Questions about Axxess Cloud Hosting

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Krampus

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If anyone has experience with Cloud Hosting at Axxess, could you please answer some of the questions I have below?

Since Axxess does not bother to answer my questions ( rcp.axxess.co.za/ticketview.php?TicketId=kg37m87edg ) I hope that members of this community can answer them. BAD FORM, AXXESS, thank you for your big, fat zero in answering any questions when I actually want to give you more money every month! And for the rest of you, take note - caveat emptor.

At the outset, in the middle this year I WILL migrate all my websites to HostAfrica, but I simply do not have the time to effect these changes until much later in the year, I simply have to many critical things on my plate right now. So for the next 4-6 months I am stuck with Axxess and Axxess is stuck with me. Therefore the typical knee-jerk answers regarding the relative merits of hosting companies are not relevant here.

I should also mention I have adequate Linux experience to set up and maintain a LAMP server, but I have some experience in maintaining email systems and limited experience regarding DNS. What I don't have is time. And very little patience to fiddle at this point.

  1. I want to upgrade a domain (actually a few domains) to cloud hosting. I suspect it is not really cloud hosting in the Google or Amazon AWS sense but a virtualised VPS being sold as a cloud hosting account. Am I correct? To expand: Cloud hosting = running a virtualised service over many different servers and storage centers over the cloud to provide expandability, speed and redundancy; Virtualised Private Server: An instance under KVM or similar virtualisation providing a complete virtualised host with the cloud portion really meaning that it is available online.
  2. I assume Axxess Cloud Hosting a virtualised instance of Centos (no other Linux distros available) that offers standard shell access over SSH.
  3. I can do just about anything without CPanel and I read that CPANEL is an add-on on for a Cloud Hosting account. Will I need Cpanel for anything really? Is it recommended , or not?
  4. To what extent is anything pre-installed? I require a standard Lamp-based installation and the more is already configured, the better, I just don't have time to fiddle.
  5. Is Apache2 installed? Or do I do everything myself?
  6. Do I even have root access?
  7. I assume I will be able to use tools such as VIM?
  8. I assume I will be able to create symlinks to a shared PHP code directory?
  9. How is email handled? Do I do it myself or does Axxess provide their standard email services.
  10. I assume I can add numerous domains to that hosted service, at least as many as the limitations of the hosting package I get will comfortably handle, but does Axxess allow this under their end user agreement?
  11. I assume the domain registration services are as normal on Axxess, the registered domain points to the cloud hosting IP and Axxess handles all relevant DNS entries to that domain.
  12. I assume Axxess won't move the data on the present hosted account over, I will have to back up everything including MySQL data and upload on the new platform.
  13. I assume Axxess have no facilities for backup of that VPS cloud account as an additional service, I will have to do it all myself.
  14. I assume Axxess does zero management on Cloud Hosted platforms, everything will be up to me with regards to monitoring of server logs, handling email spam, security etc.
  15. I assume that Axxess will leave the present website in place while the cloud hosting platform is being set up, or is it a question of flicking a switch and the old is dead and the new is dead as well, until set up of course?
  16. Is there anything else I should know, such as things Axxess won't allow for instance?
  17. And then the (always) thorny issue of custom CGI scripts. I have none right now because none will allow it, but if possible, I would like to dip into the development of a few small things. Can I do it on Axxess Cloud Hosting? Any limitations or restrictions I should know about?

Any advice by the community will be appreciated
 
So, you already "hate" axxess and still want to use their services? Reading your questions, I can only see why Axxess hasn't replied.

So, here are some of my questions:

1. Have you tried finding the info yourself?
2. Do you really need cloud hosting?
3. Does your servers have to be in SA?
4. Have you looked at other companies?
 
Thank you for replying, it presented the opportunity to think about what I
really required.

> So, you already "hate" axxess and still want to use their services? Reading your questions, I can only see why Axxess hasn't replied.

I love the products of Axxess, I hate their crappy support. A CRITICAL ISSUE was recently sorted out in the third year and resulted in the loss of a client. I cannot say that Axxess did not reply to my questions, because their autoresponder did reply. I don't have a mission to paint Axxess as bad, but I will not hide my own experience with them. My interaction with Axxess is limited only to their Hosting support, for all that I know every other service has sterling support. If you imply that Axxess does not reply to problems when they don't like the tone being used, they must then tell me to f*-off and I will gladly f*-off, my initial questions to Axxess were civil and polite IMHO.

> 1. Have you tried finding the info yourself?

Yes. Axxess supplies, CPU's, price, disk space and bandwidth plus a button to sign up. Googling does supply quite a bit of info, mainly from MyBroadband.co.za. But nothing answered my basic question what is Axxess really offering, a glorified VPS or a true Cloud Hosting offering. Given the silence by Axxess I wanted answers, not dating back to 2008, but answers coming from the actual 2018 experience of users of Axxess Cloud Hosting.

> 2. Do you really need cloud hosting?

No, I don't need root access at all. I need: SSH access. Bash. Vim. My custom scripts below the root of PUBLIC_HTML for fast backups, bulk installation of critical update code, custom installation of platforms for new sites - exactly what I do on the development server. Better file uploading than FTP, preferably SCP. SQLITE and custom CGI scripts for evaluation, and possible future use. The possibility of Ruby, somewhere in the future. I rarely use CPanel other than to create FTP and email accounts. Also the ability to upload an entire directory as a tar.gz file and extract it without the frustration of using FTP and extracting that file using File Manager of Cpanel which was the one event that started me on this path for a different solution.

> 3. Does your servers have to be in SA?

Yes, I now host co.za sites in SA - the reason being that the new co.za registration process is a real headache to use if that domain is hosted overseas. Many have argued with me over this in the past, but my headaches disappear when whoever registers the co.za domain also hosts it. Before the new co.za process it was easy and much cheaper to register a domain myself and host it on a server outside of South Africa, but I can no longer do that. I have a prime hosting account with Bluehost where I have half a dozen sites all belonging to one client. Many requirements in 2 are present at Bluehost, but not all and ever since Bluehost has been sold, I become more motivated to leave them every time I have to endure their help as a live chat ex Gujarat. Some sites (that I maintain only) are on Hetzner (SA and Germany), Mweb, Web Africa and Afrihost.

> 4. Have you looked at other companies?

Yes. I liked HostAfrica and the testimonials (on this forum) made me feel good about it. But that is a long-term thing and a big project, I don't wan't to fix many things that aren't broken for the sake of fixing one thing that has a problem. I have a specific requirement involving one site that I have to solve today. For now, an Axxess VPS (yes it is called Cloud Hosting) will fit the bill and the one other reply I got so far was invaluable in pointing out major pitfalls I would have blundered right into.
 
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Good stuff.

Okay, I wouldn't recommend Axxess as well, as I tried them last year, for a simple linux shared hosted site. Support is non-existing.

My advise would be, to get a reseller account from domains.co.za. Transfer all your domains to them and you would have greater control.
Then you get a VPS from someone that actually does have support. I would have suggested Digital Ocean, but they don't have servers in SA, but if you are only hosting wordpress sites or similar, I don't see why the VPS has to be in SA...

I have a VPS in Germany and all my .co.za and .com sites are hosted on it.
 
Hi,
Thanks for your feedback.

I have decided to take the plunge and get a mini-cloud hosting site with Axxess, the price is trivial at R10 per day and I need it for one specific domain right now. If need be I can move in a month or two. So far everything is easy to set up and took less time than I expected. What a pleasure to be able to use rsync!

What I should do is to use this thread to document what I have done and let that serve as a guide for others, but also to get knowledgeable people to say to me, hang on, that is wrong or insecure, or there is a better way.

I will certainly keep your advice in mind for the future.
 
Hi Krampus,

Can you give us a rundown of your experience with Axxess Cloud thus far please.

Thanks
 
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