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[Encryption]

Hi

I am currently working for a company that's 99.9999% dependant on their emails for business. We are hosting with a company thats charging us about $400 for a managed dedicated solution with a 1.800. number to call for live tech support too. But the problem is that its a hit or miss situation because they say "we're opening a ticket for the problem" and then staff in our company are just waiting around for someone to fix the problem for xyz period of time.

My question is, are there any Managed Dedicated Hosting companies out there that offer 24 x 7 x 365 phone support and are prepared to resolve your problem with you on the phone instead of telling you on the phone to tat they will open a ticket and try and resolve the problem an indeterminable amount of time later ?

[adam]

Not all thing's can be resolved in a few minutes over the phone, it takes time to resolve some problems.

[johncesta]

I encounter the same problem at Affinity where I co-locate. They will talk to me on the phone but if it's more than a reboot they need a ticket.

The idea of a ticket however is really to gather information and in being able to send it to a tech that may be in a different location rather than trying to locate the technician and then relaying the informtion to him/her.

The information would most likely get lost if they tried to pass it along. I use a help desk ini my company and require the clients to send in a ticket. This way if there are URLs, pop accounts FTP login credentials etc involved, as there always is, I won't have to write everything down and possibly write it incorrectly.

Support tickets really do save time.

[empoweri]

Originally Posted by Encryption

Hi

I am currently working for a company that's 99.9999% dependant on their emails for business. We are hosting with a company thats charging us about $400 for a managed dedicated solution with a 1.800. number to call for live tech support too. But the problem is that its a hit or miss situation because they say "we're opening a ticket for the problem" and then staff in our company are just waiting around for someone to fix the problem for xyz period of time.

If the customer is 100% (based upon your # you might was well be 100%) dependent upon Email then what steps and $$$ are they willing pay to get that type of uptime? For example, Do they at least have backup MX records for their Email pointing to another server should the server fail? Based upon the pricing I'm assuming it's not MS Exchange, so if't it's an open sourced email solution your options to get 100% uptime is kinda limited.

There are some solutions where you could do load balancing and keep another server as a hot standby should the one server fail. Did the provider promise 99.9999% uptime? what's in the contract? Uptime and response time is two different issues. As a managed provider I would never promise 100% uptime unless there was hardware and software to backup that claim.

Also what types of problems is your customer having with the server??? Is it hardware, software, network, end user or is the managed provider breaking the machine? If you have a hardware failure you are looking at more than a few min. on the phone waiting to resolve the issue.

[Apolo]

Originally Posted by Encryption

I am currently working for a company that's 99.9999% dependant on their emails for business. We are hosting with a company thats charging us about $400 for a managed dedicated solution

My advise: don't rely on a single server setup then. You should be using a load balancing solution, even a global load balancing solution, where you have at least two servers located at two different data centers. This way you'll be near to 99.9999% uptime you're trying to achieve.

Regards,

[empoweri]

Originally Posted by Apolo

My advise: don't rely on a single server setup then. You should be using a load balancing solution, even a global load balancing solution, where you have at least two servers located at two different data centers. This way you'll be near to 99.9999% uptime you're trying to achieve.

Regards,

But he's not going to get that for the $400.00/mo price. At least double that number.

[Apolo]

Originally Posted by empoweri

But he's not going to get that for the $400.00/mo price. At least double that number.

But that's the point!

When a customer requests us *high availability* services for a *mission critical* operation, I always tell them: "sure, it's possible, do you have the budget for that setup? No? Perhaps your operation is not so *mission critical* after all".

Some customers end up saying either:

"well, if I lose a single email, I could be losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I better invest a couple of thousands in a proper setup"

or

"you know what? I suddenly realized I can afford losing a couple of emails or having 10 - 15 minutes of downtime from time to time".

Regards,

[empoweri]

Originally Posted by Apolo

But that's the point!
When a customer requests us *high availability* services for a *mission critical* operation, I always tell them: "sure, it's possible, do you have the budget for that setup? No? Perhaps your operation is not so *mission critical* after all".

Yes it sounds like either the hosting provider either wasn't specific in what they will support/uptime or the client has unrealistic expectations. At the moment I'm not sure which is the case. :-)

[Apolo]

Originally Posted by empoweri

Yes it sounds like either the hosting provider either wasn't specific in what they will support/uptime or the client has unrealistic expectations. At the moment I'm not sure which is the case. :-)

Hopefully Encryption will come back and let us know.

Regards,

Jaime

[Encryption]

Sorry guys, had a mad day at work this morning because of this issue with a powerloss. Anyways thanks to all those who posted.

@ adam - I never said resolve "everything" on the phone in 5 minutes, I'm saying at least try ? All I've been getting off late is "starting a ticket, will get back to you". For instance today, we were using some sort of webmail program to access emails over http (from our residences) since our network at work was down due to a power outage. The webmail was spitting out some strange php errors and it took them 5 hours to get back to us stating the issue was resolved. I'm sort of familiar with php and unless you're bug fixing, nearly nothing (especially on a finished product) should taken so long to fix.

@ johncesta - Please dont get me wrong, I'm OK with trouble tickets for documentation etc. but dont make that only way to resolve problems especially since the one reason we signed up with the company IS because of their phone support. I never said dont start a ticket, but whats the point of phone support if they're gonna do the job of a typist. I might as well type and email them the problem.

@ empowri - we told them exactly what they were looking for, our "mission critical needs" about uptime, availability and phone support. They gave us a rate, we negotiated and concluded at $400. Bottom line, if you cant deliver, then dont promise the sky. Moreover, they have implemented an MX host and RAID (iirc) for hardware dependability.

@ apolo - it wasn't their hardware that failed, it was their software implementation. And while I recognize software can and does fail, thats not the point I'm trying to make. To have $400 for phone support and eventually start tickets when I could easily pay $250 and have the same turnaround is simple.

In any event, my point to start this thread was not to sound like I'm bashing my host - they are and have been helpful - just last few times have been slow in responses. Moreover, intention of starting this thread was to see if anyone had experience with any webhosting company who will start troubleshooting with you over the phone as opposed to "we'll start a ticket and get back to you".

[empoweri]

Originally Posted by Encryption

@ empowri - we told them exactly what they were looking for, our "mission critical needs" about uptime, availability and phone support. They gave us a rate, we negotiated and concluded at $400. Bottom line, if you cant deliver, then dont promise the sky. Moreover, they have implemented an MX host and RAID (iirc) for hardware dependability.

If the hosting provider did promise 99.9999% uptime based upon the hosting, what type of recourse do you have if they don't meet that SLA? For my company I would never offer that uptime at that rate. Too little $$$ for expected uptime. On the flip side a consumer should be aware of what's possible and what is not for the price you are paying.

IIRC. You mean software RAID??? Are the drives even hot swappable?? If not then you will NEVER get 99.999% uptime

Moreover, intention of starting this thread was to see if anyone had experience with any webhosting company who will start troubleshooting with you over the phone as opposed to "we'll start a ticket and get back to you".

We don't offer direct live support to a tech and found (at least for us) that it's better for the customer to leave a voicemail which goes into our helpdesk. Easier to track, monitor and get alerted.

We immedialtely call the customer back if more info is needed or to assure the customer we are working on the problem and then get to work. If it's a simple fix yes we keep them on hold. If not no, what's the point of being on hold while the tech is working on it?

We use the phone time to help figure out what is the exact issue, than actually trying to fix the problem. Something if was done via Email could take more time to determine.

Some things can take hours to fix.

I'm not sure why you are wanting to wait on hold. If the firm you are working with is reliable why not trust they will get back to you when the issue is resolved? I'm not sure what you are wanting them to do differently?

[Apolo]

Originally Posted by Encryption

@ apolo - it wasn't their hardware that failed, it was their software implementation. And while I recognize software can and does fail, thats not the point I'm trying to make. To have $400 for phone support and eventually start tickets when I could easily pay $250 and have the same turnaround is simple.

Thanks for your reply.

You're right: if you're paying for instant phone support, and if it was promised to you, your provider should deliver it, instead of saying "we're opening a ticket". Of course, some issues may take longer to be solved and some times an issue must be taken care of by a Senior sys admin, and they're not always on the phone.

My comment was towards your ultimate goal: achieving 99.9999% of uptime, and that's pretty difficult to achieve on a single server setup.

Regards,

[tamouh]

I agree with everyone comments that

1) achieving 99.999% or even 99.9% can be very difficult on single server setup. You also want to know which services guaranteed uptime. Many provides for example exclude hardware failure from the uptime guarantee, or they'd exclude errors in software from the uptime guarantee

2) Regarding resolving issues, not all problems can be resolved in 5 minutes, however, you should expect a technical person to look at it within 5 minutes if you have a "true" fully managed dedicated server.

Most hosting companies, especially the large ones have escalation procedures in place. So when you first call a 1st level Tech answer the call or sometimes a customer service rep. They escalate the ticket to 2nd level , who'll investigate and report to a 3rd level system admin in the event the problem is due to a complex issue.

The delay occurs because of the time it takes a 3rd level admin to interfere, research the problem and implement a solution.

If you want 5 minutes responses from senior admins, you'll most definitely want to go with smaller but dedicated hosting companies with expert senior admins who take care of support requests. Not an easy task, but there are quite few managed hosting companies with senior admins answering the calls always.