denis bider

Various thoughts

Don't use Nocster or Burst.Net

Posted Aug 11, 2007 at 19:24 by denisbider

Last edited Apr 19, 2009 at 17:29 by denisbider

hosting outrage technology

I've used a number of web hosting services in the past several years. First there was XO, who are reliable but overcharged incredibly for their shared hosting service. Then there were Nocster (Burst.Net), Saving Hosting (Cooplabs), and Cari.Net. Of these, I had a good experience with Saving Hosting, and my best experience so far was with Cari.Net.

But I would never any more recommend anyone to use Nocster (or Burst.Net). This service has had by far the most frequent and by far the most lengthy occurences of downtime out of all the services I used. Right now, my company's email server, which is hosted by Burst.Net, has been offline for nearly 30 hours. I've still got no response to a customer support ticket I posted 20 hours ago, and I cannot reach them by telephone. Meanwhile, my own company's ability to communicate with customers is crippled, as I am left with no information about whether our email server died (worked fine before), or whether Burst.net's UPS systems are failing (like two times before), or whether their network is down (like another time before). I don't know whether I should be waiting for our existing server to come back online, or whether I should be setting up a new mail server somewhere else.

30 hours into the blackout, I'm still waiting. Do yourself a favor. Don't use Nocster or Burst.Net.

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Showing 9 out of 9 comments, oldest first:

Comment on Aug 27, 2007 at 14:18 by JL670

Thanks for the advice , I Was about to give Nocster a deal

Comment on Aug 27, 2007 at 17:01 by Anonymous

I think I should follow up with how the above was resolved. I was able to get through to them on the phone when I called them again on Sunday morning (Aug 12). The technician checked the server, saw that it died, and rebooted it. The server must have died in some bad way, because if it's a blue screen, Windows Server 2003 will automatically reboot. I know because it happened with that same server - I installed an unstable driver. I asked what the cause of the server breakdown was, but the technician wasn't able to tell me. That concluded this particular outage.

There were outages in the past where their performance and responsiveness were hardly any better, and the fault lay mostly with them (UPS failure, faulty hardware). One among the outages was caused by their network link going down due to external causes (some trench workers cut the cables when BurstNet thought they had redundancy, but didn't).

Comment on Aug 27, 2007 at 17:23 by Anonymous

To clarify, the occasion when I tried installing the unstable driver was a different one than the occasion that caused this prolonged outage, and it took place later than the outage, so it didn't cause the outage or affect it in any way.

Comment on Sep 19, 2007 at 17:43 by denisbider

Another follow up: recently, the server crashed again. I contacted Burst.Net and their follow up was prompt and courteous. They offered to reinstall the server on different hardware, which I agreed to and they did so. Hopefully this will resolve the problem.

Comment on Dec 8, 2008 at 21:48 by Anonymous

Its becasue they use cheap $200 hardware specials/combo specials. They are not using server class hardware.

Comment on Mar 10, 2009 at 01:26 by Daniel Meah

By the looks of things burstnet have become more stable within there network and reliability, I have a server with them myself and it has been online for over 27 Days (carnt argue with that) i believe they have a new engineer. Go Burst Net!!!!!!!

Comment on Mar 10, 2009 at 14:38 by denisbider

Yes, it's been better recently, I still have to email them for an occasional reboot, but it has otherwise been reasonable.

27 days is no feat, BTW. If your server goes down once every 27 days, in a way that requires the owner's intervention, that means hassle and loss every month.

Servers need to be up constantly.

Comment on Mar 10, 2009 at 15:56 by Daniel Meah

Yes but better than the old 2 days.

Comment on Dec 13, 2009 at 19:41 by Michael

No they been even more bad recently, don't use them and stay a way from them,

My server there was DOWN everyday, and their support SUCKS