I just thought I would share my last couple of weeks with everyone, maybe for grins and maybe to offer some insight maybe just to say hello again.
Well as some of you know I want to start on the nexr phase of my business and so I thought I would share my story.
I started publicly hosting in Oct of 2003, started like everyone else with friends and friends of friends prior to that and wanted to fgo public. I leased my first server with Server Matrix and was happy to have found a decent place to do so. I then decided hey if Server Matrix is good and
ThePlanet is the parent company offering servers that are higher quality and better management I would get one there, so I purchased my second server, This one under the total control line with remote reboot.
Well it didn't take long to realize that the difference was nil. If the remote reboot worked it was a good day otherwise you sat in line with all the other customers waiting for the server to come back up, so I felt the extra expense wasn't worth it. Much of the problems with the servers were that they were Dual Xeon with cpanel and RHE, so many bugs with kernel it was just pathetic most of the time. At the time I used Steve with Rack911 and he worked so hard trying to keep those servers online. I will say that if it weren't for his hard work I may not have any customers.
Well I got tired of eating at the Burger King of servers and really wanted to change, started feeling this way in February. I decided well maybe things will get better and so stuck with it as long as possible.
In the mean time I also decided that I wanted to focus my attention on advertising, sales and personal support. I wanted monitoring, management as well as security for my servers but I wanted it all rolled in with one company and not spread out with many hands managing the servers. I wanted to go to sleep and know that not only were the servers being cared for but all the customers and so I researched, asked a lot of questions and chose Touch Support.
I contacted them and asked many questions of them and they were the absolute best. They customized a plan for me and so life was good again, I got the help I needed.
Except for one thing. I still had crappy servers at burger king. So I was on a search again. I looked high and low for the best DC, researched all the forums and each time several names always rose above the best, Rack space and Server Central, well Rackspace was way out of my budget and so landed on Server Central, the extra bonus is that is also the DC that Touch Support uses and they were within a 2 hour drive if they ever needed to manage my servers physically. So ok life is looking good again.
But then what the heck did I want, did I want to rish the same headaches with the sam configurations I had now, what do I know about what is best? Not a whole lot, just because I know somethings doesn't make me the best to know what is best, so finally after 3 weeks of searching and wondering and almost giving up, I decided to contact Touch Support. I said "I want servers that stay up more than down, I want to know that I have backups and they will be safe from the server itself. I want good hardware and software that doesn't clash. Well I can tell you Sean drew up a configuration with me that is exactly what I needed. It is a Raid configuration with crossover backups that don't count against my bandwidth. Extra Ram and memory. so off to contact Server central to see if I could even afford it. I worked with a wonderful sales guy there and they bumped up the set up fees so my monthly fees could be less and it was then affordable. So the order was placed. Ah life was good again, now I am eating at Red Lobster instead of Burger king.
Then came the task of moving everyone and also the bad personality trait in me reared its ugly head. LOL I had been working with Touch Support and securing the servers and finalizing the set up and then said ok let's move them. Was told ok let us get the staff ready and make for a smooth transfer, but no, I am gonna do it now reared up, so I proceeded to transfer everyone without help, I knew what I was doing. Well instead of being smart and doing a few at a time I just transferred the whole first server, and here some the pleas for help, My site is pointing to so and so, my site is down, you get the point. Well Touch Support really stepped up to the plate, never yelled or even said anything to me about how dumb I was, they just called in extra help and got busy repairing my damage. They had everone happy within a couple hours. Both servers got transferred. I have also learned I hate vBullitin, since I don't use it, I spent hours trying to get one that I host to work, should have only took me about 30 minutes, but it took me a couple hours just to find out how to move it. I had decided that I would fix all the broken scripts. Also one other program that was on my servers is known for being problematic with server moves, again a 5 minute fix once you spend the 4 hours looking for the fix. grrr!
Dada Mail is a pain in the patoody, so be warned.
Now I am happy to say that all customers are moved, servers are doing wonderful (knock wood) and I have the best support in place in the world. Now I can truly enjoy my business again and become that happy personable host I wanted to be. Now I can play in the forums, take some classes, and enjoy some free time.
Yes, life is definitely good again!! Have a wonderful Sunday everyone.
Well as some of you know I want to start on the nexr phase of my business and so I thought I would share my story.
I started publicly hosting in Oct of 2003, started like everyone else with friends and friends of friends prior to that and wanted to fgo public. I leased my first server with Server Matrix and was happy to have found a decent place to do so. I then decided hey if Server Matrix is good and
ThePlanet is the parent company offering servers that are higher quality and better management I would get one there, so I purchased my second server, This one under the total control line with remote reboot.
Well it didn't take long to realize that the difference was nil. If the remote reboot worked it was a good day otherwise you sat in line with all the other customers waiting for the server to come back up, so I felt the extra expense wasn't worth it. Much of the problems with the servers were that they were Dual Xeon with cpanel and RHE, so many bugs with kernel it was just pathetic most of the time. At the time I used Steve with Rack911 and he worked so hard trying to keep those servers online. I will say that if it weren't for his hard work I may not have any customers.
Well I got tired of eating at the Burger King of servers and really wanted to change, started feeling this way in February. I decided well maybe things will get better and so stuck with it as long as possible.
In the mean time I also decided that I wanted to focus my attention on advertising, sales and personal support. I wanted monitoring, management as well as security for my servers but I wanted it all rolled in with one company and not spread out with many hands managing the servers. I wanted to go to sleep and know that not only were the servers being cared for but all the customers and so I researched, asked a lot of questions and chose Touch Support.
I contacted them and asked many questions of them and they were the absolute best. They customized a plan for me and so life was good again, I got the help I needed.
Except for one thing. I still had crappy servers at burger king. So I was on a search again. I looked high and low for the best DC, researched all the forums and each time several names always rose above the best, Rack space and Server Central, well Rackspace was way out of my budget and so landed on Server Central, the extra bonus is that is also the DC that Touch Support uses and they were within a 2 hour drive if they ever needed to manage my servers physically. So ok life is looking good again.
But then what the heck did I want, did I want to rish the same headaches with the sam configurations I had now, what do I know about what is best? Not a whole lot, just because I know somethings doesn't make me the best to know what is best, so finally after 3 weeks of searching and wondering and almost giving up, I decided to contact Touch Support. I said "I want servers that stay up more than down, I want to know that I have backups and they will be safe from the server itself. I want good hardware and software that doesn't clash. Well I can tell you Sean drew up a configuration with me that is exactly what I needed. It is a Raid configuration with crossover backups that don't count against my bandwidth. Extra Ram and memory. so off to contact Server central to see if I could even afford it. I worked with a wonderful sales guy there and they bumped up the set up fees so my monthly fees could be less and it was then affordable. So the order was placed. Ah life was good again, now I am eating at Red Lobster instead of Burger king.
Then came the task of moving everyone and also the bad personality trait in me reared its ugly head. LOL I had been working with Touch Support and securing the servers and finalizing the set up and then said ok let's move them. Was told ok let us get the staff ready and make for a smooth transfer, but no, I am gonna do it now reared up, so I proceeded to transfer everyone without help, I knew what I was doing. Well instead of being smart and doing a few at a time I just transferred the whole first server, and here some the pleas for help, My site is pointing to so and so, my site is down, you get the point. Well Touch Support really stepped up to the plate, never yelled or even said anything to me about how dumb I was, they just called in extra help and got busy repairing my damage. They had everone happy within a couple hours. Both servers got transferred. I have also learned I hate vBullitin, since I don't use it, I spent hours trying to get one that I host to work, should have only took me about 30 minutes, but it took me a couple hours just to find out how to move it. I had decided that I would fix all the broken scripts. Also one other program that was on my servers is known for being problematic with server moves, again a 5 minute fix once you spend the 4 hours looking for the fix. grrr!
Dada Mail is a pain in the patoody, so be warned.
Now I am happy to say that all customers are moved, servers are doing wonderful (knock wood) and I have the best support in place in the world. Now I can truly enjoy my business again and become that happy personable host I wanted to be. Now I can play in the forums, take some classes, and enjoy some free time.
Yes, life is definitely good again!! Have a wonderful Sunday everyone.
