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05-18-2005, 03:05 AM
Just want to provide this information/feedback to Hostrocket in hopes to improve the service line...as well as encourage others to get dedicated servers, or answer user's questions.
I signed up for a dedicated server a couple of months ago after being a shared customer for a couple of years, maybe 3 (don't remember). Prior to coming to Hostrocket, I was with two other host providers.
Hostrocket on the shared side has been generally good. I haven't had too many problems that couldn't be fixed with a good converstaion with a tech that's willing to listen (after creating a ticket).
I wanted to move to a dedicated server because of disk space issues. In my opinion, disk space is something that HR needs to look into. I realize you are in the business of making money, but 100MG of total mail space for a single domain is just not suitable for any domains that have more than 2 mail boxes. I was also running out of diskspace on one of my accounts and I upgraded that and quickly ran out again.
When I signed up for the dedicated server, I found a couple of things to be lacking.
1. There wasn't much communication. It was kind of like, "Here you go - Have fun!" I don't expect HR to do all the admin for me, but a little help guide, or step by step process for getting everything working as it once was on the shared account would have been nice.
2. There seems to be no FAQ for the dedicated server. There are like 5 articles, which are basic, for the super novice.
The control panel is fantastic. I've had a couple of UNIX/LINUX admins take a look at my server, and they as admins were pretty impressed with the control panel. I would say that it's a must have.
I also really like the billing/invoice information that is provided in the dedicated server console. It's way better than what is provided in the shared account support login site. As a person who has been audited, the ability to quickly and easily print out clear and understandable invoices is important to me.
There are features that are way way better than the shared servers, such as the mail configuration section. I like the abilty to manage my own Mail DNS aliasing. I also like the professional mailman mailing list server software. It's much better than the mailling list server software that comes with the shared account.
There are other features that I had to configure and setup in the root server control panel that weren't obvious and that weren't documented, but I got there. My professional background is with Windows NT/2000 servers at the corporate level, so I'm not just a server newbie, but my experience with Linux/Unix has been more from an end=user than a server admin. Stuff like re-compiling Apache to include updates to PHP and MySQL, and a few other minor things.
Here are some problems I had with my initial setup.
1. I didn't know what the URL was for accesssing webmail. It is different than the shared servers. On the dedicated servers use http://www.domain.com/webmail
2. I initially had problems getting into the control panel of my accounts. There was an error when accessing the control panel so I created a ticket. The problem turned out to be that there wasn't an "hrcp" them, whatever that is. I didn't know this....but the HR tech fixed it for me and told me afterwards.
3. Another thing, is that I had some parked domains, and domain pointers on the shared server...and when I moved to the dedicated server, I wanted those split out as part of my original request. This was not automatically done, but in the end, and with alot of asking, the HR guys helped me get it setup. It was not smooth, but it eventually got there. I think that it could have gone smoother if the HR techs would have read my original ticket a little closer.
4. I also had a little problem with MySQL while logged in as one of the account instead of root. With the shared servers, you can drop, copy, and create databases with PHPMyAdmin. You can't do this with the accounts on my dedicated server. For the longest time I thought something was wrong, but then I realized that the dedicated server has "packages" setup. The packages that I have defined has 10 MySQL databases. I realized that I could create databases with the control panel, but not with PHPMyAdmin. This could be because I updated MySQL and it's using the default settings, or it could be that the control panel software has it set to that I must use the account's control panel for each account to create the databases so that I don't go over my quota. Either way, this was confusing and really caused some frustration for a while.
5. DNS issues. When I moved to the new dedicated server, and setup everything on the new accounts and tested the new server, and sent in a ticket to HR to switch the DNS...the DNS was switched. However, a few days later, when I created a new account on my server, which did not previously have a DNS entry. I sent in a ticket to HR have them create it. I preferred not to run DNS On my server. That's just one more thing to take resources, and one more thing for me to mess up. I'd rather have professionals running this. I got a negative response from one of the HR staff telling me that it was my responsibility and that I should either run DNS on my server, or get an account on hostrockets, rocketcontrol DNS server, and create my own entries. I didn't feel comfortable with doing so....as I don't know exactly how to create all the proper backwardly, translated DNS entries...even though I did lots of research on the net. There could be some better communication from HR on this one and a how to create properly formed DNS A records, and C-Name entries using industry standard methods...FAQ.
An example of how they do this on the shared servers would be excellent.
6. When I switched DNS to the new dedicated server, I didn't realize that I had to cancel my shared accounts. I got a credit card charge notification for both the dedicated and the shared. Just an issue of communication again.
7. I'm not sure what to do about server backups. There is a configuration section in the root control panel, but where are the backups being backed up to? I can download my accounts backups daily, or weekly if I want, but I'm afraid of losing the whole server. What is HR best practice advice to customers for dedicated servers? Again, Documentation would be key!
8. The server seems a bit slow. I'm wondering if this is because the hard drive is IDE, and not a raided SCSI drive. Are their any performance enhancements that can be done to speed this up? I also noticed that they are not 7200RPM drives either.
9. I had problems with my cron jobs being corrupted in the move. I would suggest for users to NOT use the control panel to modify their cron jobs. Use crontab -l to list and crontab -e to edit, which edits in VI editor. That really threw me for a loop for a while. I don't know why they were corrupted, but a couple of them were.
Let me also clarify this. I have about 11 or 12 cronjobs. If you have one or two, you may not experience any issues using control panel to modify them.
10. The shared accounts stats could be viewed at http://www.domain.com/stats/ which could be password protected. With the dedicated server, you must login to the control panel to view the states. Maybe there is a way to make a link, but I haven't figured out how. This is just a difference, not a problem.
Most of the changes that were moved over from the shared accounts moved over nicely and I haven't had any problems. The list above is just some of the caveats that I had that could be averted and avoided with some better documentation, FAQs, and communicationon HR's part.
Overall I'm very happy with the server though except for the seemingly slow disks. When I say seemingly slow, that is an opinion. I do not have any technical data to support that.
Thanks
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I signed up for a dedicated server a couple of months ago after being a shared customer for a couple of years, maybe 3 (don't remember). Prior to coming to Hostrocket, I was with two other host providers.
Hostrocket on the shared side has been generally good. I haven't had too many problems that couldn't be fixed with a good converstaion with a tech that's willing to listen (after creating a ticket).
I wanted to move to a dedicated server because of disk space issues. In my opinion, disk space is something that HR needs to look into. I realize you are in the business of making money, but 100MG of total mail space for a single domain is just not suitable for any domains that have more than 2 mail boxes. I was also running out of diskspace on one of my accounts and I upgraded that and quickly ran out again.
When I signed up for the dedicated server, I found a couple of things to be lacking.
1. There wasn't much communication. It was kind of like, "Here you go - Have fun!" I don't expect HR to do all the admin for me, but a little help guide, or step by step process for getting everything working as it once was on the shared account would have been nice.
2. There seems to be no FAQ for the dedicated server. There are like 5 articles, which are basic, for the super novice.
The control panel is fantastic. I've had a couple of UNIX/LINUX admins take a look at my server, and they as admins were pretty impressed with the control panel. I would say that it's a must have.
I also really like the billing/invoice information that is provided in the dedicated server console. It's way better than what is provided in the shared account support login site. As a person who has been audited, the ability to quickly and easily print out clear and understandable invoices is important to me.
There are features that are way way better than the shared servers, such as the mail configuration section. I like the abilty to manage my own Mail DNS aliasing. I also like the professional mailman mailing list server software. It's much better than the mailling list server software that comes with the shared account.
There are other features that I had to configure and setup in the root server control panel that weren't obvious and that weren't documented, but I got there. My professional background is with Windows NT/2000 servers at the corporate level, so I'm not just a server newbie, but my experience with Linux/Unix has been more from an end=user than a server admin. Stuff like re-compiling Apache to include updates to PHP and MySQL, and a few other minor things.
Here are some problems I had with my initial setup.
1. I didn't know what the URL was for accesssing webmail. It is different than the shared servers. On the dedicated servers use http://www.domain.com/webmail
2. I initially had problems getting into the control panel of my accounts. There was an error when accessing the control panel so I created a ticket. The problem turned out to be that there wasn't an "hrcp" them, whatever that is. I didn't know this....but the HR tech fixed it for me and told me afterwards.
3. Another thing, is that I had some parked domains, and domain pointers on the shared server...and when I moved to the dedicated server, I wanted those split out as part of my original request. This was not automatically done, but in the end, and with alot of asking, the HR guys helped me get it setup. It was not smooth, but it eventually got there. I think that it could have gone smoother if the HR techs would have read my original ticket a little closer.
4. I also had a little problem with MySQL while logged in as one of the account instead of root. With the shared servers, you can drop, copy, and create databases with PHPMyAdmin. You can't do this with the accounts on my dedicated server. For the longest time I thought something was wrong, but then I realized that the dedicated server has "packages" setup. The packages that I have defined has 10 MySQL databases. I realized that I could create databases with the control panel, but not with PHPMyAdmin. This could be because I updated MySQL and it's using the default settings, or it could be that the control panel software has it set to that I must use the account's control panel for each account to create the databases so that I don't go over my quota. Either way, this was confusing and really caused some frustration for a while.
5. DNS issues. When I moved to the new dedicated server, and setup everything on the new accounts and tested the new server, and sent in a ticket to HR to switch the DNS...the DNS was switched. However, a few days later, when I created a new account on my server, which did not previously have a DNS entry. I sent in a ticket to HR have them create it. I preferred not to run DNS On my server. That's just one more thing to take resources, and one more thing for me to mess up. I'd rather have professionals running this. I got a negative response from one of the HR staff telling me that it was my responsibility and that I should either run DNS on my server, or get an account on hostrockets, rocketcontrol DNS server, and create my own entries. I didn't feel comfortable with doing so....as I don't know exactly how to create all the proper backwardly, translated DNS entries...even though I did lots of research on the net. There could be some better communication from HR on this one and a how to create properly formed DNS A records, and C-Name entries using industry standard methods...FAQ.
An example of how they do this on the shared servers would be excellent.
6. When I switched DNS to the new dedicated server, I didn't realize that I had to cancel my shared accounts. I got a credit card charge notification for both the dedicated and the shared. Just an issue of communication again.
7. I'm not sure what to do about server backups. There is a configuration section in the root control panel, but where are the backups being backed up to? I can download my accounts backups daily, or weekly if I want, but I'm afraid of losing the whole server. What is HR best practice advice to customers for dedicated servers? Again, Documentation would be key!
8. The server seems a bit slow. I'm wondering if this is because the hard drive is IDE, and not a raided SCSI drive. Are their any performance enhancements that can be done to speed this up? I also noticed that they are not 7200RPM drives either.
9. I had problems with my cron jobs being corrupted in the move. I would suggest for users to NOT use the control panel to modify their cron jobs. Use crontab -l to list and crontab -e to edit, which edits in VI editor. That really threw me for a loop for a while. I don't know why they were corrupted, but a couple of them were.
Let me also clarify this. I have about 11 or 12 cronjobs. If you have one or two, you may not experience any issues using control panel to modify them.
10. The shared accounts stats could be viewed at http://www.domain.com/stats/ which could be password protected. With the dedicated server, you must login to the control panel to view the states. Maybe there is a way to make a link, but I haven't figured out how. This is just a difference, not a problem.
Most of the changes that were moved over from the shared accounts moved over nicely and I haven't had any problems. The list above is just some of the caveats that I had that could be averted and avoided with some better documentation, FAQs, and communicationon HR's part.
Overall I'm very happy with the server though except for the seemingly slow disks. When I say seemingly slow, that is an opinion. I do not have any technical data to support that.
Thanks
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