I apologize if I offend anyone here but this has been going on for months now and it is only getting worse despite management giving false hopes that this is "being taken care of"

As the topic states this is in regard to thePlanet/SM and there support or lack there of...
I'm not sure exactly what they mean by "managed" servers because in my several months with them they have gone from a very good company to a very poor company (my opinion of course) When i get an email saying "We are having an emergency maintenence" AFTER they kill 4 of our servers (note the timing) and it takes them 2+ hours to get them back up explaing they HAD to get power restored... But it takes 2+ hours to do this then find the power button on our database server which serves 29 other servers around the country we have a big problem...

I have several unanswered support tickets dating back to Nov.11,2003 which haven't been resolved as of yet.. But the biggest problem we have right now is one of our machines has been comprimised and of course i dutifully submitted a support ticket 6 days ago and not one person has even looked at it.. Now managed or not I would think this would get some sort of priority...

Some of you guys are probably saying "call them!" Yeah i suppose i could call and talk to the tech that "didn't know how to mount a drive" or the guy that "accidently" formatted a full production machine.. or i could call my account rep who is always "away from his desk" and never returns calls...

It's got to the point where I am looking at hiring an admin to "manage" our boxes over there because i cannot trust the techs in the datacenter to properly get anything done the right way which is kind of funny since i went with thePlanet because they offer "managed solutions"

The only thing they "managed" to do is give me a headache..

I would definitely give them a call. Your experience sounds vastly different from what the majority tend to post, so I would call them up and get it sorted out fully one way or another.

Gary

Had similar problems here.

The techs I seem to talk to at TP don't know swat...

Did you pay $59? You get what you pay for...

We pay over $1k per month....

Originally posted by froggerd
Did you pay $59? You get what you pay for...

Although I agree that you get what you pay for especially with the low cost/price disrupter hosts.... you should get what you are promised.

Unfortunately this is (seems to be) a case of not getting what the client was promised.

for how many servers i know at least 4 was stated.

Originally posted by Nessun
for how many servers i know at least 4 was stated.

Does it matter?

I am curious.

Are you referring to ServerMatrix limited managed services, or are you referring to The Planets paid for services?

http://www.theplanet.com/managed/index.php

Server Matrix has different levels of management ranging from 50 up to 200 per month per server.

Which are you referring to?

I am referring to the "silver" management.
But the level of support givin so far falls about inline with an "unmanaged" solution. For instance I had to mount a drive because the tech didn't know how... Does that strike you as anything other then unmanaged?

yes it made a difference it was to answer same question that weberz asked to see if u had actual theplanet management plan or servermatrix free silver management plan theres a huge difference not just in price.

You can read cannot you? I stated "silver management plan"

you said that well after i asked my question I was only stating why my question made a point as you had asked.

no worries then.

You seem to be very unlucky.
Hope things work out (so far I have been doing fine at SM)

Yikes, I've read a lot bad stories here, I've got to say we've been with Datapipe for several years now and have never had a problem, you may want to have a look at their managed or semi-managed services. A little more pricey but I have peace of mind because of it.

Matt

I dunno really...too many people are quick to complain about little things.
X-treme here being an exception (he really does have problems and for some reason they are not being solved)
Mine and plenty of others people experiences have been great so far.

The only problem I ever had was how it took me 3 tickets to get a reverse DNS corrected, but all was solved eventualy.

I don't very often hear of these complaints with SM I've been with SM for a little while now and had no problems what so sever my server was up within 24 hours of ordering (bout 15 hours really)

They called me about 4 times to verify with me what was happening etc.

I am really pleased with my experiances with them and I do hope that they are able to fix your problem.

Originally posted by froggerd
Did you pay $59? You get what you pay for...

Thats statement reflects bad judgement on the part of the company, not bad judgment on the part of customer.

Customers will buy what suits their needs....now if that cheaper product 'must' come with problematic support, then how will the customer know about it in advance........especially when the provider used to be a good one.


Now.....we don't pay $59.....we have this 'SuperResellersz' Dual Xeon and it cost atleast 5 times more per month.

But look at us......had issues almost for the entire month.....way too many issues to mention here such as kernel issues, reboot issues, reboot mistakes, server going down frequently, very slow support response, etc etc..........again way too many to mention.

Our developer could hardly install anything on the server so far in last (now more than one month) because whenever they need it...the server was usually down.

Now don't someone jump here and avise me that I need to buy their gold level server management plan. I have hired a well reputed server management comapny monitoring and correcting issues 24/7 but the Dual Xeon SuperResllerz server has many issues that just don't go away such as :kernel issues combined with other problems, and slow/mistake-prone SM support services. Just the reboot was done to wrong kernel few times even when asked specifically to reboot to latest kernel in tickets and also followed up the same via phone.
My server admin company even tried twice custom kernel recompile but the POS just don't work with any thing.


We even have ticket that is now opne for over 8 days.

Btw, here is one of my post on WHT:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=229306


The server came with 1000GB of bandwidth.....and we have NOT even used 5GB because this server is just a plain pain in the ***. We have just wasted the charges for the whole month for no reason. We did not accomplish much at all.

The server is somehow ok for last one day or so(touch wood).

Thanks.

Rick

Originally posted by X-Gaming
I am referring to the "silver" management.
But the level of support givin so far falls about inline with an "unmanaged" solution. For instance I had to mount a drive because the tech didn't know how... Does that strike you as anything other then unmanaged?

Just to clear some things up.. you DO NOT have Managed Servers.. ServerMatrix offers UNMANAGED servers.. they just go above and beyond some other UNMANGED server providers by offering some services that most would charge extra for.

ServerMatrix definition of MANAGED

Are your servers fully managed?
If you are referring to OS and security updates, the answer is yes. All Server Matrix servers are fully managed. This includes network IDS, OS updates, security updates, monitoring, and more. See the full description here for details.


so, essentially:
Port/Server Monitoring
OS updates and kernel upgrades

When MANAGED is mentioned on this board, rarely is it given a full definition, but most cases it implies they will do whatever you need done, and not charge you extra for it.. which is not ServerMatrix's definition.

just curious, but how long have you been with them now? and you mention having 4 servers, why do you only judge them based on problems with ONE of them?

also, when you say you have a ticket that's 8 days old.. do you mean they haven't replied to it AT ALL? or just that it hasn't yet been resolved to your liking?

We've had a couple of servers with The Planet / SM for over a year, and although we didn't use their managed services, things such as rebooting the wrong server, and a sales person giving me dumb answers (telling me they can't put the backup drive on the 2nd IDE because the onboard CD-ROM is set on that cable :confused: ) just ticked me off.

7-8 months ago The Planet was one of the best choices in the market, today it's just..... not good enough, even with basic support like reboots. That's just my opinion.

This is a classic example (really) of WHY DC management doesn't work. You've got clueless techs who don't know jack about mounting drives (really, how hard is it now???) , debugging anything or anything of the like.

Yet, as far as I know silver management from TP doesn't cover this.

Read the fine print people:

Bronze Level (Free)

* Complimentary Ping Monitoring.
* Complimentary Network Based IDS.
* Complimentary 24/7/365 Onsite Hands and Eyes.
* Orbit™ Online Support Portal.


Silver Level

* Ping Monitoring.
* Network Based IDS.
* 24/7/365 Onsite Hands and Eyes.
* Orbit™ Online Support Portal
* Host Based IDS.
* O/S updates and patches.
* Service Monitoring (FTP, SSH, HTTP, HTTPS, Terminal Services, etc….) - [up to 3 services]
* System Monitoring (Drive Space, Processor usage, Server Load, etc….) - [up to 3 services]
* Process Monitoring (ColdFusion.exe, PGP.exe, ApacheGuard.sh, snort, etc….) - [up to 3 services]
* On-Demand Vulnerability Assessments

NOWHERE in there does it say TP offers server administration or management. They monitor your servers, your processes, update your OS (on request I'm sure), perform (on demand) vulnerability assessments. That's pretty much offfered by any respectable datacenter, they do this to protect THEIR interests, not yours (ie: to ensure that your server isn't hacking others).

Once you get into the gold, etc management plans, then custom server admin work is offered.

This isn't a case of the company not delivering what it promises, it's doing that, and only that.

We actually have 10 servers with this company and DO NOT need them to admin the servers for us. There are certain things we are unable to do from a remote location so we ask them to do it for us such as install an extra HD.. (Which wasn't mounted as i stated before)

It does appear this thread has provoked someone into looking at the tickets we have submitted. They would like to charge us $75 per hour to "assess" any hacking attempts....

Originally posted by IceCell
Just to clear some things up.. you DO NOT have Managed Servers.. ServerMatrix offers UNMANAGED servers.. they just go above and beyond some other UNMANGED server providers by offering some services that most would charge extra for.

ServerMatrix definition of MANAGED


so, essentially:
Port/Server Monitoring
OS updates and kernel upgrades

When MANAGED is mentioned on this board, rarely is it given a full definition, but most cases it implies they will do whatever you need done, and not charge you extra for it.. which is not ServerMatrix's definition.

just curious, but how long have you been with them now? and you mention having 4 servers, why do you only judge them based on problems with ONE of them?

also, when you say you have a ticket that's 8 days old.. do you mean they haven't replied to it AT ALL? or just that it hasn't yet been resolved to your liking?

I do not base this on one machine.. You can take your pick on problems we have went through. How about a tech formatting one of our production servers out of the blue one night? Or the IP's that were givin to us that were blacklisted for spam and took over a month to fix? or my favorite, How about they ship one of our 4U servers to another datacenter in a box made for a 2U and when it gets there the motherboard is hanging on by 2 screws? These are just the highlights i could name a few more for you if you are interested..

Originally posted by X-Gaming
I do not base this on one machine.. You can take your pick on problems we have went through. How about a tech formatting one of our production servers out of the blue one night? Or the IP's that were givin to us that were blacklisted for spam and took over a month to fix? or my favorite, How about they ship one of our 4U servers to another datacenter in a box made for a 2U and when it gets there the motherboard is hanging on by 2 screws? These are just the highlights i could name a few more for you if you are interested.. That's just nasty.

Random reboots, wrong machine reboots, incorrect partition schemes, that's our experience share with them.

However, they do have a good network, no doubt, but basic support is also something we need... like rebooting the correct machine.

Originally posted by Morphix
That's just nasty.

Random reboots, wrong machine reboots, incorrect partition schemes, that's our experience share with them.

However, they do have a good network, no doubt, but basic support is also something we need... like rebooting the correct machine.

Also they just reboot to any kernel they want to:D

In just about last 3 days , I have experienced that when it comes to rebooting to a requested 'kernel', they just don't care.

Frequently they rebooted to wrong kernels even when we mentioned it clearly in the ticket and also emphasized in the ticket follow up call. They say don't worry we will do it.

But boom, you check it and again they have rebooted to what they want to:)

Well, I don't know what else to say:confused:

I am almost at a point that I am going to ask for 'one free month' due to so many issues in last 1 month that we couldn't even use the server trouble free:D

Btw, we just used < 5 GB of bandwidth in one month......whenever my developer needed the server...it was generally having some sort of issues.

Thanks.

I have a ticket that has not been updated by them in over 2 months. The problem is not important but the ticket was started 3 months ago and still has no resolution. I can only imagine what you guys are going through with such severe problems.

They have tons of tickets each day and it may be possible that they may skip a few which has some sort of updates before. You could start a new ticket which points to the old issues with the reference to the old ticket or you could drop an email to sales and have them revert to you on that.

Also ensure that the issue at hand is their responsibility and not yours.

Originally posted by eddy2099
They have tons of tickets each day and it may be possible that they may skip a few which has some sort of updates before. You could start a new ticket which points to the old issues with the reference to the old ticket or you could drop an email to sales and have them revert to you on that.

Also ensure that the issue at hand is their responsibility and not yours.


No problem there eddy but when they pull the plug on a production machine and don't get it up for another 2 hours I would say this should be an escalated ticket..