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  1. #1
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    Planet merger with softlayer horrible mix!

    So I have been a webhost since 2000, rackshack servers was great turned into ev1servers sometime later , not a bad move at all, bigger and better each time! then ev1 merged with theplanet and it was an "OK" move as they offered more services and products although truly only their network is any good, they tended to be pushy on products then when you payed for it and they didnt catch on they just simply "phased out" that product. anyhow recently Softlayer merged with Theplanet and ever since my business has been doomed.

    the first real issue is trouble tickets and support, dont even bother with chat , they have fired all their decent techs and replaced them with robotic script reader..chat is one person spread out over 100 customers so replies in chat literally take over 20 minutes with little to no information. In the event you get a tech who knows something they are usualy so busy chat just locks up.

    tickets have gone from 1 hour turn around on most issues to over a day before its even opened. right now im still waiting over 72 hours as to why my cloud server was down last friday and when/if a new SLA is in place to cover downtime for the entire night. Service and support is failing. I wont bore you with the rest of the details about no explanation for why only my node for my cloud keeps dying every 3 weeks..in short can anyone recommend a datacenter that compares to the costs of a cloud server that I can count on uptime and support in the event i actually need help?

    Also if your shopping for servers at the "new" Softlayer do it now, the cloud servers literally go up every few days. if you add any decent amount of ram or hd to hold more then 5 websites your server will go quickly by about $9 per item every few days is what im seeing added. its gone up for a saved server setting I have 3 times in 10 days. I guess id say either buy now or never buy from SL! im looking to go anywhere else at almost any cost!?

  2. #2
    You were lucky. My ticket open for over 20 days!! and STILL OPEN

    They wanted me to upgrade RAM but it's unusable because I have 32 bit os but they didn't tell me. They just want me $$.

    I ordered a new server and I had to explain myself at least 10 times to 10 different staffs (could be same one) because none can help me. The chat response was terribly slow. That's why I was disconnected 10 times.

  3. #3
    rasram,

    I can only recommend Gigenetcloud & Voxel.

  4. #4
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    thanks for feedback I will look into those other providers. I cant have 200 websites per cloud down everytime SL makes up fake excuses for downtime, im sure in some small way its my fault for not having a load balancer and another cloud in another dc but whatever , it was never an issue until SL joined theplanet! I guess this is what happens when you fire your people and put $6 an hour jockeys in their seat.

    regarding my dead cloud for a friday night last week...one tech told me it was a major issue on all clouds then in chat at the same time a person finally came on and told me it was just my one cloud and to reboot it and that it would be up in a few minutes, 5 hours....6amEST rolled around and guess who let me know their sites were not up, 500+ users... all blowing up my cell at once.

    some people on my same node said they got a notice of other issues like "we are moving your server" or "emergency upgrade on your network" notices.. I received nothing but downtime and lies. No update on SLA...dont try to be a host and use SL you'll be crap out of luck and Im speaking from hosting with companies half their size for over 10 years now. sigh

  5. #5
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    Jun 2005
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    This doesnt sound like Softlayer at all but like The Planet. I remember I could have days with a ticket opened in The Planet but from my experience in 3 years with Softlayer they where always replied in 20 minutes. About chat, Softlayer did not had support chat but you did not needed one because tickets where replied very fast. Im sure its not the same now because of course now that they have so many new clients from The Planet they are probably understaffed, that if they really had cut down on staff.

  6. #6
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    im sure SL is great alone , much like theplanet (was). I knew many of the techs by name, never needed chat much until things were down then I usually got a fast repsonse letting me know something is on fire or down...and often felt reassured when i would get someone with good skills that was fast, most of them were let go recently or are now so slammed with 500 new customers a day with the merger and piles of "what is my new server login username questions", that I rarely get decent help. Im sure the structure will settle in eventually but my users who pay annually and look for 99.9% uptime aren't interested in stories of buyouts from big bank groups who just want to "flip that house" on my DataCenter. truly i feel like support is just ripped away,products are going up in price bi-hourly and services are dying like never before. I put in an update this morning and just a canned reply of "management is working on a new SLA for its users" sounds like I will lose the lotto on downtime refund/recovery and again be found grasping my ankles from the new "great" merger of 2010.

  7. #7
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    Your going to have a slowdown in softlayer support responses i'd assume because of the influx of customers.

    However based on dealing with ThePlanets abuse department vs Softlayers I have to say ThePlanet was always very quick with abuse issues vs Softlayer that usually never seemed to do anything, or in all else wouldn't even acknowledge the reports.

    Abuse desks are usually the slowest departments so if ThePlanets abuse desk was quick im sure tech/sales was as well.

    I don't recall softlayer ever having a support chat when I hosted with them, perhaps they do now? The chat was always sales and if you wanted to 'speak' with someone you had to open a ticket and call with the ticket #.

    I'd give things a few months to see how they settle in before see'ing the ticket times get down.

    It still was a horrible mix, it'll go down as the worst merger probably in the industry.
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  8. #8
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    well at least I know others in drowning in my pool of host hell with me! i thought i was being punked, funny thing is just to see pricing on a new cloud i went in and used their build your own cloud feature, i put everthing in for a mid level cloud server and instead of hitting order i just let it sit and came back later, hit refresh and the price for a hardrive went up $9. They must be using a random php code to determine pricing lol. well anyhow im new here so thanks for the feedback, guess I should have been here 10 years ago.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by woods01 View Post
    I don't recall softlayer ever having a support chat when I hosted with them, perhaps they do now? The chat was always sales and if you wanted to 'speak' with someone you had to open a ticket and call with the ticket #.
    Exactly correct.

    They do not offer live chat support as an official method of support. The same goes for the telephone, technically. You do need an open/active ticket to call in (Except in certain circumstances, such as you can't open a ticket for what ever reason).

    I don't know why so many people have had issues lately -- I've yet to run into a single issue with Softlayer since the merger.

    Well, I've had issues with Orbit and the Softlayer portal now sharing sessions, but that's another story...
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  10. #10
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    well i guess im getting the worst of everything then.

    A merger with a company with no chat versus right now , it's a 6 hour delay chat with a guy named tyrone who thinks apache is an indian.
    Phone support refers you to tickets or you can only speak to level 1 techs which is worse then tyrone.

    You have to mark all tickets as outages to even get a reply in the same day. then request someone older then 17 to actually assist you on any thing technical. LOL. the person im dealing with now in 1 of 3 tickets just told me to do the exact same thing i just told them i did to get forum access on their site.

    I guess if we had options about the merger , mergers wouldnt happen, but i would def. have opted out of this crapperhost.

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by datingsoftwares View Post
    They wanted me to upgrade RAM but it's unusable because I have 32 bit os but they didn't tell me. They just want me $$.
    .
    Do you use Linux? because if you do, you can install the PAE package for your kernel and actually use more then 4GB ram (64GB to be exact).
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  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by rasram View Post
    thanks for feedback I will look into those other providers. I cant have 200 websites per cloud down everytime SL makes up fake excuses for downtime, im sure in some small way its my fault for not having a load balancer and another cloud in another dc but whatever , it was never an issue until SL joined theplanet! I guess this is what happens when you fire your people and put $6 an hour jockeys in their seat.
    I very much doubt this. The platform is still the same and it always has been horrendous. It's one of the "poorer" ones by a long stretch.

    Neither softlayer or theplanet's support was of any real good. Just the other week we had to wait ~24 hours to have a failed hard drive on a very old system replaced because there were only 2 people dealing with ~4000 servers because everyone either called in sick or were out at "training" for the merger. I felt sorry for having to continually harass the supervisor but that's pretty much the indication of what to expect from the new company - people that make idiotic decisions.

    What strikes me more is the nature of the softlayer fanboys they have managed to develop. It's actually very interesting because in reality they actually aren't that good in comparison to others. Pound for pound if you compare them in many areas to similar providers,

    Hardware, Uptime (Network + Power), Support, Price, Needed Features

    They actually lack behind in many of those areas to others yet the nature of their fanboy is to ignore this fact along with accepting their faults.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Scott.Mc View Post
    What strikes me more is the nature of the softlayer fanboys they have managed to develop. It's actually very interesting because in reality they actually aren't that good in comparison to others. Pound for pound if you compare them in many areas to similar providers,

    Hardware, Uptime (Network + Power), Support, Price, Needed Features

    They actually lack behind in many of those areas to others yet the nature of their fanboy is to ignore this fact along with accepting their faults.
    I couldn't disagree more.

    I deal with them on a daily basis, and have for four years. It's been nothing but a pleasure to work with them -- even now.

    Sure, some things are taking longer than usual while The Planet staff are being brought up to speed, but that's to be expected. Especially when two VERY different systems are essentially merged together.

    Yes -- their public pricing can be a bit high, but you can always haggle them down. Their private network and out of band management is a lifesaver in most cases.

    In fact, I rarely contact them for anything since I can managed several hundred servers with nearly unrestricted access over IPMI.

    I just wish the IPMI panel would paste our mile-long passwords into the console...
    Matthew Rosenblatt, and I do lots of things.
    Used to be a full time server administrator, now I help build cruise ships and inspect homes.
    My company, Ferrell Solutions, specializes in home inspections and property management.
    RecallScan is a service for monitoring appliances and vehicles in your home for recalls.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by rasram View Post
    Also if your shopping for servers at the "new" Softlayer do it now, the cloud servers literally go up every few days. if you add any decent amount of ram or hd to hold more then 5 websites your server will go quickly by about $9 per item every few days is what im seeing added. its gone up for a saved server setting I have 3 times in 10 days. I guess id say either buy now or never buy from SL! im looking to go anywhere else at almost any cost!?

    We've been using their cloud servers for about a year now and they've never gone up in price. We use them on a daily basis so I know for a fact that this is incorrect.


    Quote Originally Posted by Scott.Mc View Post
    What strikes me more is the nature of the softlayer fanboys they have managed to develop. It's actually very interesting because in reality they actually aren't that good in comparison to others. Pound for pound if you compare them in many areas to similar providers,

    Hardware, Uptime (Network + Power), Support, Price, Needed Features

    They actually lack behind in many of those areas to others yet the nature of their fanboy is to ignore this fact along with accepting their faults.
    How are we "fanboys" any different than the SoftLayer haters such as yourself? Every post you make on this forum has something to do with how bad they are. Yet you still host with them? Sounds strange to me. Maybe you're secretly a fanboy yourself.

    Quote Originally Posted by Matt R View Post
    I couldn't disagree more.

    I deal with them on a daily basis, and have for four years. It's been nothing but a pleasure to work with them -- even now.

    Same here. We haven't used them quite that long but they've been great. They do have their issues from time to time like any provider, but they've been much better than any of the others by far.


    Quote Originally Posted by woods01 View Post
    It still was a horrible mix, it'll go down as the worst merger probably in the industry.

    LOL. It's hard to tell when you're serious or joking. You seem to trash every provider in the world. Hopefully this was sarcasm.
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  15. #15
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    Hey greg not sure what you meant here :
    We've been using their cloud servers for about a year now and they've never gone up in price. We use them on a daily basis so I know for a fact that this is incorrect.
    im not saying once you order something, i have plenty of servers and am aware they dont change server prices on you randomly, im talking about on their website, before you order, in the cloud design your own area, one day they are one price and a day later they change, im not making it up, trust me after 10 year of this i dont need to. The price of a cloud goes up $9 so far every few days since the merger, if you added 100 san on day of of merger the server was $70 , now its $79 etc.. once you sign up for it im sure its locked in...just saying build wise..didnt know I had to be that verbose.

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