5 ms·

Using a budget IaaS for "critical infrastructure" is your mistake.

yeukhon 13y ago
You seem to think every business has a budget for a big contract with DO or Amazon or Google. Some people run their email server on these budget IaaS. Some prefer to host outside of Google or Amazon's power. so where else should they host their own server? Home? Ideally if we have continuous streaming backing up a node, then when the host machine failed a second machine can pick up to serve the last backup. This is of course expensive for any provider for every customer. But asking DO to actually report the status of the node, its host machine and the region is the right thing to do. Customers don't need to know the full technical detail but even a nice friendly message (email, sms or even on the status page) will ease the conflict: "Your host now appears offline because the host machine is offline. Don't worry! Your data is safe with our backup! If you have any concern, please contact XXXXX@digitalocean.com or at xxx-xxx-xxx." Conclusion: * report the status of the droplet on personal dashboard * for non-isolated incident, report it on both droplet personal dashboard and public dashboard.
- rtpg 13y ago
  there are many other hosting solutions that offer Virtual Private Servers with a high percentage of guaranteed uptime. For example, with Dreamhost you can get a VPS for ~$15 a month. If your e-mail isn't worth that much to you, then why are you bothering to self-host your e-mail anyways?
  - derefr 13y ago
    > If your e-mail isn't worth that much to you, then why are you bothering to self-host your e-mail anyways? Because Google Apps no longer offers free accounts?
    - 3825 13y ago
      On this note, what is the easiest way to transfer my free Google Apps account from a .co.cc domain to a real domain and keep my free status? Can I change domains within Google Apps itself?
      - aroch 13y ago
        AFIAK, you can't but you can instead add the real domain as an alias.
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  Digital Ocean is absolutely not meant for critical infrastructure, nor is it meant for running a production mail server (there's a good chance the IP has already been flagged somewhere for spam in any shared cloud server IP space). You're paying for a low-budget VPS with no phone support. Yes, they have a 99.9% SLA, but the penalty to them if they exceed that is minimal.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    The right way to defend a company is not by contradicting their own marketing.
  - yeukhon 13y ago
    Whether this is for critical infrastructure or not, the provider should tell the customer the problem automatically via the dashboard. It should take some engineering work, but not whole lot. How is that demand too much? Should we discard that demand because DO is a low-budget VPS? If you truly value your customer, you would take that suggestion seriously. I don't have millions to employ someone to manage an AWS farm for me. Instead of me asking DO why my nodes are down every time that happens, I want DO to tell me once that happen. It's a simple customer demand.
  - zapt02 13y ago
    As others have pointed out, that 5$ box might actually be a 20$ or 40$ box, so I disagree with your notion of not putting critical infrastructure on DO. That being said, their penalties are ridiculous. I got a 10$ "SLA Credit" for 2 days of downtime. So I agree their SLA is useless.
blueskin_ 13y ago
>Using *aaS for "critical infrastructure" is your mistake. Fixed that for you.

You seem to think every business has a budget for a big contract with DO or Amazon or Google. Some people run their email server on these budget IaaS. Some prefer to host outside of Google or Amazon's power. so where else should they host their own server? Home? Ideally if we have continuous streaming backing up a node, then when the host machine failed a second machine can pick up to serve the last backup. This is of course expensive for any provider for every customer. But asking DO to actually report the status of the node, its host machine and the region is the right thing to do. Customers don't need to know the full technical detail but even a nice friendly message (email, sms or even on the status page) will ease the conflict: "Your host now appears offline because the host machine is offline. Don't worry! Your data is safe with our backup! If you have any concern, please contact XXXXX@digitalocean.com or at xxx-xxx-xxx." Conclusion: * report the status of the droplet on personal dashboard * for non-isolated incident, report it on both droplet personal dashboard and public dashboard.

rtpg 13y ago
there are many other hosting solutions that offer Virtual Private Servers with a high percentage of guaranteed uptime. For example, with Dreamhost you can get a VPS for ~$15 a month. If your e-mail isn't worth that much to you, then why are you bothering to self-host your e-mail anyways?
- derefr 13y ago
  > If your e-mail isn't worth that much to you, then why are you bothering to self-host your e-mail anyways? Because Google Apps no longer offers free accounts?
  - 3825 13y ago
    On this note, what is the easiest way to transfer my free Google Apps account from a .co.cc domain to a real domain and keep my free status? Can I change domains within Google Apps itself?
    - aroch 13y ago
      AFIAK, you can't but you can instead add the real domain as an alias.
JohnTHaller 13y ago
Digital Ocean is absolutely not meant for critical infrastructure, nor is it meant for running a production mail server (there's a good chance the IP has already been flagged somewhere for spam in any shared cloud server IP space). You're paying for a low-budget VPS with no phone support. Yes, they have a 99.9% SLA, but the penalty to them if they exceed that is minimal.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  The right way to defend a company is not by contradicting their own marketing.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Whether this is for critical infrastructure or not, the provider should tell the customer the problem automatically via the dashboard. It should take some engineering work, but not whole lot. How is that demand too much? Should we discard that demand because DO is a low-budget VPS? If you truly value your customer, you would take that suggestion seriously. I don't have millions to employ someone to manage an AWS farm for me. Instead of me asking DO why my nodes are down every time that happens, I want DO to tell me once that happen. It's a simple customer demand.
- zapt02 13y ago
  As others have pointed out, that 5$ box might actually be a 20$ or 40$ box, so I disagree with your notion of not putting critical infrastructure on DO. That being said, their penalties are ridiculous. I got a 10$ "SLA Credit" for 2 days of downtime. So I agree their SLA is useless.

blueskin_ 13y ago

>Using *aaS for "critical infrastructure" is your mistake. Fixed that for you.