Rackspace Cloud Servers Review
May 3, 2009
I am now with Rackspace's new cloud servers. I understand that they are still under a "beta testing" but I decided to give it a go.
Over all I like it. There are however some annoying parts which I will list first.
1. DNS manager issues... I have many DNS records for my domain and it seems that the DNS manager isn't so forgiving. It gives you the ability (or you think so) to delete an individual record however I have never been able to do that. It would always return with an error which is quite annoying. So I moved my DNS servers to another location and have been happy since.
2. Chat support is too much like dell tech support. The first person you get doesn't really know what he is talking about (I have been talking with them a few times about the above mentioned DNS issues and they confirmed multiple bugs within the system but this was at level 2 support and it was quite annoying having to explain the problem to everyone that I spoke too) What I ended up doing is going with Slicehosts chat room where I always found a very helpful hand (they are the same company so it's not stealing). They helped me with many of my issues.
3. The documents/wiki is very hard to find. If I didn't get a link to it from a tech support guy then I wouldn't of known it was there. All it is, is a wiki formatted silcehosts article repo. But it is quite helpful. My tip is to make it more visible.
Overall I am happy with the speed and stability of the server. So thanks Slicehost/Rackspace for your service.
View 8 Replies
ADVERTISEMENT
Jan 24, 2009
What do you guys think about Cloud Servers by Rackspace?
They said its kind of like a VPS but more powerful.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Oct 13, 2009
I wanted to share my experience with Rackspace Cloud, till now their support and service are a+, the control panel used to be slow but not it's fixed, the only problem i faced till now was with their control panel file managed but it's not that important as you can use ftp instead, i have cloud sites account with them to host my site Rapid Zone and i strongly recommend them.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Sep 11, 2009
I am considering a move from Pair Networks to Rackspace. When I talked to the folks at Rackspace, the guy thought I was a good fit for their Cloud Sites product.
I have several Wordpress blogs, the busiest one doing around 15,000 views daily. I also have 3 vBulletin forums, once which is pretty busy and doing around 400,000 views per month. I also run a few member sites, blog powered and using Amember Pro.
I'm wondering if this is just too much to throw on the Cloud. I've heard that disk I/O is a little slower on the Cloud, and vBulletin is pretty intensive on the database.
Another option I heard is to get a dedicated server with Rackspace, host the databases and anything else I want on that server, but put the code base for the busiest sites into the Cloud in order to take advantage of the load balancing.
Any feedback?
Pair Networks has been great, but I started looking around yesterday because they were having a hard time making one of my servers cope right with the busy blog. Server load through the roof and I was frustrated. I have a feeling I'm overpaying Pair for servers which may be a little dated here. Hence, my lookint into Rackspace.
So, feedback on the Cloud or Cloud w/ Dedicated? Any other pretty busy forums/blogs you know of running in Rackspace Cloud Sites?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Aug 28, 2009
who here has experience? Is it phenomenal or awful?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Oct 2, 2009
I'm currently running two classified ad sites with a php script and a mysql database. Both just launched, but I expect them to have decent traffic within 1 year.
Here are the two options I'm currently considering:
1. a fully managed dedicated server such as Wiredtree provides. This will roughly cost me between $250 and $350/month.
2. go with Rackspace Cloud. Take advantage of their $100/month and then just pay as you go as traffic increases.
It's a hard decision.
View 7 Replies
View Related
Oct 26, 2009
Am trying to choose a shared host. Either RackSpace Cloud Sites ($100 a month) or MediaTemple ($20 a month) or MediaLayer ($19 a month).
I was really inclined to MediaTemple but I read some real bad review about it. Am wondering what has your experience been with any of the above. In Cloud Sites, do the 10000 CPU cycles get over quickly?
View 5 Replies
View Related
Jun 28, 2009
The title basically says/asks it all. I believe Mosso initially had no Rackspace affiliation other than using Rackspace's services, and then subsequently became a subsidiary of Rackspace. Now, over the past few days, Mosso has become The Rackspace Cloud.
Given Rackspace's reputation, I have to believe this is good news, but I figured I'd toss it out there for the pros to discuss.
I've thought about taking the plunge to Mosso/Rackspace Cloud but haven't pulled the trigger yet. I wouldn't use anywhere close to the full $100 package at the start but I'd probably grow into it within 6-12 months, as my sites get back online and grow. Thus, I'm kind of facing the old chicken-and-egg conundrum: I don't want to pay $100 for $10 worth of usage, but at the same time, moving sites -- and especially IMAP email accounts -- is such a pain in the rear end, I don't want to keep moving every time my sites/traffic grows.
I wish these guys had a $25 or $50 starter plan from which users could upgrade. I'd be all over that. (I know about their lower-cost Cloud Server packages (or whatever it's called), but I'm not tech-savvy enough for unsupported hosting.)
View 14 Replies
View Related
Jan 11, 2009
I had seen some advertisement for this cloud computing or cloud based server, is it like dedicated server or something,
Actually i read that advertisement many times but i am really unable to understand what it means, can any one explain what is it really
They charge per RAM hour per GB or something how to compare it with dedi cost?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Sep 21, 2008
I searched for some shared hosting providers which host on RackSpace Servers... i have found MOSSO but i am still looking for others alternatives.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Apr 11, 2009
im looking to add failover protection at my main server, in order that if it goes offline, all the traffic can be in a automatic way redirect to a failover / backup server.
For the failover server i was looking to buy a low-cost dedicated server located in other datacenter and have my dns be run at this failover server, but now i have been looking at Cloud Hosting, like Amazon or Mosso CloudServers and as it seems a very stable network, im thinking if it will be best to have setup/running my DNS at a Cloud Host...
So what do you think it would be best:
Option A:
1 main server
1 failover dedicated server
1 cloud (amazon/mosso) virtual server to run DNS
or
Option B:
1 main server
1 failover dedicated server (running the DNS)
View 4 Replies
View Related
Apr 10, 2008
Our website is based around a customer based chat system. Customers are only on the system during a particular day and time range. So for parts of the week the server gets almost no traffic. When then time for a chat comes up we get hundreds of people on the site all doing page requests every few seconds.
So as you might imagine we are bringing the server to it's knees with heavy CPU and memory loads. Plus bandwidth usage is really high. We are currently on the biggest box that Rackspace has to offer. The site runs ok on it during these times. It's a little slow but not unbearable.
But we have not hit our max customer base. In fact if all goes well we will double our customer base next month. So I know when we do we will bring that box down totally.
I was thinking about possibly trying a cloud/cluster based approach but after some research on this site I have found that is probably not the best option.
So I am looking for advice on what to do? Is there a better host? Different technology?
Servers are not my thing really so I could really use some help.
No we can't change the way customers access the site or when they access. There is nothing that can be done in that regard so don't suggest it.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Apr 30, 2008
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.
View 14 Replies
View Related
May 10, 2009
I have been very interested in Mosso for quite some time, though Cloud Sites didn't seem quite right for what I needed with the compute cycles they had. However, their fairly new Cloud Sites looks very interesting, and their sales people at least will have me believe load balancing with several server instances will be superior to my current dedicated server.
Right now I have a server with Liquid Web that costs me $424/mo and 4x Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz with 4GB of RAM. The average load on the server is anywhere from 30% at low times to 70-80% at peak times and memory usage is usually 20-50%. On average there are about 1000 mysql queries per second as the site is very ajax-intensive (hence Cloud Sites being way too expensive).
I don't really know the difference and technical side of all of this, I just program and do the business side of things, but I really like what Mosso has and am wondering if I would get a performance boost going with their Cloud Servers (Going with something like 8 server instances at 512mb RAM each @ only around $200/mo including bandwidth). Also, would I want to load balance all 8, or do something like 4 running the mysql and the other 4 serving the actual site?
View 14 Replies
View Related
Feb 20, 2008
It was 11 months ago to this day that I first signed up with Rackspace. I can honestly say that while the fee's, some of you may claim to be high (and well, I guess they are more than the average) the service and professionalism provided by Rackspace is unparalleled.
In the 11 months of hosting my server inside Rackspace, I have had my primary hard drive blow out. Now when this happened, the raid configuration switched over to the second / mirror hard drive, meaning absolutely no downtime during this event. It was suggested to me, by Rackspace, to use a raid configuration just in case something like this should occur. Well am I glad I listened! They had the primary raid device (hot swappable, again their suggestion) replaced within an hour – all of this without a second of downtime and without any need (although I did since I am pedantic) to call them – they were on it!
The only other time I experienced any service / availability related problems was when they had some sort of electrical fault and the two backup generators failed to start. This was completely out of the blue and obviously someone messed up big time. The server was down for a good 8 hours or so, and the CEO of Rackspace apologized so many times, I actually felt sorry for him and the entire team... They also credited my account for any downtime, as per the agreement we have together.
Team M8 (the support team assigned to me) and my account manager, Ginger Lee, deserve a big thumbs up! They always make me feel welcome when I call, have always been professional and most importantly, interested to hear what I have to say (and act on it accordingly).
About the only disappointment I have faced with throughout this ordeal, is that I was under the impression that because I have “Platinum” monitoring and support, which as I understand it, unless things have changed, is the best support – that if I needed something installed, that was all a-ok. Initially, it was... and the team always worked with me to install any service a growing business needs.
At some point, not long ago, however, I asked to have a certain PHP module installed to allow compilation / uploading of video files and I was actually charged an hourly fee for this. Normally I would appreciate the time in doing this, and understand a fee... however given they set a precedence and expectation with me from previous encounters and given my understanding there of the “Platinum” support offered, I was somewhat shocked... I did pay the fee for these things to be installed without mentioning this... but am still dumbfounded, I guess, as to why I had to pay (given I pay on an on-going basis for the Platinum support, which ain't exactly cheap).
I have only ever once spoke with someone (a receptionist / level one representative) and received pathetic attitude – this was during the power issues as mentioned above, and as of such have affected the break-down below.
Here is a break-down of the service / support. In fairness to my team, I have graded the teams efforts and Rackspace's as a whole, separately. In my opinion, the team that works with me, including my account manager, deserve recognition. So thank you, guys and girls, for doing a wonderful job.
TEAM:
Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 10/10
Duty of Care: 10/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10
RACKSPACE:
Willingness: 10/10
Professionalism: 9/10
Duty of Care: 9/10
Expertise: 10/10
Reaction Time: 10/10
Uptime: 9/10
View 14 Replies
View Related
Mar 4, 2008
Hi, I know how important is to have a reliable web host, especially when you have customers who are ... let's say hard to be pleased. I run SEO services company based in Eastern Europe and work mostly with customers from Spain and UK. Most of them want me to find a web host, web designer for them and to develop their web sites. Sometime from the scratch line, sometimes to work on site with tens thousands of visitors.
I would like to express my appreciation to my web host - HC Servers. I think this is very professional and competitive managed hosting company. I have 1 Core 2 Duo based machine and 2 Xeon based managed servers with them hosted in Amsterdam, all three used by UK property development companies, clients of mine. My clients are very satisfied of the customer support provided by the web host. Me too.
I don't need very special level of customization, besides CentOS Linux, Mail server, PHP, MySQL and some social software on the servers. Anyway... I received proper server managemenr any time I need it.
There is no perfect hosting company, so I can add one thing that HC Servers need to improve. Some times it takes up to 48 hour to have the server online for some configurations. I presume that they don't have anything in stock and probably need to buy some parts. But this is reasonable for me, ezpecially for the price I pay. I know there are many good hosts here at WHT. Well I'll add next on the line - HC Servers.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Mar 25, 2009
I figured I'd put up a review for a great company I'm dealing with.
I decided to offload some servers to a management team and found WaveWeb.com Their servers pricing are great for the service they provide.
I requested a WHMCS/CPanel setup, which was completed immediately. I have had issues with clients and specific requests which are performed 24/7 around the clock by a crew of technicians.
They also explain the fixes to me, and warn me of specific issues to prevent vulnerabilities etc.
So far I have found them great and are steadily improving.
I definitely look forward to dealing with them in the future.
My server with them is:
64.191.44.213 or pctechcrew.com for a test domain to show the authenticity of my review as is usually requested. I run a webhosting company however, didn't want to disclose the domain and break forum rules.
View 3 Replies
View Related
Jul 11, 2008
This is my first review here on WHT, but this company deserves a review. I started out with TMS (Tailored Servers) sometime in February of 2008. I was testing servers from several different providers looking for just the right one when I spoke to Jose for some pre-sales questions. Jose was very helpful right from the start, answering all my questions via live chat on MSN. After our discussion I decided to give him a shot. The server was set up and ready to go within 2 hours after my payment. Great first impression without a doubt!
Let's talk hardware and support. I have for the most part purchased budget servers from TMS, although his higher end machines are in my future. I had a hard drive that went bad in one box, sent in the support ticket and quickly received a response that they would change the drive out for me immediately.
Not only that, but they upgraded my 80GB hard drive with a 160GB Hard drive.
They had to reinstall my OS as well, all of which was done within an hour after my ticket, and my server was back on line! I had backups of my data and got it all transferred and ready to go shortly after. I think my only other trouble ticket was that I needed a reinstall most likely due to personal error. Again, my server was back on line within just a an hour or so. They have always been quick to respond to tickets and attend to any issues.
I started a Gaming Group on line and used TMS to host my dedicated box for the servers. We never had a single latency issue or any downtime to our servers, well other than when I rebooted I was so happy with TMS that I asked him if we could link our website to him to show him some support. Jose even went so far as to check out our website design and create an image for us that matched our website theme. That's taking the extra step, of course I could have done it myself, but the offer to do so was a bonus.
The network at TMS is also top notch. They have fantastic up link providers and I have yet to have one single network issue. The speeds are always great. They also have MRTG graphs, remote server reboots, and reverse DNS for your IP's in their control panel for easy access.
To sum it up, Tailored Servers is a fantastic dedicated server provider that goes above my standards. With a reliable network, quick support, and good hardware, they are a very capable of handling your server needs. I have had up to 4 servers with them, and just those 2 tickets in almost 6 months is pretty impressive. I'd give TMS two thumbs up and recommend them to anyone needing dedicated hosting in Dallas.
Thanks to Jose and the team at TMS for their great service and support!
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jul 15, 2008
I am going to tell you about my experience with netrack servers
Well about a year ago I had a managed vps from netrack servers. Setup time was about 4 hours which was good. They called me to verify the order first and i said ok and then later it got setup. When i first logged in it it was slow and the download speeds were about 30 kb/sec. it was about 12AM so i was thinking there was some work going on. Later i then submit a ticking asking how to setup dns. They said you need to redirect not point your domain to your ip. Well if i need to do this then why did they say in the welcome email point your domain to these nameservers. The speed did not get better it got worse. So then i asked why it was so slow and they said oh you need more ram. It was a hassle to try to get a refund they they kept saying no. I did end up getting it eventually. so whatever you do do not use them. You get what you pay for. What was interesting is the second i canceled they removed my account in the support place. Hum they running low on diskspace? I did get a refund like i said but don't use them. Are they even listed in the BBB? Use a more reputable host.
View 4 Replies
View Related
Oct 23, 2008
Anyone here had any experience with [url]inthe past.
I have a Game Servers provider company and I was looking at getting a box with them..
View 5 Replies
View Related
Sep 16, 2008
I saw good offers from prolimehost.com in offer section anyone use them or not?
View 7 Replies
View Related
May 24, 2008
I have been with Dimension Servers for I don't even know how long, definitely over a year by now. And why? Because I have never, ever had a single problem with this amazing host. Anything i need help with, the support is almost instantaneous and all problems cease to exist.
This host has pretty much taken me through the best online voyage possible. From a blackmailing incident the host protected me in, to major site transfers, I felt safe, secure, and comfortable at all times.
There was no downtime as far as i could tell, and even if there was it was back up in no time, so fast that it didnt even draw my attention.
The value is great. The guy doesnt oversell, and when I had a recent incident in which i overused bandwidth by quite a bit, he did not shut down my account like most hosts would. He contacted me and we figured something out.
I feel as though the internet is becoming filled more and more rapidly with Walmart type hosts; the companies grow so big that they don't care about a single client. They have thousands more, what will one ignored complaint do? This is not the case with Dimension Servers. It reminds me of a friendly local market in which everything is attainable with superior quality, and at the same time everybody knows each other and is willing to help out.
It is this friendly host environment/attitude coupled with superior service and quality that puts Dimension servers on the top of my list, and that is where the host will remain. I am very happy with my hosting and i strongly recommend this host to anybody from a internet beginner to an experience web enthusiast.
A++
View 7 Replies
View Related
Feb 16, 2008
I've had a Ubiquity dedicated server for 3 months now. I wasn't going to post a review for a couple more months but felt compelled to do so after reading another thread entitled "Ubiquity Servers Stay Away".
I experienced a similar situation to what the member (who posted the Stay Away thread) experienced with my initial server configuration. My server config was supposed to consist of an E6600, 2 GB RAM, and 250 GB HD. The server I was provisioned with had 1 GB RAM and a 160 GB HD. And like the member I had already invested quite a few hours configuring my server before noticing the problem. But this is where our similarities end. Because Ubiquity's support staff did almost everything possible to fix these problems and accommodate me. I was able to contact their support staff immediately via their Live Chat. When I told them that I had already spent valuable time configuring my server, they installed a 250 GB HD in addition to my existing 160 GB drive so that my configurations on the server would be preserved. When I found out that they did not have any compatible RAM in stock to add to my server, I insisted that I needed it within 2 days (I had a deadline to get the server configured for Xen and the RAM was crucial). Not only did they order the RAM with next day shipping, one of their support staff members (who lives 4 hours from Chicago) guaranteed me that if the RAM did not arrive in time, he would purchase it himself, drive to the DC, and install it. Luckily for him, the RAM came in time, because I was ready to hold him to his word. Lastly, they adjusted my billing cycle so that I was not charged for any of the days in which my server specs were incorrect.
I want to add that I actually expect all these things from someone I do business with. If they make a mistake, they should correct it and make it up to their customers. What really stood out about this experience was Ubiquity's honesty, willingness to admit their mistakes, and accommodate my requests.
The other thing I noticed throughout this experience is that Ubiquity's core staff is not located in Chicago (I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure). The only times I experienced support delays was when Ubiquity's support staff had to page/contact their hardware person at the DC and wait for that person to do the work. Yes, I said "person", as in " uno", "one". At one point, there was a 2 hour delay because that person wasn't reachable. To be fair, this was after hours on a weekend, so they may have more people available during business hours. More importantly, to me at least, is that they were again honest about the situation, and they were able to deliver what they promised in the end.
I haven't needed to contact Ubiquity for anything else since that time. My server is running as it should be, and their network has never been down.
View 10 Replies
View Related
Oct 22, 2009
I read a lot of bad reviews about that companys, but all of that reviews are of shared hosting and vps. I want see a review of someone who buy a dedicated server from they.
View 12 Replies
View Related
Jun 20, 2008
Over the last 5ish years we have had servers with ServerBeach, The Planet, Layeredtech, and now VolumeDrive. Over the years each has had its share of ups and downs but now almost all of our servers are with VD. First before I start let me say this, Josh and Jeff are two of the best guys that I have ever had the pleasure of doing business with. Each of them know when they get out here I owe them a beer and steak dinner on the strip.
Ordering. 7/10
This is one area that sometimes is a little out there, there website does not work at all for ordering or at least not when I tried last. However ordering is simple, send an email to info and say order this. Get back an email saying OK. Pretty simple. The only problem is pricing, sometimes it takes Josh a few days to get a price for the server, or a bill just shows up and I am like, ok well cool.
Server Pricing. 10/10
This has to be one area where VolumeDrive shines. The prices they offer are almost unbelievable but hey it is there business model not mine. I can vouch anytime anyplace that these servers are 10Mbit unmetered servers. I have had 5 download servers, currently 3 that almost run 10Mbit 24/7. Each servers avg monthly bandwidth usage is around 2500 GB’s +-300ish GB’s and I have never once gotten a bill or even a letter of “dude your sucking down all the bandwidth” nothing; and even better yet I get these download boxes for all of $50/month. I won’t even hint at the great prices I have for Dual processors Quad Core Xeons with 8GB’s RAID1 10k Drives with cPanel.
Old Network. 8/10
First off we all know about the XO/BurstNet turn on that well didn’t so I am not going to beat that horse anymore. The old network was to me “ok” nothing special, and nothing really bad either. I will say that there is less of a “snappiness” in server responses it always seemed to take an extra second for the pages to load or more so the server to respond to a request. At one time I had all 5 download servers on the old network and they all were pulling the bandwidth like it was water, and are shared servers were humming along. I was always able to pull 10Mbit when needed.
New Network. 8/10
The new network to me I have not seen that much difference in performance. I have 2 download servers on the new network and oddly enough the bandwidth usage has decreased and instead a solid green graph via mrtg, I have spikes and dips all over the place. The shared servers on the new network do see to answer faster, and feel much more zippy or snappy. Still able to get all the bandwidth and speeds they offer so no complaint there.
Support. 9/10
I personally don’t think Josh or Jeff sleep, have wives/girlfriends/kids/lives. J They must live and breathe at their DC’s as no matter when I send an support email in, it gets answered in like 5 – 15 minutes even at 11 my time PST and there in EST. I feel that for an unmanaged server provider these guys are amazing, I have asked them to do things that I even offer to pay them, and they do for free. I have had to have 2 servers reloaded, and both times the servers were offline in 15 minutes, the current hard drives, slaved and a new drive placed in the box. Allowing me to move anything and everything from the old hard drive. Now I have to put out a few negative items as well. Sometimes they just don’t know and we kick ideas back and forth, which is not a problem at all but it does show that they are humans and we can’t expect perfection. J I also have an open support ticket with then about inbound speeds for a week that is unresolved, but continued updates, so can’t yell about it at all. Reboots I almost forgot take anywhere between 2 – 15 minutes and the boxes are back online.
Server Delivery. 4/10
This is the one area of VolumeDrive that really needs worked on, and worked on badly. Of the 13 servers I have had 10 currently; I don’t think any of them have been online in less than 72 hours. My servers have been online from 4 – 14 days. If you need a server now, I am sorry Josh and Jeff, VolumeDrive is not the company you need. However email them first as I do know that they get shipments in all the time. Now another problem that I have had is they don’t always get the servers right. Twice now I have ordered boxes that have been delivered without cPanel installed. Minor oversight that I did not freak out and scream, but annoying nonetheless, my last box was well just off by a lot, enough that I did send a not so polite note demanding it is fixed. To which I will admit Jeff had it corrected/upgrade/formatted in about 20 minutes. Now to their defense I have 2 Dual Processor Quad Core Xeons with 8GB and RAID 1, which were online in about a week and setup perfectly. So my two most complex setups were perfect, but some of my basic boxes borked... Go figure.
Server Upgrades. 7/10
I have had a few servers upgrade with new parts, this process is pretty painless I send off an email saying I need such and such for server so and so, and its ordered no questions. That is where the lack of pain stops; from then on it is for us a bit of pain, as several times now I have had to check after a week of no upgrade if the parts were ordered. Then reschedule upgrade times with our customers, this is to say the least an embarrassment a few times as we are left with cake on our faces. Now a huge plus there upgrades are very inexpensive and I have yet to be charged for the upgrade itself.
Billing. 8/10
This two is an area that I personally think needs worked on as they only except PayPal which is not bad, but most of us have our credit/debt cards for a reason. Now a huge plus for at least us, is that every server that has been order is just that; ordered, setup, and online, then a bill is sent. I have never had to prepay for a server, ever. Same with all the upgrades. Now I know that Josh strives for customer service and support first, but sometimes are bills are behind, at least before the PayPal subscripts get setup. Last week I paid out about $600 in past bills because things were behind. Which is not a problem, but from a books point of view in two weeks the bills are coming out again. Again another point where VolumeDrive shines is during this billing mix up which some of it was our fault I am sure, I asked that someone call me because at $50 for some of these servers $600 is a few odd bills, to discuss this. No less than 3 minutes after that email was sent my phone rang, and it was Josh ready with details to go over everything, and after the phone call I received a detailed email of the conversation.
Overall. 7.6/10
Overall I am very happy with VolumeDrive, yes there has been some extended times on delivery that has made us look stupid but once online the services are strong and they just work. I can and will continue to use VolumeDrive for some time to come, the only reason we have another provider is for our higher bandwidth needs and dedicated 20 – 100 Mbit ports. Their prices are simply amazing, and once everything is online and working their service is awesome. Again I am a very happy customer and will continue to be a happy customer for the foreseeable future.
View 14 Replies
View Related
Dec 6, 2008
[Review] Super Special Servers
Well, this isn't so much of a review as me saying what's happened in the last week since I ordered a server from them.
November 29th- Ordered a server, expected 2-3 days till my server was up. It turned out to be 2-3 business days (M-F). This, I admit is my fault for not reading carefully. A few more days, I did not mind.
I also submitted a ticket requesting more information on delivery dates and they said that my server would be up in 1-2 days.
December 2nd- I submit a ticket (Tuesday) just checking that they still remember by server. It's fine, they give me information on how their process works and why it may take up to three days.
December 3rd- It's now been 3 days, so I submit a ticket. I get a reply saying that it will be up tomorrow.
December 4th- Still no server.
December 5th- Still no server.
So basically, now I'm just hoping that I will get this server within the next little while before all of my players (I'm using this to run a web based game) disappear from the 2 day downtime so far.
View 1 Replies
View Related
Jun 17, 2008
I figured id share in my experiences as a host and a client. For the last several months we have had a dedicated server with apthost as well as a VPS, I must say even as a host myself they are very good on their word and what they say they will do. I am not one to post about any host they are in the top of my list as far as Customer Service, Performance, Price as well..
Now i have heard good an bad about them but you know what only my experience can tell me what is tru and what my experience tells me about them is they got there stuff together.
And just like they said FFmpeg came on the dedicated box all setup with cPanel and ready to go eve Red5 as well.
View 0 Replies
View Related
May 19, 2008
It's a bit early for a meaninful review given I've only been with them just over a month so far, but I'll keep this updated at time goes by.
Network: 10/10 - Still early days obviously but so far zero downtime. All boxes are on a 100Mb port too which is a major plus, other providers tend to charge extra for that.
Support: ??/10 - I can't comment on their support as it's something I never used.
Ultimately though, given they are an unmanaged provider, support really should be limited to tracking down hardware issues etc.
Hardware: 10/10 - Spot on thus far, and very well priced too.
Sales: 10/10 - Ordered Saturday, box online Sunday (with an odd drive combo so some work must have gone into it too).
Other:-
Initially I was going to go with Softlayer, in fact I even filled in the order form a couple of times but got cold feet. Then browsing through WHT's offers section, I came across one of TMS's specials, quite frankly it was too hard to turn down. After a few searchs on WHT to confirm their reputation I ordered straight away. Don't be put off by the frankly awful looking website.
Once you are a customer, their client area has everything you need, including access to rDNS, you do not need to create a ticket & wait for a tech to do it, their system allows you do set it up.
and initially I never thought a 10Mbit port was a bottleneck for me, however I've since seen my peak bandwidth usage at 24Mbit. The free 100Mbit port is deffo a good thing.
View 9 Replies
View Related
Jun 22, 2008
i know i put up a review a few months back about Volumedrive but i thought id put up antoher since ive now been with them longer and got more servers with them.
firstly i have 3 servers with volumedrive at the moment (may be 2 shortly undecided yet if i need the third.)
one is a celeron with 1gb ram and 120gb hd running windows 2003 basicly all its doing is streaming media.
second ones a very special deal i managed to get for a amd athlon x2 4200+ with 120gb disk, 2gb ram and ffew other bits and peices, using that for my main website and couple of vpses
third is a new one ive only had about a month, its a amd athlon 64 3400+ 1gb ram runing plesk using it for hosting some of my clients sites (moved from managemyservices whoes support is totally useless and very very cocky/offensive in my opinion - i highly do not recommend them)
all in all baring a few minor netowrk hiccups (burst provide VDs network loop so their is soem small downtimes) ive had no major isues at all and josh and team have gone above and beyond multiple times to help out - my newest server they managed to get turned around and setup in under 48hours as i needed it urgently.
i highly recommend VD and also feel free to email them as they are always willing to try and cut a deal
View 12 Replies
View Related
Apr 26, 2008
I thought I would write a quick review of Corenetworks.net!
I've had a server at Core networks for about a year now, and have worked with support as well as billing.
Support
Lets start off with the most important thing, support. I am not one to need hand-holding from support, but every once and a while I need things like IP-KVM access, hardware upgrades, hardware replacements, etc. I've put in four requests for IP-KVM access via their ticketing system since I started hosting there, and each request was fulfilled within 30 minutes. I have to admit that 30 minutes is impressive for a dedicated hosting company. It must be remembered that they are unmanaged hosting, and managed hosting services cost extra. I find this scenario fits most technical people well because more resources are put into *real* requests such as hardware, kvm, etc instead of resources being used for hand-holding (i lost my root password, my apache process is not starting, etc)
Hardware
The price compared to the hardware you get is exceptional. A lot of hosting company's out there will push overused hardware on you. (some larger companies reuse hard drives over and over, check the smart drive lifetime with smartctl) The hard drive I was provided had a usage time of 3 months. That is VERY good compared to the average active drive life time at other hosting providers of 2-4 years. The hardware has been reliable and fault free (i have 2 machines now with no problems)
Uptime
This is the greatest part, every other budge dedicated hosting provider i've been with has had horrible power (sometimes reboots every few days, and the occasional downtime of a few hours) I have not had a single power outage or reboot since I first started at core networks! One of my severs has an uptime of 355 Days.
Network
The network is not blazing fast... with the package I got. I decided on the metered 3Mb connection (no extra cost) There is also an unmetered connection with a bandwidth limit, if anyone can chime in on this it would be great . I do know that I have always had a 3Mb full pipe on this plan (up and down) which is more then enough for my hosting purposes.
Features
Core networks has all of the features of the big-boys: Remote power management, bandwidth mrtg graphs, network status page, Free IP-KVM, etc.
Cost
The company does utilize it's cheaper servers as a bargaining tool for sales. It seems they unleash their $24/mo servers for a week or two to drive sales and then mark them as sold out. Currently I have the $49/mo servers (with a bit extra oomph) and I am ecstatic with the price. If you can catch the $24/mo servers, get them when you see'em!
Overall
Overall I would recommend corenetworks.net to anyone who is seeking a quality server for personal use or small business use. I am not sure how the service would meet enterprise level businesses, but they do have more expensive plans and I see no reason those would suck.
"Offical, im a reviewr score": 9 out of 10'
View 2 Replies
View Related
Apr 11, 2009
I posted a review about Tailor Made Servers (TMS) back in December of 2008 however it was wiped out during the infamous "WHT Incident" but I see that it has returned, although in a very incomplete state. Here is a repost of the original review along with a few minor changes to celebrate our 2 year anniversary! (Changes made to original review will have a red font color.)
Technical Support [10/10]:
First things first, TMS are an un-managed provider so don't expect any hand holding if you run into some obscure software or operating system problems. That's not to say TMS wouldn't help you, I'm sure they would to some extent, but it should never be expected from an un-managed provider.
We have a total of 74 tickets recorded with TMS since April of 2007. Twelve of those tickets were high priority requests to either manually reboot a server or check the console. Three of those high priority tickets were false alarms, but the other seven tickets were all answered within a few minutes at the very most.
When I say the tickets were answered, I don't mean a canned reply of "We're looking into it!" then an hour later someone decides to start working on it and then another hour later it's finally resolved. If you submit a high priority ticket, it's given immediate attention and resolved as fast as humanly possible.
Manual reboots take on average 10 minutes, some have been performed in a couple of minutes while the longest we ever had to wait was about 15 minutes which is what they advertise. There have only been a couple of hardware issues, a failing NIC was recently replaced in under 15 minutes, a server died last month and a chassis swap was done in under 3 hours. Hard to find any faults here - the technical support & response times are very reassuring and above average when compared to a lot of other un-managed providers.
Network & Uptime [10/10]:
TMS are located in the prestigious Colo4Dallas facility and using an impressive blend of InterNAP, Level3, Time Warner and XO Communications for bandwidth providers. There are also InterNAP FCP devices in use to attempt to provide the most efficient routing possible and also work around any problems thanks to its intelligent routing capabilities. This differs from BGP in the sense that BGP will always provide the shortest path possible - not necessarily the best path.
The latency and throughput are what you would expect from a reasonably multi-homed provider in Texas. Typical response times to my location in Ontario, Canada are about 60ms while response times to the United Kingdom are around 110ms. Average response times to other parts of the US are nothing short of impressive, 25ms to Chicago, 35ms to Los Angeles, 20ms to Atlanta and 50ms to Seattle.
There was a network blip on March 31, 2009 that caused some instability due to an apparent network upgrade that went wrong. These things do happen, however I feel that communication could have been a bit better in terms of notifying clients in advance. Outside of that one issue the last significant outage was in May of 2007 when a faulty router module had to be replaced and the downtime was a little under 1 hour. TMS clearly has a solid network and should satisfy everyone from web hosting providers looking for maximum uptime to die hard gamers looking for the lowest latency possible.
Hardware Quality & Deployment [10/10]:
All of the newer servers are Dell so you know you're getting quality hardware. The hard drives are a mix of new and old, but they all work perfectly fine with no S.M.A.R.T errors detected using multiple short & long tests. Some people would prefer to always have brand new hard drives, but that's not very economical for a lot of providers and I'm totally OK with that.
Servers are deployed extremely fast during business hours. In most cases if you order a server in the morning, it'll be setup later that afternoon. I've never had to wait more than 6 hours for a server, but I tend to order in the morning so I can't comment on how fast deployments are later in the day or on weekends.
The best deals for TMS are listed under the Dedicated Hosting Offers forum and not on their website, so be sure to check them out. Ordering a server from TMS is completely hassle free and straight forward. You pick the server configuration, pay via PayPal or Credit Card and wait for deployment. There's no faxing or scanning of documents and what not for verification of orders - but I'm sure JoseQ does his own fraud screening.
Overall [9/10]
I can't say enough good things about Tailor Made Servers! The staff is very knowledgeable and genuinely shows that they care, the response times are nothing short of incredible and I can honestly say I sleep better at night knowing our servers are in good hands if something goes wrong.
It truly is a great feeling not always having to worry about network problems, or how long it's going to take to get a manual reboot done, or replace failing hardware if need be. TMS are on top of their game, definitely one of the most underrated and under mentioned providers on WHT!
Why did I rate TMS 9 out of 10 after this glowing review? Well, there's always room for improvement and I don't think it's realistic to rate any provider a 10 out of 10. So what can be improved? When I first posted this review last year, I mentioned that KVM access would be nice and I believe they have since been added - perhaps JoseQ can clarify on that. You know, I honestly can't think of anything major I would like to see improved at this point.
That's pretty much it; if you're looking for an unrivaled dedicated server provider definitely take a look at Tailor Made Servers! Their best deals are always under the Dedicated Hosting Offers forum so be sure to check that out or send TMS - JoseQ a message to see what they can do for you. You have my word, you will not be disappointed and the only regret you'll ever have with TMS is not signing up earlier.
View 14 Replies
View Related
