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    Need help please. I think I am being taken advantage of.

    I apologize in advance if this is really remedial, but I don't host for other people nor claim to be any kind of internet guru.

    I own a business and our website is hosted by a third party host. I have felt for a long time that I have been charged a great deal more than I should be. Since I do not understand enough about the world of coding and hosting, I may be wrong. In fact, I may be the customer from hell. Hopefully some of you can tell me if I am right or wrong. Thank you in advance for your time.

    My dedicated server:

    Processor #1 Vendor: GenuineIntel
    Processor #1 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
    Processor #1 speed: 3192.111 MHz
    Processor #1 cache size: 1024 KB

    Processor #2 Vendor: GenuineIntel
    Processor #2 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
    Processor #2 speed: 3192.111 MHz
    Processor #2 cache size: 1024 KB

    Processor #3 Vendor: GenuineIntel
    Processor #3 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
    Processor #3 speed: 3192.111 MHz
    Processor #3 cache size: 1024 KB

    Processor #4 Vendor: GenuineIntel
    Processor #4 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.20GHz
    Processor #4 speed: 3192.111 MHz
    Processor #4 cache size: 1024 KB


    Memory Information

    Memory: 2050464k/2096896k available (1731k kernel code, 41824k reserved,
    1304k data, 228k init, 1179392k highmem)


    Physical Disks

    hda: LITE-ON CD-ROM LTN-489S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
    hdc: VIRTUALFLOPPY DRIVE Floppy, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
    hdd: VIRTUALCDROM DRIVE, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
    hdc: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x40 { DriveReady }
    hdd: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x40 { DriveReady }
    hdc: attached ide-floppy driver.
    SCSI device sda: 143374650 512-byte hdwr sectors (73408 MB)
    SCSI device sdb: 143374650 512-byte hdwr sectors (73408 MB)
    Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
    /dev/sda3 66G 12G 51G 19% /
    /dev/sda1 99M 26M 69M 28% /boot
    none 1004M 0 1004M 0% /dev/shm
    /usr/tmpDSK 485M 11M 449M 3% /tmp
    /tmp 485M 11M 449M 3% /var/tmp
    /dev/sdb1 68G 45G 20G 71% /backup
    -------------------------------------------

    I have been with the same host for about 4 years and pay $579 per month. I have felt for a while that this might be on the expensive side, but the host built our site and to his credit has kept us up and running without many problems.

    Now, a few days ago, our site crashed out of the blue. Our forum, shopping cart, email...everyhting was down. We contacted the host immediately and he was available to us. The site was down for 12 hours which is very costly for our business as we also run an educational forum. Finally, after some prodding for a time when we would be up, he restored us to the day before's backup. While we did loose a days worth of data, emails, and forum posts...at least we were back online.

    He claims the outage was an attack on a vulnerable PHP script. Says he can't say which one for sure because many of the logs were destroyed or inaccessible. Once we were finally back in business I was presented a bill for the following:

    Subtotal: 1,025.50
    Total: $1,025.50 USD

    6.9 hours at $145 per hour Time billed is after two hours admin. The amount here is at our cost and have paid
    the contractor. The time includes Michaels admin time built in.

    The server from the notes follow as pasted:

    --------

    The server dropped and started to have kernel issues from a exploit style attack
    trying to gain access through a MySQL injection as that would be the only logical
    explanation.


    I started feeling like something was not quite right and started investigating data centers and their charges for backup restoration. While I understand that I am dealing with people trying to sell me hosting, their charges were significantly less than $1000 and time frame was significantly less than 12 hours.

    I pressed my host to get a detailed breakdown of what was done that required 7 hours of work and he won't really specify. He keeps maintaining that:

    "I gave you the breakdown best, I could and did you mention to them that you
    needed a full OS RELOAD, that including Linux, CPanel, Imagemagick, GD LIB,
    Curl, rebuild RPMıs and then need to recompile your PHP and apache and
    modify to your needs (including php.ini files and advanced conf files. Basic
    security to help lock down before full security.

    This was a full restore and all your IPıs restored etc... A restore for
    your account ONLY via tarball is about 1 hour. You had your entire server

    On a side but related note - If you are thinking for any second I am taking
    advantage of you and donıt TRUST me then I invite you to take your business
    elsewhere and with someone one that would not care if your server went down
    even for a week or have the brains to fix it, I take insult."



    I appreciate anyone who has even taken the time to read all of this and would be forever in debt to anyone that can offer some advice. Does this sound reasonable? Should I pay him or contact my attorney? If you say attorney, do I can I go directly to my datacenter (theplanet) and get to the bottom of things?
    Last edited by photo4u2; 01-10-2008 at 12:01 AM.

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