Moving From Rackspace? Thoughts On New Providers...?
Apr 14, 2008
We run our site from a dedicated server at Rackspace and have done for 6 years now. Whilst i'm very happy with the level of service provided we're starting to consider small cost savings by moving to other providers.
We did select LiquidWeb and have attempts a couple of moves to the new server but so far without success (most recent being yesterday with 12 hours of frustration!). A lot of the problems seem to be down to cPanel/WHM being a lot more "locked down" than were were used to with Webmin (that runs on Rackspace servers) and being somewhat unfamiliar with cPanel/WHM.
We have asked advice from LiquidWeb support and whilst they seem to be reasonable in responding, i've yet to feel the "heroic" aspect although this might just be due to being spoilt at Rackspace for many years. Support responses tend to be quite "rushed" and do the minimum asked for rather than going that extra "mile" which was seemingly indicated during the sales cycle.
My question is this - do people have thoughts on potential other fully managed providers? Should we even be looking for a new provider?
Specs looking for:
- Fully Managed
- Dual Xeon Quad Core
- 2GB RAM
- 2 x 73GB SCSI RAID
- Some form of Remote Backup
- Linux
We're currently paying about $850 for the server at Rackspace which has the following specs:
I was wondering what people thought of Liquid Web, my friend has his site (twivo.com) with Liquid Web and says they are absolutely amazing. But I want to know what other people think of them.
Are the amazon's EC2/S3 solutions a viable alternative to dedicated hosting? The thought of capacity/bandwidth/computing power on demand sounds great in theory. Could it host a basic LAMP setup?
If you've done any research in this area i'd love to hear your thoughts. Are they apples and oranges?
Hope this is the right place for this question. I'm interested in hosting with 1and1.co.uk as they are good value and allow multiple domains to be hosted (incidentally, will nosy people be able to figure that the different domains are hosted on the same package?).
Just wanted to hear your thoughts and experiences? It seems cheaper to host on their American site compared to the British site. Am I allowed to do that?
I was having problems with shared hosting so I'm having a crack with a VPS from wiredtree. I have been with them 3days so thought I'd post up an early review on my first thoughts then update 3months on, 6months and 12months.
I'm new to the VPS world and have never had any experience with server management/functions other than with-in cpanel so you could say I'm a total noob, so this is coming from a newbie perspective. Ok so here goes for the pros/cons so far.
Pros:
- The set-up was fast once sorted (see the first con).
- The payment system and ordering process was easy to follow.
- The support is very fast helpful and understanding (this is for their online support not phoned them yet).
- The start-up e-mail is useful and gives clear direct instructions.
- The prices are fair and in-line with the market.
- Their 'Grove' control panel is clean and clear and gives you access to vital functions and information, such as DNS, server stats, billing and support. Cons:
- When I set-up my account they didn't ring to confirm I had to chase them to get it sorted but once it was confirmed my server was up in under 1 hour.
- On their bottom package they give 348mb ram which before you put anything else on the server over 60% of this is used by other functions/softwares. Of course these things can be turned on/off when needed but I feel this should be mentioned at sign-up so people can understand and plan what they are going to need.
- Their knowledgebase has so far failed me as the issues I have had (mostly due to being a noob) are not listed on it and there are no other way other than submitting a ticket to find out about the small easy to solve problems, but their support is fast so no biggy.
Overall its not been a bad start It has had some floors but I'm happy and things are running smoothly.
Like I said these are only first thoughts on the service and I will update at later dates to give a clear picture on their service.
Is security really that critical? If so, why are some of the largest software companies providing such a bad example for the rest of the industry? Why would someone want to target my website? Why is security often overlooked?
These are all common questions that arise on a daily basis within the online industry.
The rest of this article will provide some detailed answers, along with practical examples and true scenarios.
I've spoken with numerous hackers over the past short while. I can't count the number of times I've heard the line "Ignorant site owners deserve to be hacked". In my opinion, that's like claiming that cars without alarms deserve to be stolen, or homes without alarm systems deserve to be burglarized. It's not just wrong - it's illegal.
Security risks and vulnerabilities affect the entire online industry. When a single website is hacked, there are usually multiple other victims. This is most commonly seen with widely distributed software. A potential attacker has the ability to install the software on a test environment, locate the vulnerabilities, then attack random victims even before anyone else is aware of the potential exploits. Once a vulnerability is located, the attacker simply needs to search for other environments using the same software, and within minutes there are hundreds, often thousands of potential victims.
Typically, in the race to market, software providers are encouraged to release their products as soon as the applications are usable. Critical development procedures are often overlooked or intentionally bypassed. One such miss is an application vulnerability assessment. Although the product may be usable, the effects of a vulnerable application could be severe.
Sadly, nobody is "off limits" when it comes to hacking. Most hackers feel safe committing online crime, since the online industry has evolved much faster than the security industry. Many applications are not created with the intent to recognize hacking attempts. Some hackers view their actions as a competition - Who can attack the most valuable website? Who can exploit the most user databases? In many cases, these attacks are bragged about within the hacker's immediate network. The competitive nature of these hacking groups has become so severe, there have been reports of attacks between competing organizations.
You might ask, "If I use industry standards, won't my environment be secure?". The short answer: no, but it helps. Hackers are not restricted by industry standards. Most security companies only implement new standards once at least one victim is reported. This often gives hackers plenty of time to locate other vulnerable environments, and before long, the number of victims can increase rapidly. Hackers are some of the most innovative individuals within the online industry. The most logical way to combat them is to use similar methodology for security purposes.
What are your thoughts of Ultrahosting.com, I didn't find may reviews here on WHT.
I talked with the sales rep. and he said they host people such as: Mazda, Chrysler and Xerox.
Here's some info he gave on their server:
Quote: Paresh: to provide some way of background...Ultrahosting is part of our parent company Momentum Paresh: Momentum handles Managed Service Operations for Enterprise level customers Paresh: Ultrahosting sits in the same data center as these clients
I regret to bring this to a public forum but having seen that solarvps has a presence here I am hoping that a resolve to this issue can be found, and any public opinions are welcomed.
Having been a customer with solarvps since 2006 without any cause for concerns it does not make me happy with some recent issues I have had with them. So I have had a vps server hosted with them since 2006. Sometime in February when attempting to login to my VPS I got an error, I left it as this happens sometimes, it happened for 4 days in a row so I thought this is a little strange logged in to my control panel, to see no VPS server was listed under the account. There was no invoice generated either. Ok this is strange but I just assumed it had been terminated, no invoice came through and that particular server was a backup server so I sought hosting elsewhere.
4 months pass I get an email from solarvps stating my account is overdue with charges applied. I contact them back straight away asking what they are billing me for I have explained the situation time and again to them, I have asked the questions why the server disappeared from my account, why I wasn’t able to access the vps remotely and why no invoices got generated at the time to which I have had no response, I have asked more than 5 times now. The only response I keep getting form them is threats if I do not pay to hand over to a collection agency and the possibility of legal action. To which I have replied each time that I will contest any such action and seek legal advice myself.
Granted I should probably have contacted them at the time but really they are at fault more than I am for not asking them what has happened, I truly believe I am not in the wrong here but nobody within solarvps is prepared is looking at the facts of what has happened here.
Well anyway I hope bringing this to a public forum will bring a resolve and maybe some answers. I am getting no response from anybody within solarvps and would be happy to take this away from the public if they are willing.
I am not unfair nor does it make sense that a customer for so long would just decide not to pay you one month and kick up a fuss over such a small amount of money but the fact that I am not in the wrong with this matter, I am not prepared to pay them no matter how much bullying tactics they wish to adopt in trying to make me.
I had them for about 6 months and it was great until some time in the middle of May I got an email from them saying "my website is overloading/overlimits and even small dedicated sever wont handle the load" I had "Failover Reseller Plans" which allows 10,000MB space & 200GB bandwidth. The only script my website had at the time was a phpBB forum. My forum got about 2-3 posts per day with an average of 300 users per day. How could it cause overloading/overlimits ? Their "abuse team" wasn't very helpful at all! I got fed up with it and moved my site to a new webhost => servint
However, their support team was amazing. They replied to my tickets very fast. They were always online even at 3 or 4 am !! And most of the time they were very helpful and wouldhelp you with anything.
Would I go back to them again? i'm not sure ...maybe or maybe not
Servint So I moved everything to Servint VPS after this whole incident. I really have no word to say about Servint except that they're AWESOME! I really like them & their support team. I had them for about 4 months and no complaints about them. However due to my financial prob (spend all my $ on gas & rising cost of everything) I had to downgrade to a reseller account instead
I'm looking for a way to get a little more mileage out of Apache + PHP environment without losing Apache capabilities. In shared hosting environments, losing features such as .htaccess and a real mod_rewrite are not even on the table. I'm also not willing to accept the performance hit and connection issues that are inherent with FastCGI, so that means mod_php.
In this particular situation, there are two busy sites, which are the problem.
These are a few ideas I've been thinking about.
1. mod_proxy + nginx: mod_proxy sends static content requests to nginx. This requires two sets of vhost files to be maintained.
2. mod_cache: Caching common static content such as page graphics .css, .js, etc.
3. squid
If you've been down 2 or more of these roads, I could benefit from your experience.
Rackspace provides great uptime, however their ticket service is terrible. It takes them 3-4 hours to respond to normal tickets and 1-2 hours to respond to emergency tickets. If it's a real emergency they ask you to call them but when you call them the person never finishes what they are suppose to do. The person starts and then goes to dinner or their shift ends and nothing gets done.
Well I learned my lesson before and decided to call them instead of submitting a ticket. So I called them tonight at 6PM to tell them my website was hacked. The guy on the phone said it looked like it was a mysql injection. He said would remove some things and ask for a restore and I said okay fine and hung up. An hour passed and didn't receive an update via phone call or ticket. Where did this guy go? Well his shift probably ended. No sense in calling again since it won't leave a trail...
So I submit an emergency ticket on 2008-05-18 19:24:39 No response until 22:05:07 they apologized for the extreme delay and said restore was starting.
Here it is 23:03:25 and my website still isn't restored.
This has happened to me 3 times already and it takes rackspace around 5-6 hours to do a simple restore (I have the support tickets to prove it).
I would understand if it was a crappy hosting company..but I am paying close to $500 a month for a server and expect better service. Does this happen to anyone else or am I an exception to the rule. It's been 4 hr 22 min since I first submitted a ticket and around 5.5 hours since I first called them and my website still isn't restored properly...
I bought a server with RackSpace, for the network, support, quality, and other reasons.
Anyways I am starting up a new VPS division, and thought why settle for the rest when you can have the best. Because there is all of these "budget providers" out there that use cogent, and dual or quad core servers.
So I thought that if I bought the best server I could, with the option to keep upgrading (off peak hours of course). With premium bandwidth, and still be competitive why not?
The server that I bought through RackSpace is below.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 III Dual Processor, Quad Core Intel Xeon L5335 8 GB Memory (Fully Buffered) 4 x 146 GB (10k RPM) 2.5" SAS Drive(s), Raid 5 Unlimited Data Backup 100 Mbit Dedicated Port 80 IPs
Like I said I will upgrade that server when it gets time, because it could still use some tweaks. Also after this, me and RackSpace where talking about a cluster, but I don't know how that will work out, I think that it would be nice if it didn't pose any problems. And also load balancing.
But anyways I have not received the server as of yet, and I was wondering if anyone could give me your opinions. As this is my first time, and want to make sure that i am going about everything correctly.
I also have hired 3 admins, just for this venture, that have alot of knowledge with VPS nodes.
Also we where wanting to use virtuozzo , but they don't sell it. Would you recommend VMWare, or HyperVM?
I need to obtain a qutoa for a hosting from 3 hosting company (this is a project for a state goverment so you guys know the drill). I am contacting Rack space, who else on that level I should contact.
About a month ago I switched from Virtual Private Hosting on ************ to dedicated hosting on RackSpace. It was definitely an improvement, but I'm still dissatisfied.
Here are painful parts of my experience with RackSpace:
1) RackSpace wanted me to sign paper contract (************ didn't require that). That paperwork took almost a day (several hours of my efforts + some wait time). Sales guy couldn't open several versions of "Microsoft Office Image Writer" that I emailed to him, so I had to resend the document in different format.
2) It is a little unpleasant to deal with RackSpace sales guys. They forget (or "forget") to answer some of my questions; use some slightly unpleasant pushy sales techniques. Is it typical for any sales reps, not only RackSpace's sales?
3) After the contract was signed, it took RackSpace almost 4 days to install the server. I signed the contract Wednesday July 3rd 2008 and was hoping that on Saturday-Sunday night I'll be able to move my web site (postjobfree.com) to RackSpace. But RackSpace set up my server only on Monday - not convenient time for me and my users to do the move.
4) RackSpace promised me that they would help with the migration. They gave some tips, but not all of them were good. For example, they suggested me to shut down my web site for few hours while I will copy my database. Not a good approach for 24/7 service. So, basically I was mostly left on my own with the migration.
Fortunately, I used advise of Omar Al Zabir about smooth web hosting migration: http ://msmvps.com/blogs/omar/archive/2006/08/27/110061.aspx
Ironically - it was Omar's recommendation to use RackSpace for web hosting that made me pick them.
5) Average response to my ticket requests is about few hours (2-3 may be?). Sometimes ticket response time is shorter; sometimes it's longer (up to a day or even more in some cases). It's an improvement in comparison with ************, but is that really the best in hosting industry?
6) Most of the time responses are good, ...............
I have dedicated server P4 3.2 Ghz with ThePlanet for 4 years now. Since I want to upgrade a server I started to think if it will be good idea to change to the Rackspace.
They offer AMD Opteron 246 for pretty much same price I am getting my P4 3.2 Ghz at ThePlanet. Is it faster processor? I do not need faster CPU, I want to upgrade Hard drive but if I am getting faster CPU it's good.
Several points here.
1. I can not complain about ThePlanet. Never had a problem. And whenever I had opened ticket they were answered in time I expected.
Good morning. I have been a customer of Rackspace for approximately 2 years. I love their level of service. However, I'm paying $475 for a dedicated server with the following specs:
Single AMB Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0Ghz, 1B RMD, 80GB HDD
Are there less expensive alternatives that provide similar level of support as Rackspace?
We are a web design firm and we provide hosting for our customers who design their websites with us, we do not promote ourselves as a web hosting company. We are in the market for years and the most thing that confuses us is the hosting problems. Server problems when occur take all of our human resources (we are a small company) and that affects our other (main) work which is web development.
We've tried a lot of reseller then VPS providers, each provider will experience some problems even after a long time of stability.
Sorry for the long introduction but it was necessary to let you know what exactly I want. I know Rackspace from a long time and I was happy when I found out that they are providing a new service (mosso.com) especially for web design firms, they provide 80 GB of disk space with their zero-downtime network and other cool features for $100 monthly which I think is very affordable compared with Rackspace's reputation even it's more than what I pay for my current provider but I'm really looking for stability that makes me concentrate on designing and programming. The problem is that they told me that their customers must have a U.S bank account which we don't have.
Can you suggest companies that provide same quality services with affordable prices (reseller or VPS)
I am looking for hostings companies that are comparible to Rackspace or are competitors to Rackspace. I have two of my clients on Rackspace and I love their level of service. Unfortunately, some of my smaller clients are balking at the $400+ monthly cost.
What I really am looking for is a dedicated host that offers a package with good managed support as well as handles technical questions/issues related to system administration such as MySQL troubleshooting, password protecion, or Apache configuration. I have heard that www.servint.net is very good, but their $200 and $300 monthly packages are sold out.
need a couple of exchange accounts 1&1 charges $6.99 per account and rackspace $14.99 per account also with rackspace you have to have atleast 5 accounts
i guess i need a 2nd opinion here which one would you go with and why
also how secure is rackspace's exchange against hackers
and if you have exchange only hosting what happens with the actual site?? like when someone types it in their browser
I run a company in the UK that has about 10 dedicated servers, such as db and web servers.
I also have a SAN device with data of around 1.3tb
Been a customer with rackspace for last 3 years and am now shopping around for better value for money.
With rackspace you pay a premium for support but the charges are becoming astronomical and I also feel that they dont look after you concerning price after becoming a customer.
Is there a rackspace alternative that can cope with 4tb of san data, 100mb unmetered and unlimited bandwidth running on an internal gigabit network?
I am looking at the higher end bracket and dont mind the solution being hosted in the US or UK.
I have been debating over 2 webhosts. I know w3schools.com is hosted by maximumasp and their site loads almost instantly. I also know rackspace is the top dog for web hosting. Which one would you recommend. I am a new web administrator.
I've been with Rackspace for about a year and a half, thought I'd share my experience. It was.... so-so.
Quick summary: They try hard, but their techs don't seem to know what they're doing. I give them an "A" for effort and a "D+" for results.
Sales
The Rackspace sales process is tricky. They will quote a very high price for a very long contract, but it is negotiable. I got quotes from 3 places: Rackspace, InetU, and Datapipe. They were originally all about the same, but Rackspace negotiated down 30+%. I did agree to a 2-year contract, because I had heard lots of good things about Rackspace and didn't anticipate any problems, but in hindsight that was not a good idea. Ask yourself why they need you to sign such a long-term agreement... why are they so worried you'll want to leave, after all? In the future I'll avoid contracts longer than 12 months.
Hardware
Top-notch. I never had a problem. Not much else to say here.
Features / control panel
Rackspace has its own account management portal for things like billing, bandwidth graphs, support tickets, DNS, etc. It is quite good, intuitive and easy to use. One nice feature is the ability to manage multiple users on your account and give them different permissions.
One thing that could use some major improvement is the server monitoring system. "Rackwatch" as it's called is very limited. Most monitoring systems even at discount hosts have more advanced features. Rackwatch did not always catch website outages for us (even extended downtime), so I had to use an outside monitoring service. Also, Rackwatch gets turned off during scheduled and emergency maintenance, so if you want to know your real uptime, eg for SLA credits, you'll need outside monitoring.
Uptime/Network
Decent. The bandwidth is high quality. The only major problem we had with the network was last fall, when their entire datacenter went down several times over a few days due to a car accident outside. I won't rehash the details here since it was all over the Internet at the time. They did issue a credit for a small portion of the monthly fee that month. I think they had another major outage this winter, but it didn't affect our server.
Support
Rackspace has built their reputation on "fanatical support." They do try very hard, much harder than other hosts I have used, but I was not impressed by the level of technical knowledge. I had some problems in the beginning because they told me some wrong things about how their database backup software worked, which caused some crashes. Later, a technician logged into our server to install new managed backup software (without scheduling a maintenance window beforehand or notifying us), and managed to kill the ethernet and bring the whole system down. Rackwatch conveniently "missed" the outage but it showed up on our other monitoring service and we tracked down the cause in the server logs. I brought this up in a support ticket but it was ignored.
The good thing about Rackspace is that you can get them on the phone anytime, and they will respond quickly to support tickets -- Not necessarily with the right answer, but at least they respond quickly. I think that's basically what they mean by "fanatical".
Earlier this year Rackspace started upgrading its managed backup system, and that's when things really went downhill for us. First there was the issue with the Rackspace tech killing our server and then ignoring us. Then, we were having serious load issues for about a month. It caused major problems on our website and we were frantically trying to figure out what was wrong with our application for a couple weeks. Finally it turned out that it was caused by their new backup software hogging all the system resources during evening primetime. If we had a more experienced staff here, we probably could have figured that out relatively easily ourselves, but we don't -- that's what we're paying Rackspace thousands for. If they are going to make changes to the server like installing new backup software, it's up to them to make sure they don't destroy the system. We finally figured out what the problem was and mentioned it in a support ticket, but that ticket got ignored, too, and we gave up. Since Rackwatch couldn't detect the downtime (it just checks whether http is running, not whether it's actually serving up pages), they didn't recognize it as downtime for SLA purposes/credits.
We don't have time/desire to babysit our web host, so we decided in the end to move our server elsewhere. Now we regret the long-term contract, because we'll end up in collections if we don't cough up the several thousand dollars left on our term. If you ever do sign a long-term contract, I strongly recommend that you insist on a clause that lets you out of the contract if service is sub-par. I'm sure the "big guys" do this. We didn't think of it at the time we were negotiating, but wish we had.
Conclusion
Overall rating: 5/10 From what I've heard, this was not a typical experience with Rackspace -- most people seem to be pretty positive about them. We might have been unlucky. But I also think they have a very powerful PR machine, and you can probably find a comparable host for half the price who spends a little more money on techs and a little less money on advertising and polishing its image.
I know that this post will get deleted like the last ones but I'm tired of getting spam from a Rackspace customer. sendemedia.com keeps claiming that I "agreed to receive information from Consumerbase and our partners". Bull. I would never sign up for intentional spam. Additionally, they're using an email address that I haven't used in literally 5 years that only gets spam any more.
But I report them every time to rackspace.com. And, apparently, given that they never do anything about it, rackspace.com is just fine with the spam.
Don't host with them! WHT will likely delete / water down this post but if you read this do not support rackspace!
I heard the other day from a very reliable source that this is a fact and they expect it to happen sooner rather than later. Since they seem to set the bar anyway seems it was only a matter of time. Anyone else aware of this or am I the only one? Searched the forum before I posted and nothing came up. Seems like a significant development to me...
Like a couple of others that have posted here recently, we are looking to switch hosting from Rackspace to someone else. We've been with Rackspace for 3 years, and host 2 dedicated servers with them for our e-commerce business. We were with three other hosting companies the 2 years before that with many headaches, and Rackspace really stabilized the IT part of our business.
But they don't seem to be too competitive on pricing as our business grows. Our servers are over 3 years old now, and we just wanted to upgrade to comparable HW. We have already replaced a couple of hard drives and would prefer to be proactive. But they won't move on their pricing which would be a SIGNIFICANT increase in our budget, and most of our original support team has moved on, and I don't sense the same level of support we once had.
Our system is Windows-based running Cold Fusion. We have a web server and a database server running SQL. I have a full-time Cold Fusion developer on staff, but need Windows managed dedicated servers for our growing e-commerce retail business. We sell products to consumers - we do NOT resell IT services. Our shopping cart and back end system was all developed in house in Cold Fusion.
So these are some of the possibilities we have come up with to replace Rackspace, and I would appreciate any feedback from those that may be utilizing services from any of these companies:
savvis datapipe handynetworks crystaltech att dot com/gen/webhosting?pid=10395 theplanet