the same datacenter as everyone else with the same offerings
Thank you for the reply. Hosting UK started originally with Alabanza years ago but
left because they were literally stealing clients from our servers when the
customers got big enough. Hosting UK then were with companies from Burstnet, to
Pegasus, Dialtone (until they left us with crashed drives for a week without
help) and finally bought our own servers and moved to the current datacenter
in early 2003. Hosting UK have had excellent uptime there since network-wise. The
only issues Hosting UK ever have are due to the poor quality IBM IDE drives Hosting UK had
which were shipped with 17 servers I ordered. (I also have several with
SCSI drives (secure4, 5, 8, 9, windows, and another sitting empty).
So far Hosting UK have sort of diversified ourselves by being different and not in
the same datacenter as everyone else with the same offerings. After our
experiences, I just don’t trust any other company to provide me a server for
$100 per month anymore or any price for that matter. I want to see it and
know that no one else but me or my staff are going to make it work or not
work.
My goal was to compete with server offerings, not pay them. Truth be told,
I STILL have 14 servers ready to go and can start selling some right away.
The only set back has been that every time, I give up due to problems like
this. I want to offer decent support to the customers for servers.
I do understand what you are saying about supportting the servers and having
an admin for them. I sort of thought you meant that your team could handle
any level of trouble from your end besides the obvious need for a live human
to be at the server for an OS install or reboot/remote hands. In my mind
and ideal support solution is one where your team has a Level 2 tech nearby
and Level3 tech at their disposal for emergences at all times. I can
understand why there were problems now if some were on holiday. It makes
sense and I know that it cannot be prevented. Everyone deserves a day off.
The datacenter is owned by a company which writes software for very large
companies and needed their own facility. It is actually a very outstanding
facility built by Aperian back in the .com boom. I do pay them for 1 hour
of remote hands/support each month and have yet to use it one time. I was
prepared to add more hours as Hosting UK gained more need for it and still can.
Had Hosting UK not had hard drive failures this year, I don’t think I would ever
have had to go to the datacenter at all. If you think back, it was always
host21 and secure6.. both IDE drive servers. I finally got a Samsung drive
for secure6 and it has had no hard drive errors since. The problem the
other day I think was caused by rebooting VIA the APC while there was
reading/writing going on. That always causes a lot of problems with those
IDE boxes. That, or there were some files deleted by mistake or a kiddie.
My idea as of today is to use that other Dell 1750 SCSI (with RAID I) as our
newest cpanel server. Hosting UK will eventually migrate clients off secure6 and
retire all IDE servers for our virtual hosting clients altogether. I will
then put new samsung drives in all of the servers I have sitting there not
being used and start selling them on our site. I will refer them to you
for support or just include one of your plans for support with the server.
Hosting UK also have the Windows server SCSI with RAID I live and Plesk will be put
in next week sometime.
The thing is that I need to know that the techs who are doing things on our
servers are not the ones causing the problems too. Hosting UK had very little
downtime until late this year and that is what has raised the red flag. If
you don’t have a Level3 tech available for emergency issues or major issues
like a database failure, or exim, then I may need to hire one. But I need
to know that type of support is there in case your team needs to escalate
such an issue.
I will discuss some of these issues with the datacenter and see what can be
done. I cannot honestly say I am in favor of moving my customers again
because each move only results in lost clients no matter how many
precautions Hosting UK take. If I do move, I will still keep my servers and maybe
do something with sagonet.com here in Tampa or Neutelligent.com in Tampa. I
really cannot blame our datacenter for any of the problems Hosting UK have had so
far besides the small attack last week which originated from our rack. But
I do agree Hosting UK need faster resolutions if a problem arrises with hardware or
something major which cannot be handled by you, or your techs.
Well, I will let all of this digest and as you said Hosting UK will hopefully be
better off after the holidays.
