Sales
Experiences: 9/10
Sales with dedicatednow has been pretty consistent.
The first server that I purchased through them
was during a big rush of sales that they had due
to another datacenter having uptime issues. The
setup of the server lagged a bit because of some
cpanel problems that were occuring with that particular
batch of installs. Matthew, one of DedicatedNow's
sales people, made sure that he emailed us to
let us know what was going on, and the box came
online shortly after.
Another good thing
about their sales is that they offer several items
(ram, hard drives, rrp's, etc) as one-time-fees.
If you're staying long-term, it's nice to be able
to purchase an extra drive or whatever and not
have to pay each month.
Pricing:
9/10
The pricing is a bit higher than some other budget
providers out there - however I do believe that
you do get exactly what you pay for. For the extra
money invested - I feel that it's definitely worth
it. I also have a feeling that they may be retooling
their offerings when they reopen sales - not that
I know for sure, but I have a feeling about it
Network:
10/10
When I started, I believe I was on "Nac DJCN".
After some problems with that and their growth,
they bit the bullet and went to full-on nac premium
bandwidth. This bandwidth is *great* - I can't
find fault in it. Latency is consistently low,
and of the customer base that we have, which includes
lots of overseas customers, we get less complaints
about latency/PL than we do with other datacenters.
Currently, they're
re-ordering their network into individual VLAN's,
whereas if you ordered a server before it was
not on one. Haven't gone through this process
yet with ours, but in the past VLAN customers
were not affected by network blips that 'regular'
customers were.
One other thing that
caused much controversy was the change of allotted
bandwidth allowed with each server. When I signed
up, it was 500 gigs in+out. This has been changed
to 500gigs in + 500 gigs out - this is a non-issue,
as we never hit the ceiling with the previous
setup anyway. It may be important to those who
run streaming services or whatnot through their
boxen there, so I thought I'd note it.
For a graphical overview
of a 'typical' month there, see the attached graphic.
I chose a random month, yet most months are about
the same. Last month had some scheduled downtime
not noted in the graphic, and this month isn't
long enough to make an accurate graph, so I included
november as an example. This is as monitored from
the ev1 datacenter on 90 second intervals, with
'service warning' meaning latency/pl and 'service
critical' meaning downtime.
Server
Setup/Hardware: 8/10
When I signed up originally, I signed up for a
1.7 ghz p4 cpu server - this particular motherboard/cpu
combo was the reason why they earned an '8'. The
chipset that was used for this particular server
build was a non-intel chipset. Recompilations
of the kernel worked fine for a while, but then
at some version of the kernel the disk IO drivers
must have changed - the server wasn't really as
stable anymore due to this, and I had to revert
kernel versions to keep the server up. Later,
that started not working as well either - so we
swapped the memory on it. That didn't fix it either...
So I upgraded to
a p4 2.4 on this particular machine - this one
uses an intel chipset, and it's been absolutely
flawless since. The server is rock solid, and
kernel recompiles work just fine.
The remote reboot
port that they've issued to us has worked well
too, when it's (infrequently) required. There
have been some customers who have reported problems
with it, but I guess they're moving to an entire
new system with it - so this negative may go away
at some point in the future.
One thing that I
don't care for is the fact that they do not currently
sell dual xeon servers - I hope that they consider
selling these in the future, as I believe it'd
be a no-brainer to pick one of them up.
They do not sell
Redhat Enterprise, which at this time isn't really
a detracting point given my terrible past with
it ( see http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showt...threadid=229306
and be prepared to read a novel-length thread
for more details )
Support:
9/10
The single most important thing to us as a dedicated
server customer is that the company stand behind
us when need-be. They have done that, and done
it well.
They bill themselves
as an 'unmanaged' service provider - my experience
with them is anything but. For most normal day-to-day
things, we handle it without an issue - the only
things that we need help with are things that
cannot be done remotely. However, they have helped
us quickly and efficiently during times of crisis,
and *did not charge us when they could/should
have* during those times. You of course, shouldn't
expect that, but it highlights their supportive
nature.
One definite selling
point for them is that while they sell unmanaged
solutions, you can pay them by the hour to repair
whatever needs repairing. This makes for an excellent
backup solution, knowing that with a quick charge
of a credit card they'll do what's necessary.
I know that those that those looking for a 100%
managed solution for rock bottom prices don't
like that kinda thing, but system administration
time costs in either quality of service or monetarily
- make your choice.
Network outages and
maintainence announcements are handled with their
forum software. Whenever they can, they announce
any scheduled downtime ahead of time in their
forum. While I'd prefer a regular email list service
for this function, the forum works. You have to
'subscribe' to their forum to get the updates.
Communication is
something that I feel is important from any provider,
and this is where dedicatednow loses a point.
They've always been communicative, but in the
recent past with the sales halt and VLAN deployment,
they've been conspicuously silent. They have always
been very open in the past, and I'd like to see
them return to that regarding the service affecting
issues such as the vlan deployments. The locking
of said topics in their forum is sometimes a bit
overzealous (in my opinion) on these two topics,
but I'm sure that they'll update us when new information
is to be had.
The billing is nice
and easy to work with, and was even understanding
when we had some bank-related problems and had
to switch. I do however wish there were an easier
way to obtain invoices for the services rendered
- it does not appear as though there's an easy
way to get the full thing online.
Abuse Issues: 8/10
Much ado has been made recently about nac.net
and abuse issues in the recent past. My experience
with the abuse team has been good - they've simply
forwarded the information necessary to stop the
spam/spamvertized websites to me, and let me handle
it. They have a well-defined process for it, where
they'll take action only if we do not. Compared
to providers who yank the cat5 at the slightest
notice of any sort of abuse before contacting
the customer - this is a welcome feature of the
service.
However, they've
lost 2 whole points off of this for one main reason
- they had some issues with spews, in that they
didn't report that the spammers had been removed
in the newsgroup for some time - so their listing
grew and eventually started affecting email. This
has since been resolved, and we've noticed no
email issues since. They've been attacked unfairly
because of this at several large news sites -
but my direct experience with them is different.
Total
(sum): 53/60
In summary - I'm
quite happy with the service, support, and hardware
I've recieved from these guys. My dream is that
I can order a new, shiny, dual xeon from them
soon, so I hope that they get their sales ramped
up soon and take that suggestion into consideration.
If they don't, I guess I could just colo it
To matt,
jay, and crew - thanks for the good year, and
we look forward to continued business with you.
Originally
Post: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=243500
This Review was used with permission from the
original author.
