My Web host sucks ass

I have a dedicated server with rackshack.net and have been very pleased so far. I'd definitely recommend them.

-Jeff

http://americacoasters.com

Wow... RackShack does have some pretty good pricing. Some of the available hardware is a little on the weak side though. My only requirements are that if I call them and need a reboot, they'll do it, right then.

Has anyone seen any hosting forums where people have given them good or bad reviews? I'd like to learn a little more about them. Moving a couple dozen sites and their databases is not exactly a really fast or fun process, so I'd prefer to make sure I'm making the right decision if I do move.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
Blogs, photo albums - CampusFish
What time does the water show start?

Try www.webhostingtalk.com - the most popular web hosting community out there will have squillions of posts about RS. You'll find that most recent comments (i.e. past year or so) are all positive, with only the occasional horror story (and are usually not as bad as they make out to be). RackShack actually owns WHT, but other than ad banners, there's no real presence of them there - there's absolutely no bias in the community (if there were, it'd be negative anyway, because of all the oldies around there who were around for the horror stories of 18 months ago). The RackShack forums will be good to see what exactly goes on with the company

Being in Australia, I've had to have my servers rebooted at all sorts of awkward hours. Through their Trouble Ticket system, it's never taken more than about 10 or 15 minutes. It's not worth it for me to do it over the phone, but it'd be safe to suggest that it'd be very quick. I believe they've got a system where you can pay for a priority reboot etc.

If you're serious about going with them, hold off for a few weeks until they get some nice new P4s up - they're having some power issues with the city (nearly overloaded the grid or something to that effect), and so they're not bringing up any new servers until they open their new center that's on a different grid.

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Total Thrills Amusement Guide
Australia's Premier Source for Thrills!

I'm on the same server with xbombman and they're great. I haven't noticed any downtime for at least 5 months. Even that downtime was caused by xbombman. ;) Our current server uptime is 62 days!

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SFNE Central- Online Six Flags New England Resource

site seems to be loading just as fast as it was before for me.
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John
Albany Entertainment
http://albany.n3.net

The hardware and software itself is almost never an issue. When I had the servers on the T-1 at my house, the CoasterBuzz/GTTP box went about three months before I rebooted, and even then that was an optional security patch (Win2k3 Server has come a long way since NT). The ability to keep a stable connection and power to the box is the most critical thing.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
Blogs, photo albums - CampusFish
What time does the water show start?

You may also want to look at The Planet/Server Matrix. Their network is great and we have had no issues with them. I have a Windows box there and have never had an issue with it (knock on wood). Speed is always fast. servermatrix.com is the site. I'm not sure what equipment you are using but they have Dual P4 Xeons as well as several other configurations. Bandwidth may be more of an issue, they come with 750 GB but you can purchase more (I don't know what you are pushing now).

RackShack is getting ready to open a new facility but you aren't likely to see higher spec Windows boxes until that happens.

I only need 500 gigs of bandwidth to be comfortable. I have to say though that something ain't right about 750 gigs of bandwidth for $79. That makes me immediately suspect.

After reading stuff in the RackShack forums and on some other sites, I couldn't deal with them. Their people don't conduct themselves in a business fashion online, so I wouldn't expect for them to do so otherwise.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
Blogs, photo albums - CampusFish
What time does the water show start?

You probably get the bandwidth allowance but you could be limited on processes, perhaps? (I'm not awake yet.)

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Missing the Fallen:
King Cobra 1984-2001
The Bat 1981-1983

Not if it's your own box. You can do whatever you want with a dedicated server in most cases (though almost no one allows IRC servers).

750 gigs of bandwidth is pretty insane. You could run an adult site on that amount. ServerMatrix does have mostly positive reviews though, so I might have to consider it. I just hate to piss-away the setup fees where I am now after just six weeks.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
Blogs, photo albums - CampusFish
What time does the water show start?

I was wary of the price at servermatrix as well, but I didn't get the $79 server. That one is based on a P3 platform that does not perform as well as the Celerons based on the P4 platform.

Thier network, however, speaks for itself:UUNet - GigE Connection (1000Mbps) Level 3 - GigE Connection (1000Mbps) Verio - GigE Connection (1000Mbps) Time Warner - GigE Connection(1000Mbps) Global Crossing - GigE Connection (1000Mbps) Allegiance Telecom - GigE Connection (1000Mbps) ATT - OC3 Connection (155Mbps) More GigE carriers coming soon!

(from their site)

We've never experienced a network issue and the box has performed great. The only downtime was from a reboot we initiated when configuring the firewall. Never witnessed any packet loss as well, although it is bound to happen from time to time.

I always see ad's for serverbeach.com for dedicated servers... don't know anything about them, however.

We use Rackspace (rackspace.com) and have never had any huge issue with our servers.

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Do the Moo Shoo!

Rackspace is a total rip-off in terms of bandwidth.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com - My Blog
Blogs, photo albums - CampusFish
What time does the water show start?

Could be, I will have to look into that.

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Do the Moo Shoo!

I have two servers with rackshack.net, both linux, great machines, never any problems. Last month I bought a windown 2003 server from them, but I canceled it within the month. I just don't get nt hosting, it's far to complicated for me. Rackshack.net probably wouldn't be in Jeff's best interest, since he uses mssql, which if I remember from rackshack.net's AUP, mssql is not allowed on their win03 servers. You could check out http://serverbeach.com, they offer good win 03 dedicated servers. AMD of course, I also have a machine with them, again linux, no problems either.
*** This post was edited by DS 9/11/2003 3:45:44 PM ***

NT hosting is complicated compared to Linux? Heh, that's a new one... (And I'm developing heavy C++ stuff on Linux every day, so I'm not some Microsoft drone)

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--Greg, aka Oat Boy
My page
"What do you want, you moon-faced assassin of joy?" -- Londo Mollari, Babylon 5

We are leasing a Serverbeach Win2k server, and have not had any issues with them as of yet.

ServerBeach Window 2000 Starter Server

GregLeg said:
NT hosting is complicated compared to Linux? Heh, that's a new one... (And I'm developing heavy C++ stuff on Linux every day, so I'm not some Microsoft drone)

It was complicated to me. I have only used linux for web apps, never used windows remotely, not even once, so I was totally lost without shell. Now I have a windows server at home, so I'm learning, very very slowly, but it's starting to make sense. It's just very hard to go from something so open, to something so disclosed and hidden. That's just my point of view.

*** This post was edited by DS 9/11/2003 4:31:58 PM ***

Just wanted to make a correction to the post above regarding RackShack and MSSQL.

MSSQL is not allowed to be installed on the 2003 Web Edition, but can be on the 2003 Standard Server. This is a Microsoft rule, not RackShack. Because of the lower price for Web Edition it has extreme license restrictions attached.

For that reason I would stay away from the Web Editions and go for the Standard. RS offers both (limitedly right now) as does ServerMatrix. We use the Standard Version as we have too many scripts/programs that are restricted in the web edition.