Rackspace Cloud - Managed Service Level worth it?

Anyone with experience? I'm moving over from Godaddy hosting and the sales rep I spoke with was pushing it. I'm pretty tech savvy and typically can figure out most stuff on my own. So it seems the main benefits are the updates/patching and 24 hour monitoring. Not sure if that's worth $187/month ($100 account fee and $87 service fee). Thoughts?

 

No no no no.... well ok I don't know what you're hosting but in generic terms, no.

Get your own (managed) VPS for ~60 bucks a month and you'll have complete access (root) and 1/3rd the cost.

I have used dozens of hosting companies and I'd STRONGLY recommend futurehosting.

Here's how you play the game: Go to WHT (web hosting talk) and look in their hosting offers section for a posting from futurehosting. The deal of the day/week/month varies, but in general terms they will post coupon codes for about 50% off list price for life.

See... the hosting biz is sorta separated by knowledge. People who are not in the biz, go to a hosting company website and pay MSRP. Everyone in the biz goes to WHT, looks at the promotions section and pays like half. It's like knowing a secret knock. ;-)

If you're really in love with rackspace, don't be too surprised if you find a post from rackscape on WHT with a $99/month deal for the same thing you're looking at for $190.

Anyway, get a managed cpanel VPS from futurehosting and you get the best bang for the buck. The management is like 5 bucks a month more and when you cut that in half it is $2.50 a month and anything I need I just enter a ticket and it is done. WELL worth 30 bucks a year!

Even if I label a ticket low priority, I've never had a ticket open more than about 12 hours and that was when it was a real weird problem. I have (I dunno) about 5 VPSs with them and I'd say that 90% of my tickets are resolved in under 4 hours. and probably 50% under 90 minutes. And that include low priority software installs etc. "System Down" tickets are usually like 15 - 30 minutes.

Non-disclaimer. I have no affiliation with the company other than being being a very satisfied client. When I quit running my own servers, I originally put all my VPSs with different hosting companies in for redundancy. I've slowly moved everything to FH and just put them in different cities. ... I give away a bit of redundancy for dealing with nearly excellent customer service and very low prices. (not a bad combo) I ran my own servers for years but decided the stress was not worth it. Now I let someone else run the server level stuff and I run the application level stuff for my companies.

If you tell me what you're hosting I can give you better advice. If it is not for public consumption, PM me. I have decades in this business and I'll help ya any way I can. But no matter who you pick, WHT probably can save you half off their published prices.

 

430man...thanks, great stuff!! I have a VPS with GoDaddy right now but I've had issues with them and they charge a decent amount for their managed service. I think it was something like $150/month for 2gb RAM, 30GB storage and 1TB bw, managed service and Plesk. I'm not determined to go with Rackspace, I've just seen their name a bunch of times and they have a good reputation.

I'll definitely check out WHT and see what kind of deals are there. $2.50 a month for management is a steal! Time saved is well worth that.

Hosting wise, I've got 10 domains total. 8 of them get very low traffic, 1 is a sports website that doesn't have huge traffic at the moment but has alot of video and hopefully large traffic soon, and the last is an ecommerce site that is in the same boat, no traffic now but that will change.

What does your VPS have for specs?

 

We are a multi server client of Rackspace and use managed services for some pieces of the puzzle, but are not a Cloud based customer. They hold multiple servers of ours, in multiple physical locations (I'm paranoid about redundancy), manage our VPN, manage our "Managed Backup", and assist deeply with our firewall configurations and PCI compliance for credit card processing.

If you're interested in a Rackspace referral, give me a call at Ricambi. We have been on their servers for about 4 or 5 years, and have been literally "over the moon" happy with the service we get and the value received. As somebody that came from the I.T. world myself, I can honestly say that Rackspace is the most skilled and professional organization in this arena that I've ever encountered.

(Yes, it is obscenely expensive. Call me and we'll chat about why I'd happily pay even more if they asked. The service is that good.)

 

I have various VPSs from (I think about) 20GB up to about 100GB.

FH posts various deals at WHT as they have new hardware come on line. If they have a lot of disk space in the datacenter they run specials with double disk space. (etc... )

Some of the deals have been unlimited bandwidth. I put my heavy sites on those. The 'advanced tip' is that with FH they will give you that deal on multiple VPSs later. (or they always have for me) So if they run a killer deal and you buy in, a year later you can email support and they will set you up another VPS with the same specs at the same price. (they don't advertise this but I've never had them not do it) The deals are supposedly for new clients only but they have always let me cheat.

In a few months/years, when hosting comes down and your needs go up, watch WHT until they run a deal you like and use a different email address to use that coupon code. Then either keep both (which is what I do) or if you're really a tightwad, move all the domains and shut down the old VPS. In my book, I don't mind paying 'last years' prices (within reason) for existing VPSs but if I buy new stuff I want the WHT deal, I don't want to pay retail. I believe FH knows that many people do this but they don't care. They know it is a competitive business and you have to give long term clients a break.

From what you've described, I'd recommend then 100%. I give their service an 8-9 and pricing an 11. To get service up to a 9-10 you'll pay triple in my experience.

(Your godaddy pricing is crazy BTW.)

 

Also the VPSs come with your own DNS server so keep your domains registered at GD and set the dns servers in your domain manager. Another 'advanced advanced tip' I buy a separate domain for my DNS management.

If your name is Joe Smith buy jsdns.info or similar. Most people have the urge to set up mymaindomain.com as their dns servers (for you the sports site) Don't do this.

To run your own DNS servers you need to 'register' them (you do this thru godaddy but I don't recall where in their user interface, you have to hunt for it.) if you set up ns1.mymaindomain.com and ns2.mymaindomain.com on a server and you want to move that domain to another server you just set yourself a trap because your nameserver is hardwired to that ip address. (that might be clear as mud, sorry)

Bottom line, don't do this. Spend the 10 bucks a year on a domain just for your DNS server. It makes life much easier of you ever move to another server.

Edit: After thinking about his while I took a ride to the store, if this confuses you, don't buy the dns domain from godaddy. If you buy the dns domain from FH, when you open the account, I'm 99% sure they set up the DNS servers for you automatically. If they do not, send in a trouble ticket and after cpanel is finished generating (I think about an hour) they will do it for you. Either way, if you don't understand DNS server registration, it is worth the 5 bucks to get them to do it.

 

Jack - thanks for chiming in, glad to hear you've had good experiences with them. Your comments are consistent with the others I've heard. I may be leaning towards Future Hosting as 430man recommended due to bang for the buck but I'd still like to give you a quick call tomorrow.

430man - I checked WHT and Future Hosting has a deal for their titanium VPS...$54/month for a hell of a deal, managed and 40% off for life. Unreal how much more value there is compared to what I have now. They seem like they have a good rep and have been around for 10 years so that's always a good sign. I'm assuming you have no uptime issues since you've been with them so long?

Do they take backups for you? Or is there some kind of FTP backup I can do locally?

I'm a little confused with the DNS tip, could you explain the benefit of it? Sounds like I should just have them take care of it.

 

Very little uptime issues. I have several programmers developing code and sometimes one of them kills something. So sometimes my VPS will crash. But that's a 'me problem.' As far as network grief, I think in the time I've been with them (nearly 5 years I think) I think they have had two maybe three episodes. One time they had a router blow and that was longish.. like 5 hours I think. But in general terms they are rock solid. I'm sure someone out there has better uptime, I'm not saying they are the best on the planet, but read around WHT and you'll hear all sorts of uptime and support nightmares. I've never had any of that drama. With all the VPSs and all the years I've been with them, I'd say that maybe 3 or 4 times I've been annoyed at them for something. I push my servers hard and I'm pretty critical of -unreasonable- downtime and poor service so if they only annoyed me 3 or 4 times, they must be fantastic! lol (Note the word 'unreasonable;' sometimes stuff happens. As long as they fix it quick my tolerance for the small stuff is pretty high.)

They do have a backup service, I forget how it works, they used to charge an unreasonable amount for it but I think I remember an email a while back where they made it much cheaper. I do my backups local so I'm not sure how it works.

Just let them set up the dns. You can buy a domain during the VPS ordering process. Do that. It will probably take you 2 hours to learn how to do it and they only charge like 5 bucks more for a domain than GD does so unless you work for 2.50 and hour, let them do it.

Just be advised that after they build your VPS it takes Cpanel about an hour [and yes switch to Cpanel] or so to generate. Then you have two more 'gotchas' that might get you. Sometimes cpanel/WHM does not license itself properly. If you go to your WHM and it says it is not licensed, DO NOT click the link and try to figure it out, just send a ticket. (there is a trick to it I never can remember) Also you need to set up two dns servers. ns1.yourdnsdomain.xxx and ns2.yourdnsdomain.xxx Just send a ticket and they will do it. (you do this in WHM if you want to try it yourself)

Allow (um I think) about 2 hours or maybe a bit more for the whole installation and customization process but most of that time you're just waiting. It's not too bad.

OK I know this is a lot to read but I'm trying to transfer as much of my experience into your brain as I can.

good luck

 

How did you get 40% for life? Code?

 

The exact deal I purchased is the Titanium VPS cPanel managed for 53.92/month, with lifetime 40% off. Really is a hell of a deal, should give me some room to grow and so far everything is going pretty smooth. Support is done completely through the ticket system, I don't see a phone # to call. They are very responsive with them though, I had 3 tickets yesterday and all were assigned within 5 minutes and responded to in 10-15. The thread for that deal is here:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1005490

430man - I can live with small issues a couple times per year, with GoDaddy it seemed like every few weeks there was some kind of issue. A few weeks ago I couldn't FTP for 3 days because of a known issue. Like you said, unreasonable downtime is whats inexcusable.

I pulled the trigger yesterday, speeds are much faster already and cpanel (to me) is much easier to use. Im curious to see how much load this server can handle. Thanks for the DNS tip btw, as I was going through the registration process it clicked and made sense. Took a couple hours and was all set. Now I just need to find a local backup solution.

Thanks for the advice, beers are on me!

 

Well cool, that's about $130 a month cheaper than you started. Glad it worked out for you.

BTW Install and 'system down' tickets are top priority. Vanilla "Hey recompile Apache with this mod for me" tickets are slower. (but still we're talking tens of minutes to a few hours not days)

Lemme know if you have any issues, but it sounds like you're well on your way. Good Luck.

 

Ok, I understand now. I thought you were saying 40% off the $53.92.

They don't have any phone support? That's a little scary.

 

Funny you mention recompiling, yesterday I had PHP recompiled with mySQLi and it went like this:

-Submitted ticket asking to recompile
-Less than 5 minutes later I get a reply saying no problem, site will be down for about 20 minutes. Is that ok?
-I reply "Go Ahead!"
-20 minutes after that I get an email saying its done

And I submitted it with just a basic low priority support ticket. They've been very responsive so far. Thanks again.

It did seem a bit weird at first but I honestly like the ticket system. As I said they're really good about getting tickets assigned and taken care of quickly, and I'd rather not be on the phone every time I need something done. I can keep working on other stuff in the meantime.

 

I think they might have hired a few more support people. For several years, it was the same 4-5 names on every support ticket, depending on what time if day. I noted lately I see all sorts of names I do not recognize and at least one of them (I forget it was a girl's name) was really good.

As far as not having a phone number, that bothered me at first, but I read the dozens of reviews on WHT and back then, the owner was doing sales and answering emails. I traded about 5 pre-sales questions before I signed up. They also have (or had) a 30 money back guarantee. After a few months, I started moving all my VPSs to them and have never looked back.

OK now the super secret tip.... at the bottom of every email on your ticket they ask you to take a survey on how they did. If they really overtly bomb on a ticket, dog them in the survey and your stuff gets fixed pronto. -- That's my nuclear weapon. I've only used it maybe 2 or 3 times but if they really are dropping the ball, let them know and they make it right. I get the feeling that management really watches the surveys closely. (of course, common sense applies, only dog them if they really did drop the ball.)

 

Not having a phone number would set me off as well, but if you say that their ticketing is so good that you never need to call them then I guess that's alright then. I was over at WHT and check out the different offers as well and I must say there are several good codes, especially one ix webhosting coupon code. But I still need to think things through.