Server techs and expertise, who (company, person) is best?
 

Ok, so we've been with a few hosts, they all fucked up one time or another and that is - i guess - something we all have to go through.

Our current host has been fighting the same issues on our dbase for two years now. Most of the time when downtime arises, it takes long, very long for it to be solved. It looks like nothing was succesfully done and the server evens out itself.

So it got me thinking: which host has the best people inhouse? I mean most skilled people, not most friendly. I'm a sucker for friendlyness, which is a very bad business feature.

I stayed with - yeah yeah yeah - webair for years, even though most people here warned me and everybody else. They were good to me, and friendly. However i now realize they hurt my business a lot with daily downtimes of more than hours upon hours. With daily outages growing a business will not work.

Our server is more than sufficient for what we do, we have little traffic. People are nice at Webair too, but problems almost never get fixed.

With Phatservers we were content, but since i am in Europe, like our clients, i figured a server nearby would be best. Now i am not sure since it is down so often.

I thought it was probably me fucking up the server, but that is also no longer my fear. I get a junior tech each morning (yes, we have the same issue almost every morning which causes our server to hang for hours without a solution for over a year, and yes, i was stupid enough to stay that long), who i have to explain everything again from scratch.
Every day.

So, in short: which host do you think can best solve issues? 24/7, we do not want a learning junior tech to work the night shift on his own every day, since we will most likely be needing somebody from the nightshift since we're overseas.

And for all junior techs out there: i understand you have to learn, but we've been here a while and i guess our knowledge extends yours, we just need a senior tech to be able to solve our issues, which almost always happens, too late though as the juniors want to have a go at it first i guess ;-(

QuadraNet!

see my second post in this thread
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1069057


no europe option now, but they are taking pre-orders for the Amsterdam data center that opens in a few weeks

From what you described, it has nothing to do with the server. Has to do with the software / processes you're running on the server. Go contact the developers of whatever software you're running, and tell them to investigate, and resolve the obvious bottleneck.

Not necessarily true. I recently had to drop a server with burst.net becasue there was a hardware issue causing my network connectivity to simply drop with no explanation. They kept insisting it wasn't hardware so I left. Exact same setup runs fine elsewhere.

At the VERY LEAST if you are paying for managed service the provider should be able to explain why a server is hanging.

The fact that it happens pretty predictably means it probably won't be all that hard to diagnose. The hard problems happen once every few months.

You mentioned you were happy with Phatservers. Mike has been doing server administration for over twenty years and hires good people. You also mentioned Webair. Try getting Sagi on it. He's good, but as you discovered, he has several junior employees.

Sometimes when a hosting company can't figure out a problem they call us in. Occasionally, they get us to do all administration for a big client. For example we used to manage a well known adult forum's servers. The owners of the large forum dealt with the hosting company, who forwarded all of their tickets to us. Some people skip the middle man and have us administer their servers, either hosted elsewhere or with us.

rtl8169?

Give us a try !

As your sig says, Amen.

Sagi helped me out before, some are really good there. Andy/Chris, they both are able to get our stuff back up as well pretty fast. Otherwise it takes hours and hours, most of the time. Obviously because it is nighttime there, but prime time here. I just do not want to wake up to a stalling server every day before i have to bring my kid to school, stressed out all the way there and back to get the server back up before he comes back from school.

I do not want to be rude to the juniors there, but i feel i cannot keep my cool much longer;-)

Hello Naughty,

Outside of having true 24/7 tech support, our techs have the ability to meet our clients at their level of technical knowledge. We truly pride ourselves on "100% Customer Satisfaction".

I will reach out to you on icq. We'd love the opportunity to you show you why we are one of the best managed hosts around.

I had a similar deal. I switched hosts, and the problem was solved. Sometimes it is hardware.

I switched to http://techiemedia.com/ - great guys.

And I can recommend http://www.ruskyhost.com/ - Also great guys.

The best techs usually own their hosting company's , That being said
Besides our Services ..

I could only honestly say that the next best places i know of are mojohost and techiemedia Also saying that i make no assumption that my tech skills are better then anyone elses , I have the right to be Bias

If you want best possible tech support,then you need to take unmanaged server and hire some sys admin or company which do only that.There are many reasons for that,but mainly one of reasons to do it is because hosting companies not doing any kind of optimizations and most of them if you would have overage in bandwidth or hardware will simply say how you need another server while all you had to do is simple optimization.

WOW you gotta look out for your own business man !

The quality you give to your customers and clients can be no better than the quality you accept from anyone who deliver services to you. :2 cents:

I remember leaving RackSpace after they told me 1 time they wouldn't call a DBA to fix some stuff during a weekend and I should wait till the following monday during business hours. Then again, I'm litterally a bitch when it comes to hosting :help me

For managed hosting, never go with anyone who does not have staff available 24/7 that can fix any possible scenario, especially not if they do not provide root.

Typically if you are paying for managed hosting, you would not be provided root access. After all, that is what you are paying them for. If you have unmanaged servers, then you typically are doing things yourself, or hiring a third party, hence get root access.

:2 cents:

hands down ... CHOOPA! you'll never have to go anywhere else

I think it's a mistake to let your hosting company look after your database. Probably good to learn about it yourself, or look at getting a database expert.

It's funny, I have had this issue with many hosting companies. They never seem to want to admit there is a hardware fault. Even if you have 30 servers with the same OS, and setup, and one is having an issue after multiple OS installs... Now I typically just tell them I want to upgrade to a bit faster server, which normally only costs a few dollars a month and it solves the problem. Better than going back and forth forever on the issue.

I hosted with Webair for a couple of years and I also had 100% faith in support when Chris or Sagi got involved. However, I had just too many frustrating instances with junior techs and moved over to ISPrlme.
I can honestly say that I have 100% faith in every tech I have dealt with there, from peak time to twilight hours!

Did your hosting bill go up with your move to ISPrime?

call Natnet and your problems are solved for good. Literally, I have not had one serious hosting problem in 10 years and zero downtime that I can remember.

No, my hosting bill actually went down with the move.
DMitry was keen to win my business over and offered me a deal I couldn't refuse! :-)
I know that ISPrime have had a reputation for high prices, but if my experience is anything to go by they will try and match or beat your existing package.

I have managed servers with and without root. It depends on the hosting company in question. Just because they manage it doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to see what's going on at every level of the server.

Today I probably would not order any kind of managed hosting without root access.

Maybe I should have clarified, I was referring to things like replication/uptime etc not the actual db designs and usage.

you, sir, are a lot more patient that I am. I wouldn't deal with more than a week of that.

Hard to believe you've had so many issues and still haven't gotten your own sysadmin...

honestly a properly setup server should almost never crash if you need to talk to tech support more then once a month tops there is something wrong.

A. your scripts are overloading the server

B. your scripts are poorly written and crashing

C. your server was not setup properly

Yeah we deal with servers from tons of different hosting companies everyday. Most provide root on dedicated servers. Two of the biggest companies in adult do not, but dozens do.

Even among those who normally don't, several will allow access by someone they know to be well qualified - someone with a great reputation based on fifteen years in the business. Just because their policy is that they don't hand out root passwords to every clueless customer, that doesn't mean they can't work with a well qualified third party sysadmin.

Even among those who don't grant access to a well qualified third party, once they've failed to handle it and the other sysadmin has already largely diagnosed the problem and just needs access to fix it, they have little choice but to allow the server to be fixed. Here I'm referring to after we present logs and analysis proving a) exactly what the problem is and b) our thorough understanding of the problem. You just can't argue with a clear and well documented diagnosis combined with obvious expertise, and citing the exact line number in the system source code that is affected.

The rare company who insists on ignoring an obviously well founded diagnosis, or prevents any diagnosis by not allowing even user level SSH access, has to be fired, plain and simple.

I'm with way3 now and have had the most confidence in what the owner does out of any host to date. He's tapped into the best bw and knows how to handle a server.

xxxhostit.com has the best techs, they will solve and configure anything and a senior level III tech is allways on shift
ask for Bern and Mike over there

National Net is best hands down.

I've heard that they will overcharge your creditcards and steal your custom written scripts. I'm not saying they do but that's what I've heard.

My friend who came up with these two lies also said that his server was down for 8 hours straight one day. Also Bern and Mike seem to be spamming faggots.

My advice is that you stay far away from xxxhostit.com.

lol
I heard is the most coward way of dirtying anyone.
as for Bern spamming, I want your proof or ban.

All our network hardware is new,
on 2011 we finished a full server replacement , all our old servers , every single hard drive is new, we have just this yeard added 2 x 10G new commits, all on premium Bandwidth, we just have one bandwidth provider per network, Nlayer for main network, no "internal" mixing funny business. And expanded in Amsterdam , Atlanta and Chicago.

About ethics, most our clients have been 10 years plus with us,
that should speak for it self.

I didn't say they where spamming, I said they seem to be spamming faggots. As for proof:
https://gfy.com/search.php?do=finduser&u=8726

I am confused now, are you xxxhostit.com?

so we have been in biz since 2000 , you joined GFY and 2007
yet you can slander us just cuase and dont even own to it using seems and i heard?

that shows who you are :)

Have a great day.

you are right, wasnt my smartest post, I have added somethign in my signature to make it 100% clear I work with xxxhostit.com

Yes, I created this nickname, waited 5 years to post shit about your future posts.

That doesn't sound good at all...

Thanks for the heads up.

M3Server offers fully managed server plans. I would like the chance to discuss your needs.

I checked prices at their site and it was 1990 again! HP ProLiant
Intel Dual-Core XEON 1.6GHz (Woodcrest) @ 50 mbps at $1,249.95 ???????????

Where's a good place to hire a server tech to manage an unmanaged server, assist with migration, harden security, etc?

>>> http://www.awmzone.com/services <<<

Yeah.. time for a serious website update and you are correct!!! Those prices are WAY out of date! But if you are in the need, contact me directly for your best options!!! :thumbsup