We have a dedicated server at pwebtech and it was down a few moments ago. We called twice only to find a full message/voice box that would not allow us to leave messages. We then emailed unixded@pwebtech.com, it has been several hours and no reply. Our dedicated server has been down now for 4 hours and there is no one responding at pwebtech. We tried all phone numbers, email contacts. We have lost about 7 new signups because of this and in additional we will lose about $3,760 this month because we have to credit the 210 users on that box.

Also, a few weeks ago, our box was down, it took them 8 hours to find a tech to work on the problem and then another 4 hours to fix it.. Apparently the techs were still sleeping. Running a serious business, I cannot afford this so I need to find a new provider.. I am in the process of looking for a quality 24/7 support dedicated host..

Any recommendations?

I need 100-200gb bandwidth, TRUE 24/7 support, 20 IPs.

We are growing extremely fast and we will be requiring 1 new server every two months.

I have heard VenturesONline mentioned many times as a great dedicated host.. can anyone vouch this.. Looks like I will be moving there..

Once again, we are 24/7. There is the main business line and the NOC Line. The main business line is from 8am to 10:30pm the NOC line is 24/7. Many customers can attest to the fact that indeed we are 24/7 despite what YOU might think.

I am also a pweb customer and I am a little curious, at any time during your outage did you try reaching Jay or Ed via ICQ? I know I can almost always reach Jay in an emergency situation via ICQ thus why I am a little surprised to hear this. Also what did your problem turn out to be?

Sorry to hear you have had so much trouble, I know there are many others or us who have dedicated servers with pweb and we have experienced nothing but outstanding service. I have been with two other dedicated providers and this has been by far my best experience so be very careful in considering a new home. You will hit bumps in the road just about anywhere you go, so select your bumps carefully :)

Pweb is good...depending on your needs in a server.

If you've really got something that you can lose over 3.5k on by not having great connectivity you should probably be considering something like rackspace or dialtone. Even though they are more expensive, the 3.5k you just lost would cover ya for a few months and prevent you from needing to deal w/ it again!

I believe we can compete on the level of dialtone easily. Just sometimes customers mess up there machines and sometimes they forget the NOC line. Which causes them to get irrate.

jaygale,

The main business line is from 8am to 10:30pm

So after 10:30PM you provide no technical support? Hmmm... doesn't seem like 24/7 to me.

the NOC line is 24/7

That's great, but what if something breaks like BIND, or Apache. Do you honestly think the guy who reboots servers will run to fix the configuration? They don't do that.

some of them do know yes. But they can get hold of a real admin anytime day or night. So that is not an issue.

Emergencies happen any time a day. I still don't see how you're a 24/7 host.

Emergencies happen 24/7. That is true, and the NOC can get a hold of any of a number of our admins within 10 to 15 minutes time, usually faster than that.

I'm not taking any sides here, but I have to agree with Jay.

We have a server at Pegasus. On 31-Jan-2001 late in the afternoon it decided to "go south". I tried to call the 888 number and no one was in the office. I tried to IM Jay and Ed, but no luck. I called the NAC number and they said that they would get the box rebooted.

Shortly after that Jay was IM'im me. It took a bit, but the box came back on-line.


Frank

Once again, we are 24/7. There is the main business line and the NOC Line. The main business line is from 8am to 10:30pm the NOC line is 24/7.

Well if you had included this information in my WELCOME EMAIL or on your website then there would have been no problems. There was no NOC numbers listed on the contact page at pwebtech. If this was included in my welcome letter/account details then none of this would have happened. FYI, I never received that either.

It is not posted to avoid abuse by non-customers. I don't feel there is anything futher to discuss.

Originally posted by jayglate
Emergencies happen 24/7. That is true, and the NOC can get a hold of any of a number of our admins within 10 to 15 minutes time, usually faster than that.

Heh, that not true. If I call NOC at 6AM and tell them to contact you, you (your "admins" won't either) won't pick up your cell. If people keep calling you in the early morning everyday, that won't be a convinience to you.

if it is an emergency. The noc has cell, home and cell email #'s to contact us at. And yes we will respond.

Originally posted by jayglate
It is not posted to avoid abuse by non-customers...

Just curious....
If the number is not posted,, how does a customer contact you, if there is a problem? (Like the problem in this thread)

Do they just start dialing:

200-0001, 200-0002, 200-0003, 200-0004, 200-0005,
200-0006, 200-0007, 200-0008, 200-0009, 200-0010, and etc...

Until they reach you?

If you phone the main nac number you can press the buttons until you get to the 24/7 noc people, but i dont know how your meant to know you can do that.

Humm

Well, you guys are forgetting that most NOC's 24/7 is just Engineers on call and operations people on site, you will find NOC's that do have Engineers on staff 24/7 .. but look at their prices ..

I just don't see hoe can everybody bitches that they want 100 gig's for 50 bucks, but they want million dollar customer treatment.

Just my 0.02

I just don't see hoe can everybody bitches that they want 100 gig's for 50 bucks, but they want million dollar customer treatment.

I don't see a single person bitching about price in this thread. So I don't see how this statement has any relevance. Some customers brought up a valid point about a host advertising 24/7 and finding out how they can reach them during this advertised 24/7 period.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord


I don't see a single person bitching about price in this thread. So I don't see how this statement has any relevance. Some customers brought up a valid point about a host advertising 24/7 and finding out how they can reach them during this advertised 24/7 period.

Whathever

Originally posted by big_smooth


Just curious....
If the number is not posted,, how does a customer contact you, if there is a problem? (Like the problem in this thread)

Do they just start dialing:

200-0001, 200-0002, 200-0003, 200-0004, 200-0005,
200-0006, 200-0007, 200-0008, 200-0009, 200-0010, and etc...

Until they reach you?

They came out with this awesome invention (whatever you want to call it) called a phonebook. Its great, they update it yearly, has just about any number you can think of, they even got this big yellow book they call the yellow pages (not sure why they call it the yellow pages..personally they should have painted it blue and called it the blue pages)

Anyway, hope you have some good luck in finding these phone books because when you can find one, they are pretty useful :)

Besides the phone book, alot of websites have a Contact Us page which you can go to as a first or last resort :)

AlaskanWolf, if the number is not posted, how are people going to find it in the phonebook?

Peter

New Jersey phone books are a little hard to come by outside of New Jersey. Besides, I'd hate to think that a business would tell its customers to "look us up in the phone book" when asked for their number. Kinda tacky, wouldn't ya say?

Call me crazy but,

Before we signed up with Pegasus we asked about the support. I did not actually assume there would be a tech. them 7/24, but that someone would be on-call. I was quite happy that someone is actually at the NOC 7/24 for simple reboots etc.

After we signed up, I simply contacted Pegasus and asked them what the procedures (i.e. e-mail addresses and phone numbers) were for contacting them.

I guess I've worked in IT for too long. I ask everything and don't wait to be told.

Frank

Originally posted by AlaskanWolf


They came out with this awesome invention (whatever you want to call it) called a phonebook. Its great, they update it yearly, has just about any number you can think of, they even got this big yellow book they call the yellow pages (not sure why they call it the yellow pages..personally they should have painted it blue and called it the blue pages)

Anyway, hope you have some good luck in finding these phone books because when you can find one, they are pretty useful :)

Besides the phone book, alot of websites have a Contact Us page which you can go to as a first or last resort :)


So if my server goes down at 4AM, I have to go run some where to get a phone book? Interesting idea.

All this nonesense about phone #s aside, I think pweb offers one of the best values around. Especially in terms of price paid for amount of bandwidth, quality of box, and support.

Pweb is definitely NOT pathetic!

Originally posted by jayglate
if it is an emergency. The noc has cell, home and cell email #'s to contact us at. And yes we will respond.

LOL, that's so not true. Your techs only will get an the situation after they come in the office at 8AM.

I can attest to the fact that Pegasus does respond to things when necessary during the wee hours of the morning. We've had contact with Jay and crew at 3PM and at 3AM, and it's all the same to both them and us: fixing whatever is broken and getting on with business. I have the number for Pegasus; it's on the bottom of every contract we have for a server. Like Frank, we took the time to ask the questions that would ensure that when we needed to make contact other ways, we could. If we call the NOC after normal support hours with an emergency (and we've had a couple), I can ask them to roust one of the Pegasus guys for us and can get a response within 20 minutes (faster if happy guy is on duty up there at NAC on the overnight). Between direct calls, ICQ, and email, we've had outstanding responsiveness. I'm sorry you feel that yours hasn't been so.

Yes apache it is true. If it is an issue from the night before we know we can't fix till the next day, then it is a next day issue. But if it is an urgent issue. i.e i got hacked please help me. Then we can do it at 3am (granted your gonna pay for it) but we can do it.

Well I have been happy with pwebtech overall - in terms of value of service for the money.

I will say that I have not always felt this way over the five or so months I have been with them. But I only have a limited budget, and I reckon pwebtech is probably the best deal I am going to get around the place. For example, I have seen the complete lack of support that others have posted about regarding very cheap servers at other hosts.

My server was down for a while (after I killed it) and the move out of equinix happened around the event too - so it was pretty messy all round. (Plus I explained to pwebtech that there was no point getting someone into equinix out of hours to fix it because I simply could not affort to pay $240 an hour our whatever (I mean - that's about AU$500). But it did get to the point after a week where I wandered if pwebtech were going to bring it back up.

Then pwebtech didn't bill me at all for months. I mean I was actually chasing Ed saying - hey can we work this out. And when we tried to reconsile the account there was a lot of going back and forth over the whole thing just trying to get it sorted straight.

But, tech support is there - if not lightning fast for non-urgent matters. The "budget" network (equinix now dcjn) has been value for money.

Giving me 72 hours to change all my IPs is just not enough time when dealing with slugs like register.com (you can read my thread in the domain names forum about that). I mean *if* everything goes like clockwork, you can get your ips chagned over and your domains and name servers resolving in time. But its been over 72 hours since I requested that register.com change in ip for my primary name server and STILL register.com have not updated it (not since 5am eastern USA time this morning at the last whois update anyway).

I mean there have been these annoyances and delays right from the get-go with getting the server online. And pwebtech might say that equinix did not work out - and the new billing system took a while to get going, etc, etc. I can live with that as long as I know that the server is decent, the network is decent and the support is decent enough given the limited budget I have.

I don't know what I am trying to say. I am satisfied, and am not running off to find a better deal because I won't for my bugdet. However, there have been problems, yes. I'm hoping with all these changes and topsy-turvey that seems to have been going on, that things will settle regarding my server and the dcjn network.

:)

There seems to be a tremendous amount of reaction to one-time or at best short term problems hosts may experience. I guess that's what fills our thoughts because it's now....the present. However, I advise all to not judge your host on that basis but rather what I call "the body of work."-over an extended period how would you rate their service.

For instance, several hosts including Pwebtech have received a lot of comments here recently over the problems they have experienced with their servers at NAC.net. Well, before these incidents, most would have rated NAC to be one of the top NOC's. And, I would expect them to return to that form. But you must give your host a chance. And, I believe either NAC will regain form (highly likely) or the hosts will relocate to provide their clients better service.

At one time or another every NOC, every carrier, every host is going to experience some "out of the norm" problem. If you are going to judge just on that event and change hosts each time it occurs you will be changing hosts more often than makes good business sense.

Originally posted by Apache


LOL, that's so not true. Your techs only will get an the situation after they come in the office at 8AM.

We did have to contact them at 12 AM PST when our client's eth0 died after compiling the kernel.. the NOC operator was able to get ahold of Jay, who was able to get the server back up within a couple of hours. We were given the option of paying $250 for him to go to the NOC and fix the problem right then, or waiting until around noon the next day. Since the client had an important site broadcast the next morning, we opted for the $250. As jay said,
if it is an urgent issue ... we can do it at 3am (granted your gonna pay for it) but we can do it.

The NOC operator ONLY reboot the server and no more other than that you would have to contact jay and the NOC operator does not contact Jay.

burst.net could do a lot better for many reasons. If you need to know wait for it soon

Actually the noc call only calls Jay :)

I remember when I first got my server and it somehow went haywire and I called the noc and the guy put me on hold because he didnt know where my server was and 3 wayed Jay. Now thats what I called customer service.

Originally posted by Synergy
Actually the noc call only calls Jay :)

I remember when I first got my server and it somehow went haywire and I called the noc and the guy put me on hold because he didnt know where my server was and 3 wayed Jay. Now thats what I called customer service.

That is not true in my case. I phoned the NOC about 30 minutes ago and they said we only reboot the server. I told him the server does not need rebooting.

Originally posted by Synergy
..he didnt know where my server was and 3 wayed Jay. Now thats what I called customer service.

URRRRRRRRRM :D

--James