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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
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    483

    ThePlanet or SoftLayer

    I'm currently with ThePlanet but I'm thinking about moving to Softlayer because of current price strategy at TP. I currently have dual xeon 2.8GHz and 2GB RAM with TP. I don't know what is equivalent server at SoftLayer for that machine , probably Dual Xeon single core.
    Is it worth to move to SoftLayer ? I read that they had downtime yesterday, so don't know if they network is reliable. Please advice.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
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    Every provider will have downtime at one point another for various reasons (heck, even part of TP/EV1 had downtime yesterday too).

    I've had boxes at both over the past few years and I'd say SL hands down.

  3. #3

    EV1 Planet and Softlayer

    I have been with EV-1 since April 1, 2002 ( have had great service until recently) and was with DialTone for many years ( great service there until their merger ).

    In my humble opinion, companies that are involved in a big merger (like EV1 and Planet), lose their best people and start to have some problems. I think that good hosting is based more on having a strong, helpful staff than any other factor.

    As a side note, yesterday's outage at EV1 was due to human error which may or may not be due to the recent exit of technical staff, but was certainly due to poor management. Any activity that has any potential to drop ALL of your traffic into a datacenter should be reviewed by at least 2 people prior to implementation and should not take 40 minutes to fix when an error is discovered.

    It would be prudent to stay away from The Planet/EV-1 until this merger shakes out. I too, am looking to move and Softlayer looks interesting.

    Any feedback from people now at Softlayer, that have mulitple servers and that spent more than a year or so with Ev-1 or The Planet would be particularly appreciated here!

  4. #4
    I just moved from TP to Softlayer after 2+ years and would never go back.
    The people at softlayer are amazing and always quick to answer questions.

    I understand TP is a much larger company and therefore has more tickets, but I had an issue
    where I would only get 100KB/sec from my one server, and when attempting to tell them it's was an issue with their service
    I was greeted with rude tech tickets after providing trace routes and ping times numerous times. In addition further investigation indicated that I wasn't the only one experiencing the issue with my server.
    They flat out REFUSED to believe me, and is why I have since cancelled 3 of my servers with them and moved to Softlayer

    So I switched, and to Mary, Andrea, and all the techs who helped to get the server up so quickly thank you so much.

    Regards,
    Matt
    Last edited by EVO|Matt; 09-12-2006 at 11:17 AM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    New Jersey
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    851
    All that said accepted.

    But I still am just not able to understand the point of Anti- Planet thing. I have no problems with Pro softlayer mindset, and saying that I admit I have never used them before and 1000s of you can't be wrong saying they are one of the best. So going on popularity I admit they are one of the best in business.

    But why Anti-Planet attitude? Why would someone put millions to destroy it? Yes they must be going through updates/ changes from management level to datacenter staff, but guys you gotta agree they have given best network to us for years and years. I had my first server with them as early as in 2001 through one of the reseller, but now I have all servers hosted with them directly.

    I just want to try to put my point is don't get anti for a company because they just did merger. Someone is not fool to invest millions to get it down from where it is already "Largest Dedicated Hosting Provider" .

    By saying that I respect others opinions, same way I do of my own.
    24Shells in Business Since 2003 - AS55081
    Dedicated Servers, High Bandwidth Servers
    @24Shells - 24shells.net

  6. #6
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    Jan 2005
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    Scotland, UK
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    Perk, The ev1 outage had me worried about basically what you are stating. Softlayer are still new and while I have been happy with them, they are not an option for the ev1 rack.

    What really bugs me is we decided to move from theplanet->ev1 only to find out a week later that they have merged and by the end of the year they will be operating under the same name, so what is the point in choosing either?

    Then yesterdays outage by human error, especially when it never happened before has alarm bells ringing. While I have been reasonably happy with ev1, reasonably being the key word this along with a few other things is making me think it's time to shop elsewhere.

    Just to recap on why we would not choose softlayer for the main servers yet is, for a start the quote I requested they were unable to offer what we required, yet multiple other providers are all able to do this, that's basically about it. I have been pretty happy with them over the past few months.

    -Scott
    Server Management - AdminGeekZ.com
    Infrastructure Management, Web Application Performance, mySQL DBA. System Automation.
    WordPress/Magento Performance, Apache to Nginx Conversion, Varnish Implimentation, DDoS Protection, Custom Nginx Modules
    Check our wordpress varnish plugin. Contact us for quote: sales@admingeekz.com

  7. #7
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    Jan 2005
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    How about downtime at softlayer ? I experienced no downtime at TP for past 1 year. But read that softlayer had big downtime yesterday.

  8. #8
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by ckissi
    How about downtime at softlayer ? I experienced no downtime at TP for past 1 year. But read that softlayer had big downtime yesterday.
    .... so did isolated parts of The Planet/EV1 network (All of DC1)

  9. #9
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    Jan 2005
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    Quote Originally Posted by ckissi
    How about downtime at softlayer ? I experienced no downtime at TP for past 1 year. But read that softlayer had big downtime yesterday.
    Softlayer did not have a big downtime yesterday, they had a planned outage for < 10 minutes.

    It just so happens people were unaware of it, I myself was unaware as I only signed up for my own server around a day after the notice and did not check the forums.


    Quote Originally Posted by mripguru
    .... so did isolated parts of The Planet/EV1 network (All of DC1)
    Those are 2 completely seperate outages, ThePlanet was out a day before the ev1 outage I belive.

    The talk about these being related to the link between the dcs is baseless gosip and that link won't be happening for another few months.

    -Scott
    Server Management - AdminGeekZ.com
    Infrastructure Management, Web Application Performance, mySQL DBA. System Automation.
    WordPress/Magento Performance, Apache to Nginx Conversion, Varnish Implimentation, DDoS Protection, Custom Nginx Modules
    Check our wordpress varnish plugin. Contact us for quote: sales@admingeekz.com

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jan 2004
    Location
    UK
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    I would recommend SL over anyone. Their support is the best out there, their service is the best. There has not been any downtime in 6 months for my server apart from this 3 minute downtime yesterday which we were all told about a week in advance.

    The staff are friendly, the hardware is topnotch and the network is superb.

    I left TP for SL because TP were going downhill fast from their hay day... I would push anyone over to SL, if they wanted great service that is..

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2005
    Posts
    483
    And what server do you recommend with SL ? I have Dual Xeon 2.8 with TP. I don't know what is the equivalent in SL for that machine. Single Xeon dual core, dual xeon single core or dual xeon dual core ?

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Newport Beach, CA
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    I moved all my servers at the planet to softlayer and I've been very happy about the decision since i made it.

    There are lots of people that are jumping on the bandwagon, but there are many of us that go far enough back with the planet to understand the problem.

    I went to the planet for one reason (well obviously the network, the servers, the pricing etc). Having a conversation with lance was what convinced me. At the time (i think 1999? maybe 2000?) I was a small game server company. We had racks at NetFire (now speakeasy) and less than 20 dedicated servers. I sent a single email to Lance and he responded very quickly to my questions (which were based on several concerns surrounding gaming). He was very accomodating as well.

    We had one server with them to test. We tested running client single game servers on that machine for a couple months. Primarily our concern was support. We created a couple simple issues and contacted support to resolve them. They answered quickly, found the problem and resolved them right away.

    We moved on and added more servers. We also added two more accounts. We now had 3 divisions. game servers, web servers and voice servers. the first two being dedicated server customers.

    Over the next 3 years we moved about 25 servers over, and added an additional 20 under the different accounts. Support was fantastic, responsive and left us very assured that our trust was well placed.

    In 2004 things changed. It was obvious that there had been a large hiring done with techs. Unfortunately this also spawned the downfall of the support we had enjoyed so long. As time went on we found the support replies to be less informative, much lower level and things started happening like having to repeat the reason for opening the tickets numerous times in one ticket. It was clear things were starting to change.

    Support went downhill, and the automated things we were promised didn't surface or simply didn't work.

    In early 2006 I had enough. I knew Lance had already left, and it was pretty obvious that somewhere over the last two years the great support had changed direction. By March I found that it took me over 4 days on three separate occasions to do an automated o/s reload. all 3 failed for some mysterious reason (all 3 different server types and a combination of windows server 2003 and Linux RHEL). On each instance it took days.. literally, to get any activity out of support, and in the end I ended up having to contact Steve Kinman to get it done.

    The support staff had also picked up quite the attitude of the elite tech guru style. All the while maintaining that terrible support. When speaking to Steve I mentioned one specific name of a tech and how I was extremely unhappy and did not EVER want to speak to him again. He understood and let me know i wouldn't have to deal with him. The next time I had to call (3rd time for the same bad support) I called his office and left a message. He did not return my call. He had someone else return it. Guess who? the same jackass I had told him previously I didn't want to talk to.

    I moved my servers from Theplanet to Softlayer in May. I haven't been there very long, but I could immediately see that the support I was so bummed that I had lost in the original "the Planet" had returned. It was pretty obvious that the same dedication to support that started the planet had been instilled here. I can only assume that was the result of Lance, and a clear, successful business plan that put customer support at the highest level.

    Since that time I've had automated reloads that now are completed in less than 2 hours, free, and many other additions to service that I didnt' expect but am very happy to have.

    Steven Canale, Amanda Jordan and some others have been a real pleasure to deal with. They are dedicated to the success of their customers and attend to issues quickly.

    The network has had no problems from what I can see. I have less "short" blips of service, less 'regular maintenance' which relieves the SLA of network outages and simply better network performance than I did for the last 2 years at ThePlanet.

    With the addition of InterNAP, the support for game servers went back up to the highest level we could ask for. We had racks at Netfire for the main reason that they had InterNAP bandwidth which didn't utilize BGP routing and seemed to produce more intellligent routing to maintain low pings and low latency.

    Now we are considering dropping our racks at NetFire and moving those to monthly dedicated lease machines at Softlayer.

    My experience is unique and clearly you'll find people that didn't experience the same terrible support I did. But I can only speak from what I had happen while there.

    I wouldn't go back to the planet now, after merging with the company I had no desire to do business with, regardless of what the offer was.

    Just do your research, find answers to your questions and be open to new ideas and you'll be fine.

  13. #13
    e-places,

    Thank you for taking the time to write for a thoughtful reply. Very helpful information and good advice.

  14. #14
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    Jan 2004
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    UK
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    e-places i was one who was at TP when they were great (Lance was there) and then when they went downhill (when new managment came in). I then found where lance went and read a few reviews and caught back up with lance, and everything was great. So now i am back at SL with just as you said the amazing support and service as before.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Pakistan
    Posts
    278
    I recommand SoftLayer, it went down just for 5mins yesturday because of maintenance and they also informed about it in advanced.


    Quote Originally Posted by ckissi
    I'm currently with ThePlanet but I'm thinking about moving to Softlayer because of current price strategy at TP. I currently have dual xeon 2.8GHz and 2GB RAM with TP. I don't know what is equivalent server at SoftLayer for that machine , probably Dual Xeon single core.
    Is it worth to move to SoftLayer ? I read that they had downtime yesterday, so don't know if they network is reliable. Please advice.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jan 2003
    Location
    Chicago, IL
    Posts
    6,957
    I'm a competitor of SoftLayer, and I can't understand why they're getting such a rough deal regarding the 5 minutes or so of downtime for a planned outage. Sometimes maintenance requires an outage, etc. and if it is announced in advance, as this one was, then I do not see what the issue is. Give them a break on this one.
    Karl Zimmerman - Founder & CEO of Steadfast
    VMware Virtual Data Center Platform

    karl @ steadfast.net - Sales/Support: 312-602-2689
    Cloud Hosting, Managed Dedicated Servers, Chicago Colocation, and New Jersey Colocation

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Feb 2001
    Posts
    1,227
    ThePlanet use to get EXCELLENT, rave reviews on this forum during their early days, then people started complaining. Softlayer is still so new, lets see what happens...

    ThePlanet offers one-time h/w setup fees if you're a customer, something which is nice.
    I have servers at: NetDepot/GNAX (A), SoftLayer (A), LiquidWeb (B+), DedicatedNow (B+), Nectartech (B) and more!

  18. #18
    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    237
    SoftLayer

    We've got a couple of servers with them (5 - 6) for our clients, it's unmanaged but most of the time our techs has nothing to work on it... as it's getting very good care by SoftLayer guys (reboot when needed etc...)

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Nov 2005
    Posts
    346
    Right now I have 6 servers at SL. One of my reasons is the very nice local network, which makes it trivial to add more nodes. I still have 1 server at TP and 1 at EV1 and they're both doing reasonably well.

  20. #20
    I should have read this post much earlier... just order a server to another 'dedicated server provider' yesterday. For the next time, I'll definitely check SL.

  21. #21
    I got several high end servers at SL. Hands down the best company I have used. But they are still small compared to other companies. We shall see if the positive user comments turn south when they grow bigger as a company.

  22. #22
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    Approximately how many servers does softlayer have in total?

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Location
    Newport Beach, CA
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    This topic is 6 months old
    Show your reciprocal links on your website. eReferrer

  24. #24
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
    Posts
    385
    after 20 servers I can say softlayer has the best + most helpful people, the best network and the most flexible hardware options.
    TP used to be like that but not anymore.

  25. #25
    I've been with softlayer for a long time now.. the only time I actually noticed a big downtime was when they had some planned maintenance and that too I was warned about it in advance. The downtime only lasted approximately about 1 hour. The sales and technical support people have been very helpful and I have no complains about their service yet.

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