How I bought a server in ServerLoft

Day 0: Background

On March 27th, approximately at 22.35 Moscow time, I received an SMS - “Ping: alpha @ Hosting.UA is down”. Following her, three more, beta, gamma and delta servers also felt bad. “Okay, sometimes they have it, now everything will be back,” I thought, and calmly went to sleep. In the morning I was in for an unpleasant surprise - a good friend called me and told me that Hosting.UA had burned down. There was no official information from them, therefore it did not make sense to wait. It was urgent to find at least one server in order to deploy backups. I did not want to host anymore within the CIS, but I wanted to keep a good ping. Googling and testing the connection, it was decided to stay in Germany, and in it, in turn, I settled on two providers of dedicated servers - Hetzner.de and serverloft.com (serverloft.eu to be exact).

Day 1: I want German quality

The cheapest server for 49 euros was ordered in the hatzner, for “urgent things”, and in the serverlift I took a slightly more solid server, which was supposed to serve as a platform for the deployment of that part of the backups that was found. In the case of a server-side server, I needed FreeBSD, to which the sales team replied that they only have Linux, but I can 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, replies came from Hetzner and Serverloft - they say, thanks, 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 checked my credit card first thing. Hetzner charged EUR 41 (it turned out that the price includes VAT, which non-residents of Germany do not have to pay). On the server, Linux from the panel was automatically flooded, I put a tomcat there with all the troubles 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, it took me more than 90 euros, instead of 79. I was waiting for the server setup until evening, finally, at about 10 p.m. Moscow time, I received a letter stating 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 theft on trifles should have prompted something, but intuition at that moment was tired and went to sleep. Okay, I think it’s not critical, the main thing is that you can work ...

I downloaded the fresh FreeBSD image and, with an anticipation of magic manipulation, got into iRMC. It turned out that it does not work. Around 23.00 I opened a ticket that I would like for him to earn money and start to wait. Four hours later, in despair, I went to sleep.

Day 3: Silence of the Lambs

All morning I went on business and returned only to dinner. It turned out that no one answered the ticket. The little things of yesterday came together and it became clear that we had to impose ourselves, otherwise the matter would not move anywhere. I dialed the serverloft phone that is hanging on their site. It was emphasized by the kind support who, using a terrible mix of English, German and Arabic (!) With great difficulty, explained that they solve only sales and billing issues by phone, and the 24/7 telephone support on the website means that they can speak on the phone "Please open a ticket." There was no one to talk to. After a little thought, I decided to go from the other side - the site had a standard LivePerson store. In the live chat, they politely answered that now none of the technicians is in place, but they will certainly pass on 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 install Linux on the server and configure iRMC through scripts that are there.” Okay, I think, sorted it out. Suppose I lost another day, but at least some result. Fortunately, there is an automatic OS installation there, after an hour I configured iRMC and, having prepared an image of FreeBSD, I went to install it.

But it was not there. After clicking on the “Remote storage” section in iRMC, I saw an inscription that gave me enchanting surprise: “You need to activate this feature with a valid license key.” A similar inscription appeared in the section with the remote console. Resentfully, I opened a new ticket describing the problem.

Day 4: And here are the pens ...

Surprisingly, I received the answer quickly - literally the next day, i.e. in only ten to twelve hours. The answer was: “We do not provide all the options for the iRMC console. To use the functions of Remote Storage and Remote Console, you must purchase a license directly from Fujitsu. " Google immediately informed me that the advanced pack (license) costs about 300 pounds (~ 13500 rubles). It was the last drop of German quality, the glass of my patience overflowed and I opened a ticket addressed to sales - “I want a cashback, take your everything and give the money back”. The answer came around midnight and contained the 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 is you and no one else who filed a request to cancel the server therefore,

It became clear that there was no moneyback. A paper letter will go on for a week or two, then it will be picked up by the secretary from the company’s PO box, then it will wait for a signature / decision, in general, just at 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, we will refund the money. I decided that the morning of the evening is wiser.

Day 5: Desperate Move

There were no options. 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 had to try to fix the situation all the same - the serverloft reviews are generally good, the channels are excellent, the 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 by technical means. Digging a little 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 by writing data to the MBR from under any operating system, and upon rebooting, get a FreeBSD 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 built into Fujitsu showed emptiness. While I was trying to solve this problem, an answer came to one of the old tickets, which said the following: “Quite by chance, from today we sell licenses for iRMC, cost 20 euros per month, but you can buy them only for servers on Xeon, and you have Opteron. ”In the end, we agreed that they would lower the server, after which they would give me Xeon, which was a bit more expensive and I would pay 20 euros for the license. Although I agreed, I felt that something would go wrong here. And so it happened.

After lunch, the server was turned off. And with it the account, thereby completely blocking access to tickets. After a few hours, it became clear that there was nothing to wait and it was worth recalling about yourself. On the phone I was convincingly asked to open a ticket. The argument of no account did not help. The only means of communication was live chat, but there they answered only late at night - "You know, Xeon is not available, you have to wait ...". How many? “We will try very hard tomorrow ...”

Day 6: No money and no honey ...

So, the long-awaited tomorrow has come. So, as a client who has already paid for my order a long time ago, I go to a guest live chat to remind me that it would be nice to get a server. It’s not even important which one, the main thing is to get it. After cross-checks, repeated questioning of the ticket number and other details, the answers were as follows:

Xeon is not available at the supplier and will not be in the near future. Quite reasonable questions why this could not be verified before the replacement and when the Xeons will be - remained unanswered. At the request of the manibek, an attempt to talk with the management and everything else, the answer was one - “we have holidays now, wait until Tuesday. Now only sales work. Do you want us to sell you a server? ”

The attempt to buy “remote hands” was also unsuccessful. I offered 50 euros so that they simply put the disk with a frayha into the server. They refused - "we do not provide such services."

The sixth day, actually, today. To summarize, it turns out the following: the money was paid six days ago, the server as it was and never is. And not foreseen. It’s a pity not 90 euros, which I already consider as missing, figs with them. Sorry for the time. Yes, and now you have to start the search all over again. There were no problems with the hetzner, but they did not have a very stable channel to Russia, therefore, unfortunately, they could not 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, Chukchi is not a painter :)