Afrihost is awful (again)

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joes3029

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So, it's been a fun few days. On Wednesday, I received an email from Afrihost with 'Great news'...

'...brand new hosting environment for our Windows servers. This new environment will necessitate a change of IP address as it utilises a different IP range.'

'...we require your Administrator password.'

'Your server will be Shut Down 09 May 2016 at 19:00pm in order to complete
its migration'

'...this move is not optional'

I've got a Windows and a Linux server with Afrihost, I also have many more VPSs with another 5 VPS providers. Between all of the other 5, I can count the number of issues I've had with my servers on one hand, with Afrihost I'd run out of hands.

Afrihost staff regularly (hard) reboot the servers, don't provide backups and any contact with actual server admins has to go through 1st tier support - I've never had the chance to speak to someone who actually manages the infrastructure. Connectivity is slow and they completely lost my Linux server last year, requiring me to do an urgent full rebuild and recovery from my own backups.

Fortunately I'd already moved the mail off of the Windows server, and the IIS sites were moved on Thursday. I no longer need the Afrihost Windows server, and it's being cancelled tomorrow.

Then my Afrihost Linux server went down this morning, at 9am. After fruitless attempts to call them, their email support tells me that the server was shut down by their admins because it's not running VM Tools. Despite my pleas, it's nine hours later and the server is still down. Calls are (still) not being answered.

:mad:

It's fine. I'll move the services running there to another provider (Isoho.st remain a clear favourite). But I can state categorically that Afrihost is a poor, poor choice for anyone wanting anything other than some bull**** Fisher Price™ 'My First VPS' server. I've been disappointed in their service, I've been disappointed in their support, and I recommend, as strongly as I can, that people steer well clear.

Tl; Dr for those who need:
Do not buy Afrihost Cloud Hosting, you will regret it.
 
Had similar issues with my hosted mail servers. Non stop issues and support was abysmal.
Moved to another provider 6 months ago and have yet to log a support ticket :-)

Vote with your wallet because they dont give a f¥ck except to take your money.
 
Hey joes3029

Sorry to hear you've had a poor experience with us.
There shouldn't have been substantial downtime during the migration you mention from your mail.

You've brought up a few queries though, happy to run through them with you one at a time and get you in touch with one of our server guys to review what's gone wrong. Regular reboots are never cool to go through :(

As for VMWare Tools - it's a requirement to have this running on the server.

Shoot me a PM if you'd like to run through a few things :)
 
AfriGuy said:
Hey joes3029

Sorry to hear you've had a poor experience with us.
There shouldn't have been substantial downtime during the migration you mention from your mail.

You've brought up a few queries though, happy to run through them with you one at a time and get you in touch with one of our server guys to review what's gone wrong. Regular reboots are never cool to go through :(

As for VMWare Tools - it's a requirement to have this running on the server.

Shoot me a PM if you'd like to run through a few things :)
Click to expand...

After more phone calls, I managed to get the server back up at 8:30am - that's 23 and a half hours of unnecessary downtime. I've also installed open-vm-tools as requested. As I've already said, this is not the first time I've had this kind of support failure from you guys. My business is run on the promises I make to clients, and I can only keep my promises if my suppliers keep theirs.

I still find it astonishing that every other VPS provider I use offers (and delivers) 24/7 support, while the 'ISP of the Year' does not. My only conclusion is that your Cloud products are simply not a professional offering, and should not be branded as such.

My Windows server services have already been moved, so I no longer need that server on your side. My Linux server is following, and services there should be transferred by the end of the week. I'd like to think that this incident may act as a wake up call for your Cloud department, but since this last failure is just history repeating itself the only thing I can offer is my condolences to your remaining Cloud customers.
 
Afrihost have responded:

"The server is no longer suspended now.

If there is anything else you need please let us know.

Also in future keep in mind when any kernel updates take place it stops vm tools and if this happens they will stop the server again."

There seems to be a fundamental disconnect going on here - instead of warning me, Afrihost will instead simply switch off the server. I don't have an option to turn it back on myself (that portion of their Clientzone control panel was disabled for me and was only reinstated when they restarted the server), my only hope is to contact tier one support, beg them to send a support ticket to the server admins to whom I'm not allowed to speak, and pray that they'll action it at some point that day or the next.

This is not acceptable customer service.
 
joes3029 said:
This is not acceptable customer service.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I've been with several cloud hosting providers and none of them turned off my servers because I didn't have some sort of tool installed that they require. They also don't threaten to turn off my server for no reason other than not keeping up with kernel updates or running said tools after the kernel update stopped them.

I've been saying for years (and others agree). Afrihost has lost it's core business... hosting... they'd rather sell you bandwidth now, they have no ****ing clue as to how a hosting company works or operates anymore
 
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