Switching away from Hetzner/MTN Business for dedicated hosting - suggestions?

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fluffypony

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Hi, I'm looking at switching away from Hetzner, and wouldn't want to touch anything powered by MTN Business for the foreseeable future. They are truly useless, and this year has been horrendous for them from an uptime and reliability perspective. Time to move on.

Criteria:

I don't want mom-and-pop ISP's/VISP's that want to host my stuff on their virtual server.
I currently have one TruServ Commerce dedicated server (http://www.hetzner.co.za/index.php/dedicated-hosting/index/dedicated-servers/truserv-commerce/) and may move to a second one to offload the database soon.
I won't touch IS - their support is horrendous.
Sorry MWEB, but until you get your peering junk sorted out with Telkom you're out the picture too.
I don't want to spend more than R5k a month (before out-of-package bandwidth spend), preferably closer to R3k.

I'm currently looking at AfriHost's Platinum product: http://www.afrihost.com/site/product/dedicated_hosting - I am concerned about the single Xeon quad-core processor, though. I'd prefer something a little beefier. I like the 16gb RAM that is standard - thumbs up for that.

Suggestions? Advice?
 
I've been using RSAWeb, happier with them then I was with Hetzner. Better service and less random issues.
 
we have 14 servers with Hetzner, and have often looked at moving away, but alas we cannot find better service and deals anywhere else (RSAweb and Afrihost looked good though)
 
garp said:
Is'nt Afrihost dedicated at IS?
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No clue - as long as there is a buffer between me and the useless IS staff it's all good in the hood. I miss Uunet:(

How can WebAfrica be a Tier 1 ISP if they don't even offer dedicated server hosting?
 
dotnerd: I'm solely moving away because MTNB has provided unstable and unreliable connectivity, and Hetzner has done nothing to provide redundancy. I'm not expecting them to dump MTNB as their provider, I'm expecting them to stop having a single point of failure. It's not acceptable for a vast data center to just assume that our mission-critical apps can go down whenever they want to. Also, running out of petrol in the generators is just shoddy planning.

Currently looking at ARC Telecoms hosting at Tereco.
 
fluffypony said:
dotnerd: I'm solely moving away because MTNB has provided unstable and unreliable connectivity, and Hetzner has done nothing to provide redundancy. I'm not expecting them to dump MTNB as their provider, I'm expecting them to stop having a single point of failure. It's not acceptable for a vast data center to just assume that our mission-critical apps can go down whenever they want to. Also, running out of petrol in the generators is just shoddy planning.

Currently looking at ARC Telecoms hosting at Tereco.
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Well I am not going to start an argument over how your assumptions, especially since I am very closely affiliated with the ISP in question. I can however ensure you that there has never been a case of a generator running out of fuel, definitely other technical issues which we cannot deny.

Thing is though once you go to a Third Party vendor you are as redundant as they have bought into with the ISP, if they did not cater for this properly then you really have no option either. Going with a ISP directly gets you options and access to whatever that ISP has in place, and lets be honest there really is only 1 properly scaled and deployed network in Africa.

I think that regardless of who you go to with your business you should make sure of what will be provided and what the consequences are for non or ill delivery.

Good luck!
 
dotnerd said:
never been a case of a generator running out of fuel, definitely other technical issues which we cannot deny.
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The genny diesel issue was at Hetzner CT, its one of the reasons I moved away from them for rack hosting. They only had 4 hours woth of fuel or something equally silly, not sure if it was the tank limit or someone forgot to fill it, but either scenario is equally worrying for a serious hosting provider.
 
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Bern said:
The genny diesel issue was at Hetzner CT, its one of the reasons I moved away from them for rack hosting. They only had 4 hours woth of fuel or something equally silly, not sure if it was the tank limit or someone forgot to fill it, but either scenario is equally worrying for a serious hosting provider.
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I understand now, thank you for elaborating.

offtopic: nice x201 ! I see they just launched the new X1! Can't wait to get it!
 
dotnerd said:
I understand now, thank you for elaborating.

offtopic: nice x201 ! I see they just launched the new X1! Can't wait to get it!
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[off topic]
I frikkin' love it, best laptop ever so far, robust, great screen (in light, minimal reflection) and so on. Plus ordered the below and it came with a Gobi 7.2Mbps 3G and GPS card which is great for my Cell C sim:D think it is standard from Pinnacle although not noted in the specs. You can get two for the price of the i5 X1, with the 3G and GPS such a bargain, plus A4 size fits in to so many places so well.

If you're a reseller go to Pinnacle's site and see how cheap they are now! If I waited a month a could have saved R1000.

X Series (NUSBEZA)
X201i, Intel Core i3-370M (2.40GHz, 3MB L3, 1066MHz), 2GB DDR3, 320GB/7200rpm, Intel HD Graphics, 12.1" WXGA LED Entry non-glossy, Gigabit Intel 6200 AGN (2x2), ENABLED, Modem, Bluetooth, Camera, No FPR, 6 cell cylindric, Express Card + 5-1 Media Card, Windows 7 Pro 32 NO BASE/BURNER IN BOX [off topic\]
 
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Seriously contemplating the same move as fluffypony. We use Hetzner for all our hosting where I work and there isn't a day that goes by where we don't experience an issue.

If it's not being able to access our Konsole via https://myaccount.hetzner.co.za/ it's an error on their systems e.g. after SSL certificate installation, they don't provide access to the public_ssl (only public_html). Then I have to email support and tell them to fix their system as they simply take no initiative to resolve the problem the first time it happens.

Today, during the regular "down time", (we're based in Cape Town) I sent Hetzner support a tracert to one of their SQL servers that we have databases hosted on. The tracert timed out after the 6th hop [fe11-1-0.gw1.cpt1.za.mtnbusiness.net] (I included the request timed out bit). Support emailed me back to say my tracert was incomplete and that I needed to provide the entire tracert.

Can you say facepalm?
 
we should be able to offer you guys reasonably spec'd hardware at a decent price. feel free to get in touch with us and we'll put together a quotation
 
We have also just cancelled with MTNB and have taken up the offer from GamCo. They have been advertising here for a while now and the pricing is very aggressive - works out to about a third of what we were paying at MTNB. They are reselling rack space in the Ambronex data center. We have been there and it all looks good, and it is a pleasure dealing with people that know what they doing... hopefully it goes well ;)
 
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