIVED: MAIL FROM:<fivebean@kona> SIZE=3560 Mail server rejected because of the incomplete domain. This appeared to be an issue with the sign-up process only. All support ticket replies came from a FQDN. I described this problem in a support ticket, curios to see if they really do look @ and fix. Maybe on my second order? Everything initially ordered during the process was delivered, with no follow-ups required to correct anything. That's a little rare, from my experiences.
They offer online chat support, but have not caught it online as of yet, although I haven’t checked before 9PM on any given day, so not a fair eval on that aspect. FWIW.
- On to the goodies -
Control panel - Apparently, FiveBean previously used HyperVM, but has since disabled and rolled out their own self-spun VM manager, "moxieVM". It's a simple, yet effective, web interface that allows me to do everything I need to, and everything works. That's always a good plus! moxieVM control panel contains the following: VPS list facility / user profile control / pass reset VPS Controls -- Reboot / Start / Stop / Rebuild OS / Set Reverse DNS Report (simple) shows -- OS currently installed / Monthly BW Usage total / Current Memory Usage / Action Log of previous control commands
Noteworthy - when you select "reboot / start / stop" there is no confirmation, action is queued and executed immediately. Good info to know.
Rebuilds - FiveBean offers 13 OS rebuild option w/ 6 Flavors - Ubuntu / Suse / Slackware / Fedora / Debian / CentOS, 32/64bit in most. Reload of OS (From CentOS 5 to Fedora 10) took about 4 minutes. Note - keep your original root login password! On OS reload, the pass is reset to the original you receive in your VPS welcome email, NOT whatever you have currently changed it to. I can see this being an issue if it’s been a while since you have reloaded and end up digging out the old email. A little different than HyperVM.
Network - Ping times are consistently 15-16ms from/to Austin, 21ms from/to Atlanta, 12-18ms from/to Kansas City, MO. Traceroute to node (69.162.118.226) puts them behind Limestone Networks in Dallas, Tx. One thing I can report, their network seems to be very peppy. I've had a hard time hitting anything from / to the VPS with more than 20ms. I haven't seen a 30ms yet. From anywhere. An I have VPSs from coast to coast.
VPS / Initial Order- Hostname was set properly right off the bat, both initially and on OS reloads. Reverse DNS PTR self-set worked without having to put in a ticket, a first for sure! I just entered the rDNS PTR I required, waited about an hour, and it was set and propagated, ready to go. No muss, no fuss. Although I haven't put any load on the system, the CLI is responding very fast, and pings / traces / nslookups are very quick (as stated above). The only issue at all so far was the aforementioned order response email non-FQDN flurb. But, stuff happens. Small beans (pun intended).
AUP No porn, excessive violence, hate, deception, illegal IRC that causes no disturbances is allowed. I really prefer non-IRC networks, but they have a long lecture about it in the AUP, so it appears they watch activity pretty close.
Nuts n Bolts -
Benchmark (benchmark is on newly loaded system, minimal install FC 10, no load) ------------------ INDEX VALUES TEST BASELINE RESULT INDEX
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusions – so far, so good. I’m actually pretty impressed with everything I’ve seen up to this point. I’m planning on putting the server under load as a backend node of a busy website’s load balancer. I’ll post follow ups as we go along.
I had three VMs with Fsck VPS, dating back to before they got hacked in June. I've been paying the bill since then, I imagined as a kind of insurance, so that I had the VMs handy if I needed to use them in a big hurry. Last week, I tried to log in, and found that my three VMs didn't exist, anymore. As far as I can tell, the VMs haven't existed since the June break-in.
SETUP / PROVISIONING
My first reaction was "They've been billing me for three months, and providing nothing?!??!" I'll be honest, I was pretty tweaked, but after I'd calmed down I decided to see how they handled the situation. So I submitted a ticket asking for an explanation: How long had the machines been down for, and what would it take to get them back up and running?
It took about a day, but we eventually established that VAServ could build three new OpenVZ VMs, and that they would give me three months' credit for those three machines. Since I actually do need the VMs, and I didn't really want to fight about the billing, I decided to go for it. It took another day, but I did get three new machines up and running.
Unfortunately, I do have some complaints about the process, specifically:
- VAServ's technical support is very inconsistent, and different techs seem to have vastly different levels of communications skill and professionality.
- Many of the techs don't seem to bother reading your ticket, beyond the subject. They tend to only be capable of answering the first question in each ticket/email, and they ignore anything else you've asked.
- After the FSCKVPS/VAServ buyout, following the break-in, the HyperVM control panel was disabled. If you need a reboot, or a root password reset, or anything that you can't accomplish yourself by SSHing into the VM, you have to open a ticket. (Seems like a chancy proposition, now, to me.)
REBOOT-AND-PRAY
Today, I started seeing memory allocation errors in running programs. The machine mostly worked, but certain operations (shell scripts, in particular) would error out. I opened a ticket asking for some guidance, and within less than 10 minutes, the VM started rebooting. I got an update about the ticket a few minutes later, and was told that the VM had been reconfigured (increased memory allocation limit) and rebooted.
I was pretty mad about the no-notice reboot. I'd been in the middle of editing a bunch of configuration files, and I lost an hour of work. It just seems so unprofessional and inconsiderate for VAServ's technician to bounce the VM without confirming it with me, first.
I did get an explanation/apology from the tech who rebooted the machine. I asked him to have his supervisor contact me, which took a few hours, but I did hear back. The supervisor wrote:
"...we reboot the vps if we found any VPS out of memory. Normally most of the service stop working or access got killed when VPS is out of memory..."
To me, it sounds like the reboot is a standard procedure for a common problem. Given that kind of environment, it's only natural that the tech's first impulse would be to reboot, given a ticket about memory errors.
At the same time, it's also indicative of a bottom-of-the-barrel service, isn't it?
- Memory problems seem to be common--is that because they're over-subscribed? Does your 512MB allocation mean anything, or is it just talk?
- The staff can't / won't bother to read through a ticket and give it some consideration.
- The staff has an itchy reboot finger. Their first impulse is to power-cycle, rather than to try to understand and fix the issue directly.
FOR THE FUTURE
I do intend to continue using VAServ / FSCKVPS, at least for now. They're really cheap, about $10/month for a 512MB VM, and I can mostly get done with what I need to do. But this is a qualified opinion. I am solely using these VMs for simple R&D projects: Quasi-professional work, stuff that nobody is currently paying me to do.
Given my experiences so far, I would never trust these guys with a real, money-making business project. VAServ / FSCKVPS is suitable for toying around with, or if you're flat broke, but I wouldn't bet my job on them if I could possibly help it.
I'm setting a calendar reminder for myself, right now, to check back in another month or so with an update to this post. Assuming I'm still chugging along with these VMs, I'm going to make a point of posting my impressions on a regular basis.
My site will wait for 30s almost everytime before loading any of the page itself.Specs of my install:
- DigitalOcean Droplet (VPS) with Ubuntu Server 12.10: 512 Ram and 20GB SSD (not even coming close to needing more RAM, still have 240MB free according to top) - Wordpress 3.6.1 - 5 plugins: W3 Total Cache, Wordpress SEO by yoast, WP Better Security, WP Smush.it, and Redirection (problem occured before adding the last 2, I can't remember about the others) - No traffic to speak of. I get maybe 10 uniques/day. - Apache 2.2.22 - MySQL 5.5.32
I've optimized my site itself the best I can, minifying and combine js and css files, using the WP Smush. It plugin to compress images, serving jQuery from a CDN, but none of that worked the 30 second wait (though it did shave about 10 seconds off the load time after the wait for response).
I was using cloudflare and had to fiddle with the nameservers of my domain, but cloudflare didn't work at all and I switched the nameservers back to normal pointing DNS directly at my site to eliminate the obvious causes. I'm comfortable with Linux and the command line. This is the link to my site: [URL] ....
experience with connexions4london as an IP transit provider. We are looking for dual 100Mbit (commit) connectivity in Telehouse East and their pricing and response time on the quote was very good.
Any feedback on their tech support and network will be greatly appreciated. Any other options (good network/price)
They are sure running some great specials right now but sometimes things aren't as good as they seem. Any experiences from people especially on their management services & such from users who have had them (or used to have them) for some period of time (not brand new or short-time users--- unless the short time was due to very bad experiences from the start).
And please-no "secret reps" telling me how great you are, would like some actual user experiences. Have been very happy with the same provider for over 6 years but their pricing is not reflecting the current trends in server technology & I'm growing tired of "negotiating" (old tech at new tech prices) so I've been looking for some options for the first time in years.
High-end users preferred (quads-dual quads etc.) but mainly want to know if they live up to their management & security promises (response times SLA, tech knowledge, etc. for "fully managed".
