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  1. #1

    Thumbs down Horrible Experience with Layered Tech

    I got a new server from them last October, and less than a month after all the problems started to pop out. I don't even remember how many times the server went down from Nov till today but I'll let you judge with these pics. It all started with hard drive failure warning that I got from cPanel and it took them weeks to get things working.
    The problem with them is when you do a ticket, they just reboot the server and tell it's all fine, but after a day or so it goes down again. I had to explicitly I don't know how many times to FIND what's wrong the server and not just reboot and close the ticket.

    Here's a lil summary of all the pain I had to go through:

    - Got server on Oct 17, 2005
    - Took me few weeks to get it running with serverwizards
    - Fri Nov 25 2005 11:14PM Created new Ticket with this email from cpanel:
    Excessive ATA Errors on disk /dev/hda. Please consider replacing this
    drive. Some Errors may be normal due to not 100% compatible IDE controllers
    and may be ignored.
    - Sat Nov 26 2005 07:22AM by support@layeredtech.com
    Please take backups of your data and provide us with two maintanance windows of at least an hour each during which we can replace the failing drive.
    Sat Dec 3 2005 09:41PM by support@layeredtech.com
    After going back and up many times.
    I will take your server offline and begin a comprehensive hard drive scan. This could take up to 4 hours.
    Let us know when would be a good time to do this.
    Sat Dec 3 2005 09:43PM by me
    you guys can do that NOW because the sites are down anyway...
    Sun Dec 4 2005 03:18AM by support@layeredtech.com
    They did basic and advanced scans.
    The has finished and did not report any errors, your server is now back online if you have further problems please let us know.
    From Thu Dec 8 2005 06:12AM to Sat Dec 10 2005 12:28PM by support@layeredtech.com server went up and down. They only did reboots and told me it was workin before I aked why it keeps going down.

    Sun Dec 11 2005 01:02PM by me
    My server went down once again.
    Sun Dec 11 2005 01:20PM by support@layeredtech.com
    Your server has been rebooted and is now online responding to ping and ssh
    Mon Dec 12 2005 04:58PM by support@layeredtech.com
    It appears we missed our window to perform the chassis swap. Would you like to set up another time that we can perform this hardware maintenance? I await your response.
    Tue Dec 13 2005 01:06AM by support@layeredtech.com
    This will be done at 6am. CST.
    Tue Dec 13 2005 07:13AM by support@layeredtech.com
    Sorry for the delay. This chassis swap has been completed. Please let us know if this has corrected the issue. Thank you.
    Thu Dec 15 2005 10:14PM by Me
    It went down again...
    Fri Dec 16 2005 12:54AM by theplanet-support@support.layeredtech.com
    I apologize for the delayed update. Your server's RAM was defective, causing a page fault and subsequent kernel panic. I have confirmed this using memtest86, which reported numerous errors with the second 512MB RAM module. I replaced the RAM completely and the server is back online.
    Thu Jan 12 2006 03:54PM by Me
    Down again
    Thu Feb 2 2006 08:51AM by Me
    The server is dead right now.
    So since then they did the reboot story all over again till:
    Mon Feb 6 2006 11:11AM by support@layeredtech.com
    [quote]Your server has been pulled down for os reload per your request.[/qupte]

    Mon Feb 6 2006 06:58PM by reload@support.layeredtech.com
    Your server was reloaded due to a physically failing hard drive as a preventative measure, to guard against permanent data loss on the old drive. Our techs were supposed to have installed the old drive alongside the new one so that you could copy your data over; that is indeed a mistake on our part and I will have your old drive installed for you ASAP.
    After all this I got a new installed OS with nothing than a broken hard, and need to pay $99 again for a setup, so I just decided to move to ev1.

    They setup the server themselves for free, and helped me to do all the DNS stuff.
    I know this might be a bit long, but I'm sure it'll interest some of you guys.

    Screen shot: http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/485/down6ho.gif

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Jersey
    Posts
    2,971
    Wow, amazing...

    I bought a CELERON server from EV1 and it had a broken HD to begin with. My server was down for 4 days and at the end, they ended up giving me a Xeon, for the price of celeron .
    Email: info ///at/// honelive.com

  3. #3
    I had: AMD 64 3800/1024MB/80GB/8IPs/100Mbps

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    9,072
    That's quite a trail of trouble... I've heard nothing but good things about LT. Hopefully someone who represents them can come along and try and make sense of all of this...

    Have they even apologized to you for all of this?
    RACK911 Labs | Penetration Testing | https://www.RACK911Labs.ca

    www.HostingSecList.com - Security Notices for the Hosting Community.

  5. #5
    Nope nothing, that's why I just moved.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    UK, England
    Posts
    136
    I think I'll take Layered Tech of my "future provider" list.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Location
    New York, NY
    Posts
    706
    I use LayeredTech and am happy with them, my main server is not hosted with them but their services have been remarkable for me, sorry you had to go through all of that.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2005
    Posts
    232
    Quote Originally Posted by ex0de
    I had: AMD 64 3800/1024MB/80GB/8IPs/100Mbps
    I have been with LT for 2 months, no problems at all. I don't even need their support.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Albany, NY
    Posts
    3,956
    Sounds like you just got unlucky. It happens. Doesn't mean that you shouldn't be pissed, but for every one like you, there are 20 that are like 'skyaus' for example.

    Good luck with EV1
    AYKsolutions.com - High Bandwidth Specialists - 10Gbps/20Gbps+ Unmetered & DDOS Protected
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  10. #10
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    Flint, Michigan
    Posts
    5,766
    I have been with LT for quite a few months now with 0 problems at all. A++ in my book. Sorry for your bad luck.
    Mike from Zoodia.com
    Professional web design and development services.
    In need of a fresh hosting design? See what premade designs we have in stock!
    Web design tips, tricks, and more at MichaelPruitt.com

  11. #11
    Join Date
    May 2005
    Posts
    33
    Well, sorry to hear your problems. I have only ever expereinced one problem with LT and that was when Plesk hadn't been installed successfully but it wasn't rocket science I just ran the DB install script from SSH

    Had around 10 servers from them. Mainly because I bought my first one and due to customers I was able to upgrade and migrate to another one, and again with growth we bought more. But i decided that Shared/Reseller hosting wasn't for me and am now successfully selling dedicated servers out of LT. No clients have any complaints they are quite happy. One ordered a XP2800+ off me at christmas and LT were runinng low on them so they put a 64bit 3200+ in it instead.

    Once I found out they were using 64 3200+ chips instead I bougth one for my own personal use lol

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Your Screen
    Posts
    3,999
    Quote Originally Posted by ex0de
    - Fri Nov 25 2005 11:14PM Created new Ticket with this email from cpanel:
    Quote:
    Excessive ATA Errors on disk /dev/hda. Please consider replacing this
    drive. Some Errors may be normal due to not 100% compatible IDE controllers
    and may be ignored.
    - Sat Nov 26 2005 07:22AM by support@layeredtech.com
    Quote:
    Please take backups of your data and provide us with two maintanance windows of at least an hour each during which we can replace the failing drive.
    Did you ever confirm that the drive was failing? The e-mail from cPanel means nothing -- cPanel sends up false alarms all the time.

    I put up notes about this for running the necessary tests, as I just went through this @ LT and did not get the necessary guidance from LT for sorting it out. Please bookmark or feel free to copy/paste/print it, whatever, it's good stuff to keep on hand.


    Quote Originally Posted by ex0de
    Sat Dec 3 2005 09:41PM by support@layeredtech.com
    After going back and up many times.
    Quote:
    I will take your server offline and begin a comprehensive hard drive scan. This could take up to 4 hours.
    Let us know when would be a good time to do this.
    Sun Dec 4 2005 03:18AM by support@layeredtech.com
    They did basic and advanced scans.
    Quote:
    The has finished and did not report any errors, your server is now back online if you have further problems please let us know.
    This is bad, bad, bad. I do not recommend having LT do this work. In fact I recommend against it.

    Before I knew about running my own smartctl reports I consented to a scan as prescribed above, and was assured it would take no longer than 2 hours. Six hours later the server was still down!!! And, nobody was answering my support tickets pleading for them to just please abort the test and put the drive back in the server. I opened duplicate tickets, thinking maybe that would get someone's attention.... you know, walk over to the workroom and say "dude, can you answer this chick's ticket?" or "hey man, what's going on with drive XYZ?" It takes 30 seconds to do this. (Been there/done that) Nope -- didn't happen.

    9 hours later my server finally reappeared. This was at the beginning of a business day. At 2 AM I was assured it would take no more than 2 hours at the most... 10:30 AM and I had people crying for their business sites and e-mail. I take this very personally, take tremendous pride in the service provided, needless to say I was very upset to have been duped by LT on this.

    Never did find out what the report said.

    I've discussed this with a few others and all said the scan should not have taken more than 45 minutes, especially considering the size of the drive (80 GB) and the amount of utilization (under 30%). So what the hell took 9 hours? God knows.

    Instead of allowing LT to further screw things up, we simply migrated all the accounts off the server w/ the bad drive and onto a new box. We then decommissioned the old server. Took the matter into our own hands and resolved it ourselves, at least we knew what we were doing and if it got screwed up we could blame ourselves. Case closed.


    I don't know what they do when they take a drive out of the server and test it for 2 or 4 hours... 2 or 4 hours is way too long as it is, beware it may well take much longer. Mine is not the first case of this -- search here @ the WHT forums and at the LT forums and you will find other instances of it.



    Now that said... I've had servers with RAM issues... both times the RAM swap was fast and it went fine. I think the first time one chip was simply not seated properly. The 2nd time there was a mobo issue where the server could not take mis-matched chips. They didn't realize this and neither did I. I had no problem upgrading to the next step up (2 GB instead of 1.5 GB) so that was no biggie.

    Bailey
    Let's Connect on Twitter! @thatsmsgeek2u || Fighting mediocrity one thread at a time.

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