Quote:
Originally Posted by techjr
Just hit the report button as the other user stated. I believe you posted a real review but the moderators will require this regardless. They do so on most reviews. It's just to ensure company's aren't posting fake reviews or bashing competitors. It actually happens quite often with various providers.
The OP was verified and this posts shows that
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Ok thanks. I just reported and submitted the IP address of both servint and wiredtree at the Report button.
More details:
We run recursive DNS service and did not plan to cancel our wiretree server before this because it is a major headache to change IP address if you are running a DNS server. Unfortunately, Wiredtree forced this upon us and we have no choice but to switch away from them. Lessoned learned.
Now we have all but one of our DNS servers are based on EC2 which is a lot cheaper at $12/month for reserved and don't make false accusations like Wiredtree. Our web servers and mysql database cluster are hosted at ServInt and Rackspace which have been very stable. We haven't needed to use support yet at Rackspace so we can't comment on their tech support but ServInt has been helpful in everything. Even at certain circumstances where ServInt can't help, they will not take an offensive stance like Wiredtree by falsely claiming we broke A,B,C and violated 1, 2, 3 rules by making their case stronger.
Just one example:
We have two DNS servers, one hosted at ServInt since June 2011 at $49/month, another one $49/month at WiredTree since last June as well. Obviously we didn't need much support help because it is simply BIND.
Recently, we are switching to PowerDNS so we needed to install some extra stuffs and get rid of cpanel because it is not necessary of our application. We made a request at ServInt and asking if they can provision a new server for few days without cpanel and extra bulk so we can begin configuring it. When we are done, they can reroute the IP address to the new server and cancel the old one so we can minimize the downtime. The answer from ServInt, "No problem, here is the new server and you have 7 days to configure it and transfer your data to the new server."
Once we are done with transforming the ServInt DNS server, we began to work on the Wiredtree one. We didn't touch the Wiredtree server because it was having some issue back in Feburary already when we tried to convert to webmin to manage BIND cluster. We couldn't use Yum which said missing python initparse. We gave up on that attempt because we didn't want to mess up the server since it was the Master server. However, since we have to switch to PowerDNS now, we tried again to fix yum but couldn't so we contacted support. The level 1 support guy was helpful but he couldn't fix it. As result, I asked if we can have a new server, give me few days to configure it just like ServInt, and reroute the old IP to the new server. The Level 1 tech guy couldn't help so he got his manager to answer the question. What is the response? Well, I was shocked when the Customer service manager said the following before offering any help options:
1. Instead of finding a solution, he first dug up the history of our SSH and claimed we broke the server by trying to install Python. We tried to install python because the Yum was broken and asking for Python initparse. And we started to get "RPM corrupted" e-mail from Cpanel way before we tried to install any Python.
2. He accused us of breaking their TOS saying we installed Squid. Yes, we did made an installation of Squid on this server but it was to do a test to see if our configuration was working or not since we had some problem at another server. Which webmaster hasn't installed something on another server to test few things? More importantly, at the time of his accusation, we don't even have Squid running NOR installed. The squid was long removed after our test because we won't jeopardize anything else running on our Master DNS server.
3. He accused us of having some other domains record on our DNS server and questioned why we have them. We run a DNS filtering service and our customers decide what domain to allow or deny in their private network. Why is Wiredtree began to question what content we have on our server when they are completely legal? Have they even heard of something called OpenDNS which filters domain and allow DNS based access control? We felt completely violated by this. We never had another host doing this to us and we are spending over $2000 a month on our hosting bill. It is not much compare to large companies but it is not little either.
4. Finally, he offered 3 options to help:
a. Pay $75/h to fix the Python issue since he said we broke it and they can't help if we tried to install any package or RPM on our own. (what is the point of ROOT access if we can't install our own RPM?)
b. Pay FULL for a new server , transfer the data but lose our Old IP. (ServInt gave us few days free to do this and reroute the IP for us and WIredtree not only want to charge a full price but will remove our old IP)
c. Have few hours of downtime to restore the server to blank state. (Not acceptable to have few hours downtime on a recursive DNS server; we will also need to spent hours testing and configuring our PowerDNS, firewall, tuning, and etc. The total downtime will be more than 10 hours for a recursive server).
Obviously cost is not that big of the issue for us but the principle is. We decided to sucked it up last night and contacted 8000 customers by e-mail telling them to update their DNS setting because we will be removing one of the DNS server from our cluster. It is a huge issue for us because DNS filtering is our bread and butter but we have to do it because we don't feel safe any more having WiredTree as our host. We can't have long-term relationship with a host that not only don't offer the basic courtesy to an almost one year customer who needed little support or used up their resources (<20gb/month in transfer, 0.1% cpu use), they also like to make accusations which are untrue.
This experience also made us like and trust ServInt even more because it is a stark contrast in real customer service and caring when they offer the same price and similar hardware.
Lessons we learned:
1. Spread out our servers in multiple host so we won't be held by the neck by anyone.
2. Go with EC2 if you prefer fast turnaround in everything. Server broken? No problem, fire up a new instance, configure it, and just assign the old elastic IP to the new one. Easy as a cake.
3. Reserved small instance only costs $29/month after factoring the 1year advance fee. Good deal for 1.7ghz and 2gb of ram.
4. Reserved micro only $12/month
5. Use ServInt if you want to host stable web servers/database or anything that are mission critical. The tech response time is great and will go beyond to help. We actually planned to move one of our servers away from ServInt before since we don't use that much resource(mostly self-manage) and it was overkill. At the end, we decided against it because we feel loyal to them and they have been very helpful in everything. We are very comfortable to have our webserver , master database, and a DNS server at ServInt.
6. Rackspace is quite nice but we are shocked that you can't choose your own data center. We initially planned to build a NDB mysql cluster based on Rackspace but quickly cancelled the plan. Now we are hosting one mysql slave there and no issue so far. Never contacted the support yet.
7. We also have few non-essential servers at VPS.NET. What I like about them is the freedom they give you like EC2 to fire up a server, close it down, scale up, scale down. The only trouble is the billing confusion and sometimes downtime (had it once). It is very good, after EC2, to quickly fire up a new server to test new concepts and debug application configurations. Overall, it is good value if you can tolerate some downtime or can fix anything yourself.
I truly hope there will be a viable contender of EC2 because no one is close to them in terms of scalability and flexibility.
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