Brief aside: How is it possible for me to be just a “Novice” around here when I’ve been a member for over ten years?!
On to my review:
Just for some context: I am in my 20th year operating a tiny boutique hosting service. This is by choice because I tend to specialize in supporting emerging (a.k.a. “starving”) artists, authors, filmmakers, videographers, documentarians and so on. In my experience, creative people engaged in these endeavors make the most compelling and interesting customers, although they typically don’t have very deep pockets so you stay small as a result.
In March of 2021, I relocated my primary hosting service to a modest self-managed dedicated server at InterServer. I can now say without any hesitation at all that I love this company! This is something that I thought I would *never* say about *any* entity in the datacenter / hosting realm (probably because I originally edged my way into the industry from the electronics side of things in Silicon Valley back in the 1990’s.)
Everything was blissful until my server inexplicably went offline last week, on July 25th, and then again on July 28th.
Each time, I got a broken pipe at my end (‘top’ via ssh on my desktop) and the logs simply indicated the network connection dropping off.
The first incident was resolved in ten minutes with a reboot, which understandably left me with a bit of a nagging concern (“Were they working on the network or something?”)
The second incident was resolved in under three hours with a NIC (mainboard) replacement, well within their stated TOS.
I have been building, configuring, maintaining and operating *NIX CISC/RISC systems for decades and I’ve always tended to favor OEM ‘sane defauts’ (I learned many years ago to avoid ‘server jockeys’ at all costs.)
InterServer’s support staff didn’t blow me off or attempt to imply that I’d somehow broken my own server.
On their own initiative, the second time this problem arose, they immediately investigated and fixed the server. And they were extremely polite in the process.
Whenever a company ‘just delivers’ like this, I think they deserve an acknowledgement. So here it is. I hope you’ll keep this in mind if you’re looking for a dedicated server.
