Hello,

Lately The Planet just seems to have been terrible. Although their network is doing ok, their prices are higher than the industry standard and their service is extremely lacking. Lately we've had 2 issues one on a the planet box and another on a servermatrix box. The one on the servermatrix was fixed by us, the planet didn't know what the heck they were doing and it frustrated us so badly that we ended up having it fixed ourselves. The other issue has been going on for several days now. Although we are not having downtime, it is effecting one client. It takes the planet 4+ hours to put a response. And so far we've got 6 or so responses and the issue is not fixed. We followed their instruction to fix the issue (very simple, basically a one click type thing). I believe by doing so it completely ruined a resolvable issue. A client will probably lose data because of it, all because of not only the planet helping, but rather giving us incorrect instructions, further putting us into trouble. Managed.com is not only cheaper but their network is not that bad, and their support team is quite similar. Although the panet has 100+ employees and managed.com has maybe 5, managed.com certainly does a better job than the planet. These whole fiasco's with servermatrix has already caused us to buy all new equipment from ServInt, but also perhaps persuade us into moving those servers currently with them as well!

Note: We would still never put clients on managed.com servers.

Well the dedicated market has that downside. They only make a min. margin per box versus colocation. Also with the resellers of the planet as well that adds more levels to the support chain. I have had these problems with dedicated servers as well which has caused me to stop selling them until we can come up with a better solution then be at the whim of someone else for support which can be at times very backloged/

Note: I do have a SM box but I don't plan on getting any more due to their costs hicks.

Now what exactly is the industry standard pricing?

Originally posted by GideonX
Now what exactly is the industry standard pricing?

Generally you can get a lower end P4, similar bandwidth and much better support with the current cost of their celeron.

Originally posted by RaineTech
Generally you can get a lower end P4, similar bandwidth and much better support with the current cost of their celeron.

That's WITH the $199 setup fee..

Originally posted by RaineTech
Generally you can get a lower end P4, similar bandwidth and much better support with the current cost of their celeron.

Who would provide these lower end P4 boxes?

Lots of companies offer this. An example is www.ev1servers.net ($129/mo. + $1 setup fee and cPanel for only $10/mo. more). Look around and you will see plenty, from large or small companies.

Originally posted by RaineTech
Lots of companies offer this. An example is www.ev1servers.net ($129/mo. + $1 setup fee and cPanel for only $10/mo. more). Look around and you will see plenty, from large or small companies.

It's not the same product though. EV1's machines are unmanaged, and they offer neither the VLANs or uptime SLA that servermatrix/TP does.

-B

The Planet does not have above industry standard prices. They are still WELL BELOW industry standard prices. Despite their attempts to market The Planet as a higher end, big brother to ServerMatrix, they're not high end at all.

Originally posted by RaineTech
Lots of companies offer this. An example is www.ev1servers.net ($129/mo. + $1 setup fee and cPanel for only $10/mo. more). Look around and you will see plenty, from large or small companies.

Apparently Im missing something, I look over @ EV1 and their P4 machines (P4 2.4ghz series (dont see any other lower p4 machines listed) start @ $149 a month with $1 setup.

Oh nm, I found those $129 servers, they are P4 2ghz boxes (ie bargin basement)

And is it just me, or does it seem they only offer FreeBSD on their servers with 2 or more hard drives? :confused:

SM's datacenter is almost full. If they were to continue selling at the old prices, they probably would run out of space before the next DC was ready. By raising prices they reduce sales and don't run out of space (not to mention they make more money).

If this is correct then we will probably see significantly better prices after 1st December when their new DC opens.

I notice TP support is lackluster. Entering 3rd day now without any reply to an accounting ticket.

I have to say, ThePlanet (not ServerMatrix) has had HORRIBLE support lately. All our SM boxes have no issues, the one and only Planet box we have they can't seem to get right with anything they do. Almost EVERY ticket we submit for the server they do not read properly, causing us over 10 hours of unecessary downtime due to them ignoring tickets and screwing up.

Just yesterday the server had an issue due to an iowait problem, so we had to reboot the server, they took forever to bring the server up and when they did the /tmp directory had been removed, and its permissions changed. We quickly fixed everything up and got everything running, but then they restarted the server again, without even notifying us. We inquired about it later and said they didn't know what happened with this and they gave excuses like the server wasn't coming up properly (when at the time of reboot everything was up and running fine), they also said the /tmp directory had been removed by the OS and it wasn't their fault.

When they caused us hours of downtime last month they gave a us a measly $30 SLA credit. The only thing that is stopping us from moving all our servers from the planet is the time and cost for the actual move. In the 8 months we have been with them we have seen their server degrade dramatically, and there are many more providers out here providing much better prices. Hopefully TP/SM will get their act together and start sorting out their issues.

Originally posted by RaineTech
[B]Hello,

Lately The Planet just seems to have been terrible. Although their network is doing ok, their prices are higher than the industry standard and their service is extremely lacking. Lately we've had 2 issues one on a the planet box and another on a servermatrix box.
You can't have it both ways. The Planet's prices are much lower now for what you get than they were a year ago. If anything, the lower prices and specials are what have taxed their support system. Their prices are less expensive than even EV1Servers, so I have a hard time understanding what you mean by saying that they're "higher than the industry standard". In my view, they are an excellent value and only upstaged by providers with less connectivity and a far shorter track record of stability. This is normal as new providers typically offer extraordinary prices to attract customers until their service record is proven.

We followed their instruction to fix the issue (very simple, basically a one click type thing). I believe by doing so it completely ruined a resolvable issue. A client will probably lose data because of it, all because of not only the planet helping, but rather giving us incorrect instructions, further putting us into trouble.
It sounds like you really need to hire a server admin. I think one problem with the planet/servermatrix is that they advertise their servers as including 1 hr or x hrs of management time, and this can sometimes be helpful, but it is no substitute for a server admin who is available to troubleshoot problems quickly and have a real-time dialogue with you. Or was the problem hardware related?

significantly better prices after 1st December when their new DC opens.interesting... thanks for the info.

The way to go with TP is to call them - phone calls they never ignore(d so far)

Originally posted by dotSecurity

Just yesterday the server had an issue due to an iowait problem, so we had to reboot the server, they took forever to bring the server up and when they did the /tmp directory had been removed, and its permissions changed. We quickly fixed everything up and got everything running, but then they restarted the server again, without even notifying us. We inquired about it later and said they didn't know what happened with this and they gave excuses like the server wasn't coming up properly (when at the time of reboot everything was up and running fine), they also said the /tmp directory had been removed by the OS and it wasn't their fault.


I'm not sure, but if you are referring to a The Planet Dedicated Server, your server IS equipped with a Dell DRAC III Interface, which has its own seperate power supply. This will allow you to restart/power on/off, and cycle your servers power with the click of a button an almost instant results, without the need to open a ticket. If you are referring to ServerMatrix, then you have to wait to have the ticket answered, but *I* personally never had The Planet restart any of my servers with them, the DRAC interface does it all very nicely for me.

As for The Planet. I have recieved great tech support at times, and terrible tech support at times. Luckily, the great tech support times currently outweight the bad times. If I have a serious issue to talk to them about, I pick-up the phone and call, their tech support is quite nice, and **IF** your lucky, a Level 2 tech guy will be around to talk to you (They know what they're doing, regular tech (Level 1) just puts you on hold).

I have had a few servers with The Planet/Server Matrix over the past 14 months and I am generally satisfied with the service. The uplinks are very nice though, I get awesome connectivity.

As for their reseller program... It's non-existant. Well, let me put it this way. It exists, but the reseller rates are very sad and it's not worth getting into. I keep my shared web hosting servers at The Planet, but I offer all my dedicated servers out of a different data center with a much more flexable and well laid out reseller system.

I can't really complain about The Planet. They are a gem in a world filled with bloated, low-quality data centers. The Planet runs some serious bad-*** fiber to a lot of providers and because of that their prices are going to be a bit higher than the norm for us general customers. Added features such as VLAN, and managed services (not the best managed service, but its there) make this service well priced.

I can't complain, out of all the data center's out there, I still think The Planet and its not-so-little brother Server Matrix are a great thing.

Originally posted by TMX
It's not the same product though. EV1's machines are unmanaged, and they offer neither the VLANs or uptime SLA that servermatrix/TP does.

-B

Equipment, and setup are very nice, but sooner or later you come across a comparison like this, and you have to ask yourself: Which do you trust more, an absolute monkey with all of the latest and greatest toys and features, or a vetran who has substantially less, but a proven track record.

Don't get me wrong (not taking sides, frankly I dislike both providers, [naturally? heh]), but it's something you have to consider eventually. I'd trust my routing admin running our entire network off a few Zebra boxes more then I'd trust myself running off a few Cisco GSR's anyday.

Originally posted by porcupine
I'd trust my routing admin running our entire network off a few Zebra boxes more then I'd trust myself running off a few Cisco GSR's anyday.
Not that Cisco GSR's are late or great ...

i too wonder where you can find prices better than TP.

remmber TP provides 2TB of bandwith as well as 40G of NAS storage. the NAS storage is great for backing up data.

Originally posted by jsw6
Not that Cisco GSR's are late or great ...

I was going to say 6509's, but I didn't want to confuse anyone :). Needless to say, the difference between GSR's and Zebra boxes is immense.

Well this is a bit of a double edged sword for me. One one hand I
would like to believe that The Planet/SM can handle this and work
through it. On the other hand I have clients on boxes there and I hope
they smarten up.

I have experienced many of the same problems that Frank is talking
about. While Frank has a questionable background on WHTIRC from numerous
things this seems to be so far true.

Ok so, issue one.
About 3 weeks ago I said that in my upcp emails I saw connection
timeout errors to the proxy that they run. Ok so what am I to do? So I
call in. I am told to submit a ticket (ohh gee' that's a new one) so I
go ahead and do that.

I think about 1 hour later someone says "I'm on it" and then another
30 hours go by, another guy says he changed the update times so it
should take effect at a new time since he believed the issue was
because their server updated at the same time which caused it to be
offline. So he told me to wait a few days and see if that issue got
fixed. I do as told... issue not fixed. I open the ticket again and we
go through a few useless replies.... so now about a week in they say
they fixed the issue... I still get these emails. So I tell them, and
they are quick to tell me they will get on it on the phone but, it
seems that never happened... the main error I had back then about
their proxy server went away but now I have a new one about a timeout.

At this point I am not going to open a ticket... that is useless now,
it takes far too long to get anything fixed in my mind. About the only
thing I get told is "that will be $79/hour administrative charge". I
figured they were going for the "Pay a bit more get a lot more"
approach - maybe I am wrong?

Ok so its been 3 weeks safely I would say since this issue and nobody
has fixed it... the ticket closed itself. This doesn't seem to be
causing any major server harm so I figure I will just let it go.

Now, I have another beef with them.... and if anyone here is reading
it from the tech department I am sure they all know who I am.

So this issue was because .htaccess files & CGI files were not
working after a cpanel update. So.. I give them a call, and the one of
a kind answer I got was "open a support ticket". I am told that it may
be taken care of within a few minutes... this meaning under 4 hours.

So ok? What option do I have.. I open the ticket, wait... wait....
wait... it's like 6 hours after I opened it so I call someone up and I
get another answer I have never heard before "That will be $79/hour
administrative time I would think". So I politely let the guy go...
call back later once 12 hours has passed and at this point I believe I
got Karen (If not for her I would be far away from them right now) and
she is very nice with me, she is down to earth and tells me how it
is... she tells me she can't do much about this error but she will
send it up to level 2 for further analysis. So I let her do this and I
wait some more for replies on my ticket... another 12 hours go by and
no replies... I call back in asking to speak to Karen and of course
she is there happy to help. She seemed quite shocked that nobody from
level 2 had gotten to the issue yet so she called the guy she thought
would be best for the job. He gets on there about 3 hours after I
called her last (issue time: 30 hours~) and pokes around... I believe
he recompiled apache using easyapache to try to fix this issue...
nothing got fixed, he was in there for I think the best part of 2
hours... most of which he was reading an error log which had no errors
in it. Or doing something else that ps aux couldn't show. So at this
point I have come to my conclusion: The Planet is not going to be able
to fix this issue.

So I give Steve at rack911 a call... he is very down to earth with me
and tells me what can be done, so after a little bit of talking I let
his access the server in question to fix this issue. I think it took
him in total about 45, maybe 50 seconds (yes, I said seconds) to fix
this issue. He added a few things to some config file and it's worked
perfectly since then.

Now I don't know how advanced or not advanced this issue was but going
on 33 hours at the planet I really think they could have done a better
job.

I am just being honest here but when I pay so much extra for something
I can get for so much less... I kind of expect a bit better service.
Now don't get me wrong I love the 1-800 support when ever I need it
but all they seem to tell me is to submit a support ticket (so what's
the 1-800 for?).

I am not sure if they are overloaded or what... the fact of how slow
orbit (the planets little user center) loads leads me to think they
are overloaded with support requests.

I really hope things look up... I am trying to have some faith in
them, I really am. My issues above may look like I think they are
total goons but if they could just get a few more techs like Karen in
there it would be awesome. I am really not satisfied with the level of
support they offer anymore... maybe this will just be something they
overcome? I can understand they are a growing company and it will take
awhile for things to work themselves out (which is why I stay) I just
hope this happens a little faster :)

Just my 2 megs on this issue...

I'm not sure, but if you are referring to a The Planet Dedicated Server, your server IS equipped with a Dell DRAC III Interface, which has its own seperate power supply. This will allow you to restart/power on/off, and cycle your servers power with the click of a button an almost instant results, without the need to open a ticket. If you are referring to ServerMatrix, then you have to wait to have the ticket answered, but *I* personally never had The Planet restart any of my servers with them, the DRAC interface does it all very nicely for me.

Wish it was so easy. This is one of the main things that we had problems with, after about 6 months, they finally got this feature working TODAY! I submited multple tickets on several ocasions asking them to get this working. And finally after updating the ticket twice daily for the past week they have fnally got it working. :eek:

Most of the time their support it good, but for some reason with this server they NEVER get anything right. They always rush and screw something up.