How I bought the server in ServerLoft

Day 0: Prehistory

On March 27, at approximately 22.35 Moscow time, I received a text message - “Ping: alpha @ Hosting.UA is down”. Three more followed, the beta, gamma, and delta servers also felt bad. “Okay, they sometimes have it, now everything will come back,” I thought, and went to sleep quietly. In the morning an unpleasant surprise was waiting for me - a good friend called me and told me that Hosting.UA had burned down. There was no official information from them, therefore there was no point in waiting. It was necessary to urgently find at least one server to deploy backups. I did not want to host more within the CIS, but I wanted to keep a good ping. Googling and testing the connection, it was decided to stop at Germany, and in it, in turn, I stopped at two providers of dedicated servers - Hetzner.de and serverloft.com (serverloft.eu to be exact).
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Day 1: I want German quality

In the hetzner, the cheapest server was ordered for 49 euros, for “urgent things”, and in server-machine I took a slightly more solid server, which was to serve as a platform for deploying the part of the backups that was found. In the case of server-based software on the server, I needed FreeBSD, to which the sales team responded that they only had Linux, but I could install any OS via iRMC (Fujitsu remote console, an analogue of HP iLO and other systems). Well, I said, and made an order.

On the same day, we received answers from the hetzner and serverloft - they say, thank you, dear, for the order. Well, I think half the job is done. It turned out that not everything is so simple ...

Day 2: Houston, we got a problem ...

In the morning I first checked my credit card. Hetzner charged 41 euros (it turned out that the price includes VAT, which non-residents of Germany do not have to pay). Linux was automatically poured into the server from the panel, I put the Tomcot there with all the reasons and returned the programmers to work. Serverloft, on the contrary, added VAT to the price indicated on the site, and without asking for my location, I charged over 90 euros, instead of 79. I waited for the server setup until the evening, finally, at about 22.00 MSK I received a letter that the server was successfully installed and I can use it. The billing period began from the moment of payment, tobish a day ago. Such little things stealing should have given a hint, but intuition was tired at that moment and went to sleep. Okay, I think, it is not critical, the main thing is to be able to work ...

I downloaded a fresh image of FreeBSD and, with anticipation of magical manipulations, got into iRMC. It turned out that it does not work. Around 23.00, I opened a ticket that I would like him to earn and start to wait. After four hours, in despair, I went to bed.

Day 3: The Silence of the Lambs

All morning I went on business and returned only for dinner. It turned out that no one answered the ticket. The little things of yesterday gathered together and it became clear that it was necessary to impose, otherwise the case will not move anywhere. I dialed the server server phone that hangs on their site. A dear supporter was stressed, using a terrible mixture of English, German and Arabic (!), Explained with great difficulty that by phone they only solve sales and billing issues, and the phone support indicated on 24/7 is that they can talk “Please open the ticket”. There was no one to talk to. A little thought, I decided to go on the other hand - the site was a standard love from LivePerson. In the live chat, they politely told me that now none of the technicians are there, but they will certainly give to the technicians as soon as they return, that there is such a problem. Finally, at 23:00 Moscow time, the answer to the ticket came - “you need to put Linux on the server and configure iRMC through the scripts that lie there”. Okay, I think, figured out. Suppose I lost another day, but at least some result. Fortunately, the automatic installation of the OS is there, after an hour I configured the iRMC and, having prepared the FreeBSD image, went to install it.

But it was not there. Clicking on the “Remote storage” section in iRMC, I saw an inscription that gave me an enchanting surprise: “You need to activate this feature.”. A similar inscription appeared in the section with a remote console. Reluctant, I opened a new ticket with a description of the problem.

Day 4: And the pens, here they are ...

Surprisingly, I received the answer quickly - the very next day, i.e. just ten to twelve hours. The answer contained the following: “We do not provide all the options of the iRMC console. To use the Remote Storage and Remote Console features, you must purchase a license directly from Fujitsu. ” Google instantly informed me that advanced pack (license) costs about 300 pounds (~ 13,500 rubles). It was the last drop of German quality, the glass of my patience overflowed and I opened the ticket addressed to the sales - “I want a money back, take your everything and give the money”. The answer came around midnight and contained an old mocking, but legal move to keep the client: “We are very sorry that you want to cancel the server. We want to make sure that it was you and no one else who submitted the request to cancel the server, so please send an application written by hand with your signature to our postal address in Germany ... ”.

It became clear that there is no money back. A paper letter will go a week or two, then it will be taken by the secretary from the a / I company, then it will wait for the signature / decision, in general, just by the end of the billing period, you can say - well, we will take money from you for 30 days used and for 1 so be it, the money will be refunded. I decided that the morning of the evening was wiser.

Day 5: Desperate Move

Options in general was not. I decided to spit on the loss of money and started looking for similar providers. After half an hour of searching, I realized that I should try to correct the situation anyway - the feedback on server-based software is generally good, the channels are excellent, and Fujitsu hardware, although cheap, but with a claim to the server one.

I decided to recall my turbulent admin past and try to solve the problem in a technical way. Having a little picking up the bookmarks, I remembered that there is a wonderful thing called mfsBSD. This is a set of scripts that makes a freebsd image that can be run from memory, writing data to the MBR from under any operating system, and when rebooting, get FreeBSD's installer. I configured the scripts, assembled the image, uploaded it to the server ... and the server did not boot. It was difficult to understand the reason for the lack of a full-fledged remote console, and the text-mode redirect that was built into Fujitsu showed emptiness. While I was trying to solve this problem, an answer came to one of the old tickets, which stated the following - “Quite by chance, from today we sell licenses for iRMC, cost 20 euros per month, but you can only buy them for servers on Xeon, and you Opteron. ”Ultimately, we agreed that they lower the server, and then they give me Xeon, who is a bit more expensive and I pay 20 euros for a license. Even though I agreed, I felt that something was going wrong here. So it happened.

After lunch, the server was turned off. And along with it the account, thereby completely blocking access to tickets. After several hours it became clear that there was nothing to wait for and it is worth reminding about myself. On the phone, I was convincingly asked to open a ticket. The argument about the absence of the account did not help. The only means of communication was live chat, but there they answered only late at night - “You know, Kseonov is not available, you have to wait ...”. How many? “We will do our best tomorrow ...”

Day 6: No money and no honey ...

So, come the long-awaited tomorrow. So, I, as a client who have already paid my order, go to the guest live chat to remind you that it would be nice to get a server. It does not even matter what, the main thing to get. After rechecking, repeatedly asking for the ticket number and other details, the answers were as follows:

Xeonov is not available from the supplier and will not be in the near future. It is quite reasonable questions why this could not be checked before replacement and when will the Xeons be left unanswered. At the request of the Manibek, an attempt to speak with the management and the rest of the response was the same - “we are now having holidays, wait until Tuesday. Now only sales are working. Do we want to sell you a server? ”

An attempt to buy “remote hands” was also unsuccessful. I offered 50 euros for the fact that they just put the CD with fryahy in the server. They refused - "we do not provide such services."

The sixth day is actually today. Summing up, it turns out the following: the money was paid six days ago, the server was not there either. And not foreseen. It's a pity not 90 euros, which I already consider missing, figs with them. Sorry for the time. And now the search will have to start over. There were no problems with hezner, but they have not a very stable channel to Russia, therefore, unfortunately, they will not be able to keep the server.

PS Dear% username%, advise European Dedicated with an adequate channel to the Russian Federation and reasonable prices.
PPS Sorry for the picture, the Chukchi is not a painter :)