I have been researching reseller for several months. Finding the right host has been a issue.

I had it narrowed down to HostRocket and WizardsHosting.

I was pinging different sites from both companies to see which one had better uptime.

I decided to go with HostRocket, and when I went to sign up, they were no longer accepting sites, which worked out well cause they had a ton of problems where you could not reach support and if you did, no response, downtime and server changes.

So, the focus was on Wizards, but I am confused about something.

Obviously, WHT and Wizard's main site are not on the same server as the sites I am pinging because the ones I was watching were down several hours today, the other day, and another time, not including the VDI issues I read about on these boards. I was pinging a reseller and a couple of personal sites. I will not mention the reseller as they might not want it known that they are, but one of the personal sites was Kunal's, which he states on his signature is hosted by them.

As a reseller is this much downtime acceptable? It is WAY over the 99% uptime guarantee (ironically, if one were technical, it would be March that completely over with more than 8 hours downtime, and April is almost there with 4 hours downtime) that I see hosts offer (and was going to offer), so what happens in this case? If the resellers have to provide refunds to their clients due to the screw up their host, wouldn't Wizards be liable to give them free hosting that month? If I had a dedicated server, and there was extreme downtime like this, who would be responsible for that? The upstream provider would owe the host and the host would refund me? I am not talking about issues I can control, only things I have no control over and I could be in more debt than I could handle.

It concerns me because unless I have my own NOC (yeah right) I am COMPLETELY vunerable to whoever I host with. Everytime I think I have one picked out, something goes wrong. :( I do not understand why a server would be down that long, unless it is unmonitored, or really really broken. If that is the case, and you are a reseller or leasing a server, it is not the responsibility of the reseller or lessee right?

I was going to resell, but now I am thinking it might be better to go dedicated, because in the case of Wizards, it would not have effected me at all, whereas if I were a reseller, I would have a lot of explaining to do to my clients.

Could someone give me some insight on this please?

Thanks,

Alex

If you want to offer quality customer service and to be independent - don't wonder any more - GO DEDICATED !
Beleive me, it will cost you some extra cash, but it will add a lot of years to your (and your customers) earthly life.

Alex, just a few points. First, the uptime guarantees vary in terms from host to host, so when you say, "...wouldn't Wizards be liable to give them free hosting that month?" it depends on the TOS that you agreed to. How you monitor downtime and how your host montiors downtime, could be two different things. Also, sometimes a server only appears to be down, when it fact it is only unreachable from where you are.

If you had a dedicated server, your provider would be responsible for network downtime, but not server downtime usually (don't expect to run server-killing scripts on the server and then ask for money back when the server dies).

Just one last point. You said, "It concerns me because unless I have my own NOC (yeah right) I am COMPLETELY vunerable to whoever I host with...", which is true to an extent, but ask any host here with their own NOC and they will tell you that all that does is shift things to the carrier, and even with your own NOC, you are COMPLETELY vulnerable to whoever your lease line(s) with.

EDIT: Sorry to quote the entire long post, I hate it when people do that! I quote it so I can read it easily and then usually delete it (but forgot to).

[Edited by Chicken on 04-06-2001 at 12:04 AM]

Chicken: You do have an excellent point. At some stage, you are vunerable no matter what you do.

I looked at many TOS and they have 99% (or more) guarantees provided that it is not the upstream provider, as in this case, it is not. So the resellers and customers would be due a refund, correct? Then, the reseller would be due to refund whatever they are charged if they offer a guarantee. Isn't that the way it works?

I really wanted to reseller to gain some experience prior to going dedicated, but seeing what has happened over the pass couple of weeks makes me wonder if that is a good idea.

Thanks for the input.

Hi Alex,
If a webhost offers a uptime guarantee, they should honor that. Reseller or not, you have to honor your TOS. Your upstream may not even give you a credit. One of the many hazards of reselling, I guess... :)

Alex,

Keep in mind that if you don't like the idea of being at the mercy of your reseller... you may find that you like the idea of being responsible for an entire server even less. :)

It's true that you have a bit more control over how things are run on a dedicated system, but you also become responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of a commercial webserver. Sure your host can provide you with assistance where needed, but chances are that they aren't going to monitor it nearly as closely as they do their own shared hosting servers. Before you go dedicated, make sure that's something you're comfortable with.

IMHO, It is unadvisable to jump into a dedicated server solution before you're absolutely ready to manage every aspect of it.

Just my $0.02 (which probably isn't even worth that much. :D)

Best Regards,
Matt Lightner
mlightner@site5.com

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
Just my $0.02 (which probably isn't even worth that much. :D)

haaa, the jokes I could make about that :D

I was looking to go dedicated but the thought of being leashed to a server was a bit much. When I go on vacation I go away. No phones, laptops, nothin'. If I had a dedicated I would be worrying about it all the time.

Sure I end up paying more in the long run but the peace of mind knowing someone else is getting sleepless nights keeping the server running makes it all worth while.

Good luck on your decision.

-Steve

Originally posted by CommonSense
I was looking to go dedicated but the thought of being leashed to a server was a bit much. When I go on vacation I go away. No phones, laptops, nothin'. If I had a dedicated I would be worrying about it all the time.

Sure I end up paying more in the long run but the peace of mind knowing someone else is getting sleepless nights keeping the server running makes it all worth while.

Good luck on your decision.

-Steve





agreed. i cancelled my vacation to florida in june due to the amount of trouble that can arise from my server being down. i cant imagine being away for a week and not being able to fix things.

Boy, there sure are some pessimistic attidues towards running your own dedicated server in this thread, I myself do not yet have my own dedicated server but plan on renting one in the near future, I plan on installing software that will alert me when any services stop running via pager or cell phone, then turn on my laptop w/laplink and see whats up, maybe the more experienced people can enlighten me, is it really all that difficult/stressfull?

Just wait till you get to a decent site and experience your first hacker...its something you will never forget and its pretty much inevitable with a redhat linux server which is so popular...sure you can lock it down pretty tightly, but it requires at least about a year of in depth experience with dedicated servers that someone new won't have. I suggest you make friends with someone you can trust and that knows quite a bit about the OS you will be using.

I plan to for sure, I also plan on backing it up everyday, have you had any problems with hackers? what did they do?