Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : PhotonVPS - I think I expected way to much

[sexyflanders]

Hey everyone,

First post here at WHT but I've been a lurker for quite sometime. I'm making this post really to I hope get the attention of someone at PhotonVPS.

I saw a thread on DSLReports.com about the great prices on their vps's I mean typically you find something like 10gb of space for 30 dollars a month just way too much.

PhotonVPS offered 20gb of space 500gb bandwidth for $10.95. This was my first VPS purchase.

I signed up Tuesday night (9/8/09) about 8:30pm cst. I selected their "Beam 1" option and then added C-Panel and Factisco for an extra 13.50 a month.

First thing their payment system, I paid for 3 months $29 but I had to make a separate payment of 13.50 which was annoying when the receipt said I paid $43.50. But I paid both and then anxiously waited for my vps to be setup.

It took 21 hours from payment to have my username and password so I could login to my VPS. A trouble ticket I had put in at about 18 hours after order took 3 hours to be responded too.

What bugs me is on the Thread I read it claimed "Instant setup" and on their website they claim "24/7" support. I read all the reviews from WHT and they seemed good.

Now I have my VPS setup and running great. But still problems, Fluid VM is their VPS Managment tool, My username and password doesn't work I put in a ticket I'm being told "that it hasn't been finalized" several hours later I try again still doesn't work I put in another ticket I'm then told "Fluid VM has a bug and they closed it" I tried today and still can't login.

So I can't monitor, rebuilt or do anything with my node from the web.

Also last night I put a ticket in about my Fantastico license not being installed. I got a prompt reply but still hasn't been dealt with.

I don't know if I'm expecting too much I'm not trying to be a jerk but I paid $43 I know in overall cost its chump change but if I pay for something I expect what the company sells is what I get.

Honestly I think this is a one man operation, there is no phone number tickets are being closed without resolving problems and its taking ages on other things.

All the reviews gave these guys good marks noting how quick and fast they were but so far I've experienced nothing but slowness and I'm frustrated. I wouldn't be so frustrated but they claim stuff that I'm just not seeing.

So if anyone from PhotonVPS reads this please look into my issues I'm tired of waiting I'm tired of playing games 21 hours to setup a VPS seems very excessive not having my management panel.

I'll keep this thread updated I haven't asked for my money back yet because I'm hoping to give these guys the benefit of the doubt and maybe once these issues are taken care of it will be put the bed.

Thanks for reading.

[PhotonVPS-Jim]

We had instant setup but we sold out over the labor day long weekend. As of now we have shortages on nodes due to the high sign up rates. We're working with our hardware vendors to get more hardware in on time so we can setup all accounts faster. We do apologize for the issue and that you did not get any replies.

Our billing team works on regular business hours but our support is 24/7 monitoring nodes, vps, and assisting clients with critical issues. The Fantastico issue is delayed due to management netenberg has changed their licensing scheme just last week so we are re-working another bulk order from them which will be taken care of. If we cant get it done by Friday for Fantastico we'll deduct that from your billing and just give it to you for free since this is a long pending issues from a 3rd party that is basically out of our hands.

FluidVM is still under testing stage we released over 1000 VPS on it and experience a huge delay in reboots, and just manageability on the panel. We are re-testing the panel with our dev team we are looking at 1-2 months before a full release on the panel. There are some clients on the management while some will not have it. We are trying to lessen the amount of work load require during this beta testing with the new panel. However all rebuilds, reloads, and reboots are taken as priority and you will get a response. If you don't please escalate the ticket to management for review

[reiteration]

Funny, we've had zero problems with fantastico licenses - they are available immediately.
If you don't have the capacity you should make customers aware of this - BEFORE they sign up.

"FluidVM is still under testing stage" - why are you using unproven software in a production environment ?

I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh but I've been in this industry for over a 12 years now and a few of your answers don't inspire confidence.

John

[PhotonVPS-Jim]

We do have the capacity to support these clients in fact we have cabinets free and available along with switches and power. We just don't have the hardware from the servers themselves. We launch a few nodes a week on pallets and run out within the end of the week. Please note that the client ordered at the end of the week where anticipated orders are fulfilled just that sometimes we have problems fulfilling them during end of business week but they are always fulfilled in 24 hours or less. If not they are emailed personally.

FluidVM was tested in our labs with 500 VMs in our labs. We thoroughly tested the panel and things look great. However once in production we were able to see some bugs that we worked out with developers at the moment there are some issues that are being worked on. Just like any panel there will be bugs during its seed stage but this is consider a "beta" testing since its in the seed stage of production for the vendor as well as ourselves.

[sexyflanders]

Thanks Jim for letting me know what is going on appreciate it.

[Echelon]

Keep one thing in mind, 24 hour support does not cite a guaranteed SLA. Too many people have the preconceived notion that 24 hour support means their SLA is met within seconds, or minutes, of a ticket being submitted. That isn't the case most of the time.

[sexyflanders]

weeee now the vps is down apparently to a 15gige DDOS attack super. 45 minutes and counting.

[Ekin]

If you need instant setup and fast support, go with someone that puts their words and promises into writing -- with an SLA of somesorts. All providers aren't ready to offer such services and their prices are usually a reflection of the service you will receive.

[PhotonVPS-Jim]

We rarely experience network outages this 15 gige ddos was anticipated that our uplinks were maxed to capacity. We are working on getting another 10-15 gige feed to avoid this in the future.

[reiteration]

Are you SURE you have a 15g feed ?
Do you know how much a 15g feed costs ?

[flyah]

if you want instant deployments you should have gone to Linode or Slicehost.

[Exoware]

I don't think he wanted it instant; just within a reasonable amount of time.

[PhotonVPS-Jim]

Yes we're pretty sure because we have a 1 x 20gige link that one of them is capped. We'll be upgrading this of course to avoid future issues.

On our MRTG we have 15 gige incoming where it basically saturated our ports causing everything to be unreachable. We found the destination of the ddos and have nulled it at our upstreams. We find that if an attack like this can take our network out it is time to upgrade the capacity. We simply want to be able to reach our network and null / etc.. if an attack this magnitude were to occur again.

[reiteration]

I highly doubt any VPS provider has a 20gige link
You'd have to sell ten's of thousands of VPS just to pay for the link.

Stay away from this host. They claim having a 20g link, yet don't have an AS number ?

Unless you can confirm *YOUR* AS number ?

John

[dariti]

Originally Posted by reiteration

I highly doubt any VPS provider has a 20gige link
You'd have to sell ten's of thousands of VPS just to pay for the link.

Stay away from this host. They claim having a 20g link, yet don't have an AS number ?

Unless you can confirm *YOUR* AS number ?

John

I believe you're jumping the gun here, they haven't done anything wrong. Who are you to judge what they do or do not have access to and to advise people not to use their service based simply on your speculation and not from hard evidence or first hand experience?

As far as I am aware, PhotonVPS is a subsidiary of one of their larger operations (psychz I believe?) who have been operating since 1999. For a company that has been in business for 10 years, I don't doubt that they would own their hardware and have a considerable amount of bandwidth -- If they've been in business for this long, surely they must be doing something right.

They ran out of stock - it happens, they gave an explanation to the OP and it's been sorted out. Is there any real reason why you're putting your '12 years of experience' to use by exploiting this thread with negative comments?