A2b2.com :: Reviews Or Comments?
Jun 8, 2008Any one use a2b2.com, any reviews or comments?
View 8 RepliesAny one use a2b2.com, any reviews or comments?
View 8 RepliesI've been with RockMyWeb.net for exactly one month now, and I want to share my experiences. This is a one-month experience, so it will be mainly about new purchase and initial support. This is a quite long post, I wasn't really considering to write that long.
I'm a shared hosting provider in local language. One of the websites I host has grown too much to be on a shared server. It didn't even fit on a standart VPS with 256 MB guaranteed, 1 GB burst ram. So we decided to go with VirtuallyDedicated,
[url]
with the plan 1.5 GHP, since it was better than a dedicated server with pentium-4 processor and 1 Gb ram, and was cheaper. The website being hosted is www.trforumcu.com, along with a dozen of small websites.
Purchase:
I requested a custom quote, with cPanel and management, less diskspace. They prepared the quote within 3 hours, I paid within 24 hours, they set up the VPS within 12 hours, including initial management. The process was painless.
Initial support:
We had some requests about the VPS within the first 3 days, before moving the websites. The tickets was being responded within 2 minutes, some being even within the same minute. That is the fastest response time I've ever got from a provider (I've been with 6 different VPS providers, as far as I remember.) It looks like someone is always waiting for tickets at any time. My tickets were usually being opened in their nights, due to the time zone difference between us. I'm very satisfied with their knowledgeable support.
One point about their support is that they act as if the customer is their friend. I mean, They don't send this reply:
Quote:
Hello,
The issue is being worked on.
Best Regards,
Blah Blah
Customer Service Represantative
RockMyWeb.net
Instead, they send this within the minute:
Quote:
Hi, I'm having a look at it right away.
I, myself, actually use the former type of reply to my own customers. But the latter was quite nice, considering they are sending it right away, and start working on the actual problem within the minute. And they are solving the problem, too.
Support within the month:
After initial configurations, we had some problems. Our website was using too much resources, and the server needed to be optimized a little bit. I opened a ticket. They replied 4 times, without my reply. They informed me about the process well. After 4 replies, they said the server should be fine now.
After 2 days, they sent me an email, asking if I'm satisfied with the optimization. This is the first time I'm getting an email from a provider after some time, asking about my satisfaction.
We also had a cPanel licence issue (cPanel suddenly forgot about its licence, and started saying "cannot read licence file"). This was solved within 36 hours. They said the problem needs to be fixed by cPanel support staff itself, and their support over weekend is not the best. They kept updating me every 12 hours, saying they are waiting the cPanel staff. After 36 hours, the issue was fixed.
About their system:
Their VPS technology is different from my other VPSs with other providers. They don't use Virtuozzo, they use some kind of custom system (it doesn't seem to be VMware or like). This is the only thing I can complain, I was used to VZ and their custom panel is quite different. They provide VPS restart utility, and this is actually the only thing I need from a VPS remote panel.
They don't provide equal-share CPU, they allocate guaranteed CPU. This was very important for us, because the website we were hosting was being kicked off the VPS providers due to high CPU usage. With rockmyweb's allocated CPU, we are not interfering with other VPSs on the system, and we feel quite more comfortable. Also, we have 1.5 processor cores guaranteed, much higher than any other VPS providers will provide for this cost.
Their backup system is also satisfying. They charge 0.25 per GB backup used, not allocated. So I don't pay for unused backup space.
Overall, I'm satisfied with their service, and very happy with their support over the first month. I'll update this topic with additional information and comments (both positive and negative) over the time.
Netdirekt.de seems to have very nice plans for dedicated servers, especially for hosting binary content.
How would you rate their network and their service? Do they provide support in English?
[url]
has anyone tried to put this board into 1u case? seem like a sweet deal
Does anyone have a review/comments about QuillHost?
Also, does anyone know a good, reputable host with packages similar in price to QuillHost (or better than QuillHost)?
With the dedicatedplace.com ongoing saga, I'm looking for a new dedicated server. I'm considering Sago Networks [url] Anyone have any experience with them?
View 14 Replies View RelatedAnyone using a Watchguard firewall X750e or other in a past or current setup which can provide me with some feedback on their experience?
I am looking at introducing a Firebox running Fireware 10.
I am interested to setup two Ironport appliances in my company network. As the current company is about 120 users, and each user send and receive an average of 100 email per day (including newsletter, signup, etc) it’s about 12000 email a day.
I am interested in :
For the mail side of the company, I am thinking about an Ironport C150 and for web filtering, I am thinking about S350. The current company outgoing banwidth is 60 Mbit/s at peaks, but I want to be able to be able to continue to use it with traffic up to 200 Mbit/s, as we will maybe take some server in the company network in a few months.
Some questions :
- Is it really « setup and forget » appliances (except monitoring them)?
- Are they hard to setup and configure?
- Do they support many email languages?
- What is the price for both appliance, like around 5k each, 10k each?
I would like properly address Matt Ayer's (WiseOne) continual claims that user created swap in xen can lead to disastrous situations. This doesn't make any sense from a Kernel point of view. Linux kernel treats Swap not as a additional memory, but as auxiliary storage, and will use it only sparingly. So a larger than ordinary swap has effectively zero impact on performance.
Quote:
I just don't have the time. Try this quick though. Create as many 64MB RAM Xen VPS's as you can, make a 1GB swap file inside each VPS, run a memory hogger, and then finally watch your system die due to horrific disk I/O. Not fun, I'll tell you that.
Conclusion: User controlled swap in a shared environment is a very, very, very bad thing.
Now let us assume there is a hostile user who is egregiously bent on creating excess disk I/O for the host and has purposefully hired vps to enact his revenge on the provider. Further assume that, for this nefarious purpose he has taken a 64MB xen and is running a full 1GB real memory allocated workload (To get create such a load itself would be difficult unless he writes his own programs to do this). Now note that, for the offending vps, the impact of the disk I/O is at the memory level, while the impact on the host is at the disk level. So very trivially, the vps would be so crippled to make it pretty much useless much before this starts having significant effect on the main server. And if engendering excess disk I/O is the sole purpose of user, then all he need to do is write a program to consecutively load and free all the files in the entire harddisk. This will create worse disk I/O than the convoluted method of using large swap. And the latter can be done on both virtuozzo and Xen--though I think in recent versions both have methods to throttle disk I/O.
The problem that UnixShell ran into with Xen was owing to their use of Snapshot, which is something that's prohibited, unless of course, you are running on a desktop with a single virtual machine. LVM snapshot will exactly double the disk I/O. The real problem that the usage is insidious and will not affect the actual vps that's leading to the excess load, but will affect the entire server as a whole.
Xen does have some drawbacks, but it can have all the important features which most providers here think are unique to virtuozzo.
Is someone using Cloudmark Authority for Spamassassin?
http://www.cloudmark.com/serviceprov.../spamassassin/
If yes, what are your comments and what do you pay for this service?
Considering skipping VPS and going to a colo setup for a handful of sites. Nothing major, so the server will be very entry level, but with redundancy in mind (software RAID1 and 2 nics). But I have a few basic questions:
How good is hot swapping in Linux? This was very hard to me to find out online. I am getting a 1U rack with a hot swap backplane and 2 SATA drives. I won't be using any commercial software with my setup.
How does redundant NIC work? This is new to me and am wondering how this is setup.
I think I can shop around NYC for a 1U slot for around $40 a month. I don't need a lot of transfer, but would like a decent pipe. The thought of 1Mbit sounds unattractive (transfer is around 100KBytes/s, right?). How much would 10Mbit cost? I found some quotes but they seem way too much (I could be wrong).
A short review of a2b2.com [url]after a few days - I will update this review thread, when I have more experience with this host.
The short story
My server broke down wednesday morning. All my websites were down, my e-mail were down and I didn't know what to do. The hosts couldn't find the error on the server and I waited for a long time between each answers from the (US based) support team.
After 2 hours were the server still was down I searched for good offers for a new server. I cam across a2b2.com and found their offer and speed of server pretty fine. I contacted their sales department and go answers quickly. After around 1½ hour they found a server that they were able to finish for me the same day! I confirmed the order an paid with credit card a few minutes past 12. I go the IP of the server an hour later and could start changed DNS for my most important domains.
Around 3pm could see the server was up running - and asked the tech team at a2b2 if I could get access to the server. Few minutes later I got the offer that I could install the basic software (like apache and so on) by myself if I wanted - if confirmed and got the root login immidately.
The period between the payment and the time I got the root login was only 3 hours! I can't be better than that. Totally 5 hours including discussions about what server I wanted and so on.
The server is fast (from Denmark where im located) and the support have been execellent so far. I hope this continues, then I will be a happy customer They made my bad day a lot better.
I will try to write a new review when I been at a2b2.com a bit longer (a month or so). Hopefully as good as this one.
Just thought I'd pass on my experiences with A2B2/VA Serv to avoid anyone having similar experiences.
I've been a customer of theirs for several years now and the past 6 months have been awful. It started with them canceling a DNS hosting service they offered with out notification, leaving all my sites inaccessible for two weeks. Since then I've lost track of the number of times that my DNS records have been inaccessible. There have also been problems with their firewall denying access to my box, causing another day of downtime.
In fixing these issues, the support staff have continually shown lack of knowledge of the tools they're working with (from not knowing how to send out important announcements to people on their mailing list, to pressing the wrong button and overwriting my zone file with the default). Speaking to Rus has usually resulted in the source of the problem being located, but then it can take days for his support team to then understand what needs doing. The worst support was when Rus and team ignored requests for access to my zone files for months and then demanded I paid them an extra month's worth of hosting or they would switch of my site instantly. I have tried to find out if this was an isolated case or if others were having similar problems, but Rus refuses to allow me to discuss this issue on their own forums - presumably he know how many people have been affected and doesn't want that many people complaining publicly.
It's a real shame - it was a great company when I started hosting with them, however I think it's now grown too big for it's boots and can't provide the same level of service and reliability it used to.
I have checked a2b2.com offers I heard that they are awesome UK provider have anyone tried their services before?
View 4 Replies View Relatedboth these providers are good UK and US providers and have spoken to both in the past thats why i cant decide who to go for on a VPS? So what i decided was to ask them both in public and get opinion of others,
My specs are 512mb ram with 1gb bust a nice hd and good ram based in the UK which both of u offer, i would proberley go for semi managed and cpanel.
Now my questions to you both is if i had a DDos (which i have never) what would you do to my vps?
My next question is how do you share the servers cpu? If fairshare how many on a node and how much of the cpu does each node get as a basic, i know they get full bust proberley?
My next question to both is how do you manage support? Rus i know you have taken over many companys so does that not affect the support timings.
What are the catches as in the small print
Fianlly can you both tell me why should i choose you?
i try to access www.a2b2.com but i cant open the page.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI'm considering getting a VPS server to run 2 or 3 small websites and also a SVN and Trac server for a team of at present 2 people. In the future, I can see this team getting no bigger than 5 - 10 people.
At the moment I am considering the Starter Plan from Solidhost (Drat, can't post links)
Or the £22/month plan from a2b2 (Drat, can't post links)
I am based in the UK myself, so really a UK server would be best for me as I understand UK (and to some extent, European) law a lot more than US law (not that I would be hosting anything illegal, it's just having to think "Hmm, can I do that in America" before I do something... bleh)
The Solidhost server seems to be fully managed, that's nice to know because considering I am currently running the SVN and Trac server from my house on an old Laptop, I still have a tenancy to break things
The a2b2 server says it's Semi-Managed, although it doesn't (or at least that I can see) state whether this includes server hardening in the Management scheme, this is something which Solidhost seem to be keen on helping people with.
Anyway, was just wondering what other people though about these plans in general and also hopefully get some opinions of people on these plans.
Purchased a vps from CheapVPS/A2B2 a month ago (There was a special running on WHT..and i wanted the vps urgently so they deployed it within 30 minutes ).Support rocks.My tickets are answered within 10 minutes and they even have msn support!Today, i ordered another vps and they deployed it within 30 minutes again .
I highly recommend Cheapvps/A2b2.
Support 10/10
Setup Time 10/10
Overall Experience: 10/10
I've been with A2B2 for around just over 18 months now and feel that I'm well placed to right an overall review.
I originally signed up with the A2B2 brand after having problems with numerous other VPS hosting providers - I won't name names but I'll say that I went through several different companies before ending up with A2B2. I orginally had a VPS on the East coast with DirectAdmin, but I felt this wasn't to my needs so changed VPS plans.
Like in a previous review I can find all these different brand names confusing. It would be better if there was just one brand name offering the whole bag (shared and VPS hosting).
I later on found out about the CheapVPS brand which suited my needs more in terms of what you get for your money and the fact that I don't need any support for my VPS servers. I still have several CheapVPS VPS servers to this day, and find them totally reliable.
Support overall is okayish, could be better in some area but I'm not complaining since I receive a good level of service for what I pay. I have to say its been better with the new support staff, but can find things a little difficult with them sometimes which can result with the intervention of Rus (who is a great guy).
Setup times were always fast, never had any problems in that area either. In terms of server reliability, I've never had any noticable downtime apart from entire DC outages at BS.
So in summary, out of 10:
Support: 8.5
Reliability: 9
I have been with A2B2/CheapVPS for well over 6 months now. I have multiple VPS with them, both US and UK based, and a mixture of Windows and Linux. I have no complaints about the networks or servers, having only experienced a couple of down times because of chassis swaps and network problems. Support has been okay, but not the best; my suggestion would be that other staff apart from Rus (the owner) have access to facilities so that they are able to set rDNS, reload Windows VPS and other things like that, as far as I'm aware and from what I've seen, these kind of things can only be done by Rus. As those kind of things can only be done by Rus, the support ticket can easily drag on for a bit, and Rus being a new father means that he doesn't always have the time to reply to the tickets.
Although I have my few opinions of the support situation, I will not be moving to another host anytime soon as I'm happy with the state of my servers with A2B2, and as long as the servers are up I'm happy.
I'm coming upto a months service with a2b2 and have to say it's been a pleasure using the services. It might not all be fully automated with a nice gui but the service provides everything I need including stable servers for developing
Support = 5/5
The times i've been required to contact them they have replied fast and dealt with the issues i've had and have been polite and easy to communicate with during pre-sales also.
Network = 5/5
I cannot say i've noticed any downtime with them, I will admit i've not monitored the VS too closely but everytime i've tried and SSH session it's been there ready for use.
Server Speed = 5/5
After being with VPSlink for a few months and getting extremly tired of the slow diskspeeds it's been a dream using my VPS with a2b2. no lagging when typing commands.
I've got one of there £12.50 packages but minus CPanel as I wanted to build my own mailserver.
Service, Reliabilty and Support knock the socks off what VPSlink provide I can't speak highly enough of Rus and his team
I will be moving out of VPSLink this month since i've just finished configuring my development server with a2b2, I'm not going to post the url hosted with a2b2 but will provide it in a pm to a moderator if they require it as it's a dev platform I don't really want the world knowing the url
Ive been with a2b2 for exactly 9 months today, so I guess that now is a good time to post a review.
I better quickly state my package that I had. It was a custom special double ram package that I found over here at WHT:
512mb RAM Guaranteed
1024MB RAM Burst
600GB Bandwidth
15GB Web space
2ip's
Unmanaged
London Bluesquare datacenter
All for ~£14.50 a month
I liked this package and service so much that I decided to pay for an entire year a few months ago. Rus gave me 3 specials options: double RAM, Double Bandwidth or 12 months for the price of 10. I decided to go for the double RAM option so now I have 1024mb RAM Guaranteed and 2048MB RAM Burst.
The main site that im hosting is www.spudmud.com (300,000 + page views in September with around 45,000 Uniques a month) as well as a few very small sites.
Now I better get to the reviews:
1. Speed
The server was extremely fast in all respects. It almost seems like im the only one on my node. The specs as I can see them are 8 x 2.7GHz Xeons so its really is quite a tank with the best hardware.
Once when my site was on the front page of HeavyGames.com I was getting ~1 visitor every few seconds (the game file was ~2MB big) and I did notice that the site was starting to feel the strain (probably because of my bad programming ) and I submitted a ticket to support and Rus upgraded a few of my limits and the server was running super fast again. Since that every new game on heavy games doesn't even seem to effect my server with the new limits (not sure what Rus upgraded but it did the trick).
2. Uptime
Since I got my server I would guess that I have had around 99.99% network uptime and around 99.8% server uptime. There have been one or two network problems but they were fixed fast.
My VPS had one day where it was down for 17 hours because it "Hung" and I was on holiday so didn't know until I checked at an Internet cafe and I issued an reboot request and it was back up within a few minutes. I have never has any problems with my node, just with my own VPS, probably because im not the best server manager.
3. Support
Well all tickets are answered within a few minutes or up to 1 hour max but I would say around a 5 minute average response time.
4. Cost
Im very happy with the price of ~£14.50 for what I am actually getting. Even now when I look in the VPS offers section I don't see many providers offering anything even close to what a2b2 offers hardware and support wise.
5. Features
a2b2 offers HyperVM which is great for rebooting you own server or monitoring your memory usage and traffic usage.
They also offer a DNS cluster for those who want it but I havent set mine up yet.
The only problem with a2b2 is that it has no RAID so I need to backup everything myself but a2b2 offers very cheap backup space so its not too bad.
6. Conclusion
To summarize I would call my 9 month time so far a very pleasant experience and I highly recommend a2b2 to anyone that wants a reliable and fast vps with very good support and a very nice price.
I try calling they never answer the phone, I try them on AIM they never answer. I haven't been with them long, so far I needed 2 reboots the first one took 2 hours and the second one is going on 5 hours and still hasn't been done.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have been hosting my vps with a2b2.com since May/2007 till Oct/2007 .
This hosting company owned by Rus Foster offers great hosting packages with suitable prices. I purchased vps from them and they helped me transferring my website to my new vps , also they have a very nice support team ! Whenever i submit a ticket (via email) they respond asap (usually within minutes.. )
They have been always helpful .. specially when i face a problem with my vps as iam a newbie in vps issues .
My vps was in uk and it was always fast and even faster than usa hosts .. (maybe coz UK is nearer to Jordan than USA )
Not forget to mention that they offer live chat on their website and also on msn .. and also, whenever my vps goes down while iam away from internet .. i just send sms to them in order to get it rebooted!
Now i have upgraded to a dedi server with them and i hope this review will be useful to anybody looking for a good hosting company with great support team and excellent service .
Product: 2x VPS
Service: Fully managed
=== Setup and Support ===
I was a little disappointed with the speed of setup. I paid for the hosting, but it took them 5 days to get the VPS online and accessible for me. I was told this was because they were "waiting for the DirectAdmin license to be provided by the provider". Not sure what that means, but I paid for 5 days of nothing.
Once the VPS was up, I received very fast responses to my tickets as I got the server ready for my sites migration from another host. They upgraded Apache/PHP for me, plus installed a PHP module I needed. Later they installed an SSL certificate for me, which helped me out a lot (DA's interface kept failing).
Most ticket responses were within a few minutes, but on numerous occasions the responses weren't great (as you'd expect with such quick replies). Several times I had to retype details I had already provided in my initial ticket -- which made me wonder how carefully they read and understood my support requests.
Overall I was impressed enough after a couple months hosting my own sites, that I suggested that my company moved its customer sites to A2B2.
The setup for this second VPS again took 5 days, which just seems a bit too long to me. Luckily, we had no time pressure on us, but, if your project does, I would certainly seek some kind guarantee from A2B2 before you place your order.
=== Reliability ===
A2B2 have been less good here. Some of the problems I have experienced over the last 8 months include: backups failing (error message "system load higher than acceptable limits"); the VPS being non-responsive (tickets yield the same "the load on the node seems fine" response and there is never a satisfactory investigation); DirectAdmin license expiring and locking us out; Apache randomly going down and not restarting (I'm still waiting on an explanation); and running out of hard drive space.
The last one is the most worrying since it caused numerous failures on customer sites and locked us out of DirectAdmin. On the VPS in question we had used 211MB of 10GB, which raises the question of whether A2B2 are overselling.
The problem was solved by them "deleting some files", which didn't fill me with confidence for the future.
=== Value for money ===
I think the price point for the two managed VPS I have is good, in particular given the amount of work the support team are prepared to do. The margins on selling web hosting to our customers are tiny, so we can accept some of the issues we've experienced. Also, when there has been a problem it has always been fixed. This has sometimes involved Rus stepping in to take over from the off-shore support.
=== Conclusion ===
The good outweighs the bad and A2B2 still probably represents the best bet for UK-based companies wanting a managed VPS service. However, compared to some of the US companies I think they fall (a little) short on the quality of the service and technical competence of the front line support.
I'd rate them thus:
Support: 6 out of 10 (but 8 out of 10 for effort)
Reliability: 6 out of 10
Value: 7 out of 10
Overall: a solid 6.5 out of 10
So... let's start my review, shall we?
I came into VPS business with EpicVPS, both Amaresh and Raghev (if im right), are excellent persons. Always helped me a lot and their service was overall great.
After some disasters xD, EpicVPS was sold to VAServ. I thought: Okay... maybe it's time to move BUT I should definitely wait a few months and watch how this is going to be.
So, stayed as a client.
I dont know how much months have passed, maybe 6? Dunno, but I do have to say a few things about Russell's company, VAserv.com:
I had some billing problems, specially when they changed to the other software, but all this was solved with screenshots (not that they doubt, just wanted to keep it clear), and in no time, I had it fixed. (Also had one billing issue, for some other reasons, which was solved and today Vladimir just made my day.. heh, not that he offered anything, but telling me kind words... made me feel good. )
Loads... Everyone knows that when you're using a VPS, sometimes you have some stupid users abusing the server , this way you'll get affected as well.
Happened a few times, and I was telling them it wasn't my VPS, etc etc (I've a pretty big vps, and always monitored so I can be sure that everything is running smoothly, this is also pretty secured). I didn't like when they once restarted my vps without asking, and load issue was still there. Again a few days later, they restarted again, like it was my problem. (And figured later that wasn't, but it happens!).
Anyway, this was solved, and their staff was really helpful on this, being really decent with me, just like it SHOULD BE in EVERY company.
Uptime... What can I say, it's true the VPS was rebooted a few times, but, besides that, it's great.
Staff... Always helpful, an extremelly fast support and lovely staff! Just like... hum, Kody, Vladimir... both awesome. (I consider them like business-friends. Honestly, they have helped me A LOT).
It's true that there are a few of them that still need some work heh, but overall, it's really really good.
Support... Extremelly fast and efficient! Top notch. Never saw a company like this.
Hardware... Top notch, NEVER had a disk issue, or something like that. Just like a dream!
Network... PERFECT. But really, just PERFECT. I'm living in Portugal, and I've about 40/50 ms to UK (I choosed UK, but they have other locations), the network is really fast (downloading at 1.7 mb/s from my home, no download accellerators). Also, never had a single downtime.
Billing... Good billing software now. Pretty organised, and simple. I like to keep it simple, easy to use. (And yes, I know that ubbersmith is a COMPLETE software xD)
Price... Excellent. I don't find any place with better prices. Even if I someday find one, I still WON'T move.
Other Issues... Had 2 IP's listed on SBL, reported it, and they already knew, then 2 weeks after the issue was solved. (Yeah yeah 2 weeks, but I emailed SBL and they didn't even answered me , so, vaserv did a great job.)
They just got me as a loyal client, and won't leave them for sure! Rus, great job!
I guarantee you that if you join them, you'll have an excellent service.
Overall:
Uptime: 10/10
Staff: 10/10
Support: 10/10
Price: 10/10
Total: 10/10
What do I want them to get better? Please... just keep providing this quality service.
Join them.
(Domain will be verified as I will submit through the Report button.)
I was looking at ovh.co.uk and there prices seem to good to be true and searching webhosting talk it says no results found. so does anyone have good or bad reviews about them?
View 14 Replies View RelatedIs anyone in NYI.NET.
How is their facility, etc.
i found a nice ovh server which is a quad core with 8 gb of ram on a 1 GBps port. I saw a few reviews and i heard people say that they will lower your speed or something. What i need to host is a game server which uses a lot of upload. At least 10 mbps at MOST excluding users that have to download a 5 mb file. Perhaps if i tested my upload on speedtest.net if i had a ovh server that is on a 1 gbps port. What would the upload be?
View 10 Replies View Relatedsome PLESK VPS solutions for my business and ran across 1 & 1. Does anyone here have any past/current knowledge of their service and support?
View 0 Replies View Relatedi have registered on Mochahost.com to Get a VPS, the prices are very good and the Datacenter is " Theplanet.com ". i need your reviews about Mochahost.com if any body is or was a customer on it.
note : they told me that i'll get the VPS after 24 hours is it normal or what?