Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Windows Hosting : Managed Windows Servers

[Tina J]

Who has them and who's good at it?

I have a client asking about a managed Windows server.

--Tina

[THill]

Liquidweb does apparently from their banner ad here at wht.

[Tina J]

I'd like to get referrals from people who have actually used a Windows managed host and liked them. I mean, I could Google it and come up with probably 100 results...but that doesn't tell me who's good.

--Tina

[THill]

Good point :-) I thought you just wanted to know who offered them...sorry :-)

[Tina J]

No problem! Thank you anyway.

--Tina

[gate2vn]

contact Mike or Jay at Handynetworks.com. They offer managed Windows servers for a long time. I was with them before, I was using unmanaged server in fact. But they're very good

[HNLV]

Like do you mean windows server and 3rd party management or just windows server w/ management (like liquid web)?

Or any combination is good?

[Tina J]

Originally Posted by gate2vn

contact Mike or Jay at Handynetworks.com. They offer managed Windows servers for a long time. I was with them before, I was using unmanaged server in fact. But they're very good

I'm an idiot...I completely forgot that we actually had a Windows box from them years ago. Good guys. I'll give them a shout. Thanks!

--Tina

[Ultima VPS]

We are at Liquid Web and run Windows Servers. Can highly recommend them as they move more and more into the Windows market.

[PCTechMe]

I can also give a recommendation to Handy. Althogh I was not with them long the service and support was excellent. I believe Rubal Jain is still with them too for all who know him.

[bkleinhe]

I just moved away from liquidweb windows servers...I still have 7 linux boxes with them, but windows support is horrible. Actually their overall support in the past two years has declined.

I bought a very nice xeon 5130 box from cari.net, and all was going well for a couple weeks and then today they just dropped the ball and my server has been down for over 15 hours... so strike #2....it's unbelievable how incompetent some of these shops are...I am going to try one more provider and hope they can keep the box up long enough to recode the entire application in php/mysql

windows sucks so bad...I've really developed a hate for them

[Tina J]

I ended up getting an unmanaged Windows box with WireSix.com instead. So far, everything is fine.

Thanks!

--Tina

[LiquidWebTravis]

Originally Posted by bkleinhe

I just moved away from liquidweb windows servers...I still have 7 linux boxes with them, but windows support is horrible.

Bkleinhe,
Can you please send me your ticket numbers or hostnames so that I can look into this? If this is the case I want it to be addressed immediately. I can even provide you retroactive SLA credit if we dropped the ball anywhere. Thanks for your feedback.

[bkleinhe]

Hi Travis, your team did end up providing me with a full month and a half credit. So that point should be made. And your technicians did acknowledge that due to your recent ramp up with windows servers that they didn't have the level of expertise they do on the linux end of things. On both points, I was grateful for the honesty and the credit.

Maybe you can answer another question for me. I am considering moving the remaining 6 boxes I have with liquidweb to another provider. For two reasons:

1) Cost. I bought these servers over 1.5 years ago, running opteron 244s I think...for what I am paying for them ($600+), I can now buy 2x xeon 5160s...how do you compete for existing customers?

2) It just seems that overall service has decreased to the point where response times have lengthened and the techs just really don't care. It's that attitude that put me off...I'm like jeez, maybe my little 40,000 uniques a day load balancing clusters are either too little or too much for liquidweb, because either way they sure don't seem to care if my server is down.

Additionally, your techs never even tried to figure out why my application had this weird hang / latency...and when I told you the hard drive was bad, the techs denied it...then the next week it failed! When I finally had enough and moved to another provider, the hang was gone and the application screamed. Until today that is... when the hard drive failed... and 21 hours later, the server is still not accessible.

So cari.net didn't fare too well either, although to their credit they at least called and emailed me claiming they are working on it...liquidweb called but it was a week after I closed the account. better late than never I guess.

so I don't know...liquidweb just doesn't seem to care that when my server is down I lose $2000 a day or more, get hundreds of emails from irate customers, etc.. there'sjust no proactive support...it's like the customer is the bad guy. not a nice feeling.

[LiquidWebTravis]

WHT isn't really the best place to discuss this. Please email us at sales@liquidweb.com and we'll be happy to evaluate your service ticket by ticket. Our support times, and quality scores, have actually went up. This is why I find this so odd. After we review your tickets we'll have a practical idea of what you mean. So in summary, send me your host name and ticket numbers and we'll get you all squared away.