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Inception Hosting review
Hello guys! This is my first review here on LET.
I have purchased Frankfurt 512Mb Xen on 19 August, which is now totally gone =/
Every thing was great until this:
On 12 of the September at 11:37 AM I have received this email:
Good Morning Client If you are getting this email it is because you have direct service in Germany on Node 10 or because you have access to resell servers on this node, it was picked up that the number of pending sectors on one of the drives has jumped up hour by hour since yesterday from 0. Initial scans have been ran and although reports came back clean the drive in question dropped off the raid and then back on again soon after the scans so it is expected this disk will fail imminently. As a result the server will be shut down at 13:00 UK time tomorrow Friday 13th September to replace the drive and potentially add some performance enhancements to the server. Sorry for the short notice but with disks failing this really is longer than I would like to leave things running to begin with, as a precaution if you have any data that you do not already have backed up please ensure you have a copy before 13:00 UK time tomorrow as we cannot be held responsible for loss of your data, free backup space offsite is already provided on request. If you have any questions feel free to reply to this email. Thanks. Anthony Smith. Inception Hosting Limited.
After a while VPS went down until I have received the next message at 11:19 PM!!!
After many hours of work today to recover the corrupt raid I am sorry to announce it is not completely recoverable as first thought.
The remaining data has some small amount of irrecoverable corruption and it is impossible to say specifically which files this affects.
The server is now in a state to start booting VM’s however I urge you to take a backup of all your required data as soon as physically possible.
After much discussion with the data centre and assessment of the situation the decision has been made to remove this node from service, the options available to you as a customer are as follows:
1) Agree to migrate your service to the UK or The Netherlands, this of course will mean an IP change, this can be done for you along with your data.2) Request a prorated refund and terminate your service.
I hope many of you consider the first option, services in the UK and The Netherlands are on a higher price but your will not be charged any extra, your current rate will remain the same, it will however be fully understood and met with no resistance should you go for the second option.
In either event the stability of the server is now highly questionable, 2 disks failing in a raid array is never going to be an easy situation to recover from so please take back ups of your data as soon as you can as stability cannot be guaranteed at this stage.
Please do not reply to this email in either case as that will be hard to track effectively, the best thing to do is to open a billing or support ticket with your choice, migrations can start immediately if that is your choice.
If no support ticket is opened by the 20th September a decision on location and migration will be made for you and new details made available. The server will be decommissioned by the 21st September at the latest if indeed it lasts that long.
Migrations will be done on a first come first served basis, in the event that the server completely fails before migration a new VPS will be created for you in either the UK or The Netherlands and you will need to restore your own data from your backups.
On a personal note I would like to express my thanks for your patience during the difficult time, this is the first irrecoverable event in Inception Hosting’s history and it is not a proud day to say the least.
Thanks.
Anthony Smith.
Inception hosting Limited.
The last message made me upset, I was hoping to staying with InceptionHosting, but no more Germany node, so sad =/
Comments
Now time for the voice from the other side
Yeah, Anthony have removed that announcement as well in client area ( http://clients.inceptionhosting.com/announcements.php?id=97 ), where he was saying:
You want a node that'll be there forever? Signup with one of the big boys, not a Low End provider.
Oh, yeah, one month vps and expect node to be gone ???
They've been offering services out of Frankfurt for some time now. You are not the centre of the universe.
@alexvolk I understand your annoyed that frankfurt is not an option now but I assure you there are many other hosts in this area so you should not have trouble finding more service in that location, it is also unfortunate that you had to be victim of this so soon after signing up.
The other announcement was moved not for any tin foil hat reasons, it was simply superseded by the unplanned outage.
I worked 21 hours straight to get things back up and gave people options, your VPS is still there and you can use it until the 20th (if it lasts that long)
I am not going to get in to any debates about raid failures etc I would simply refer you to my comments on this thread which sum it up: http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/comment/321499/#Comment_321499
Drives fail, raid arrays fail, I also offer free backup space to anyone on request, a refund or migration to another (and more expensive at no extra cost) location was offered. if you want absolute 100% grantees that your server will not go down at any time you need to be looking for a true DC independent multi San backed cloud solution
Other business reasons (not financial) are also in play here but I am not going to go in to that here.
Other locations and services have been in place and running for years, Germany is the exception and I assure you lessons have been learned on this side too, I sense from your general tone that you may be taking this a bit personal or have built up some frustration so rather than getting in to a long winded argument about what could and should have been done please just let me know from your perspective as a customer what you would have liked to see happen and I assure you I will listen, the best options I could offer while your on a server that although is running now could fail at any minute I feel I did offer i.e. a refund or migration to another server but if you think I should have done something else then let me know.
The DC were unable to provide a replacement server or even an additional server for at least a week and frankly I doubt the current server will last that long so please keep that in mind while you consider your response.
Quick Edit: in the interest of clarity let me add that your initial comment is not correct it is not totally gone, and this is not actually a review it is a slightly incorrect version of the events of the last 24 hours.
@AnthonySmith you should have worked tirelessly, at the expense of your other customers to keep this fella happy, so unfortunately you get a -1.
Well I did work 21 hours, got to bed at 5:15am and was up again at 8am and continued, I thought I was doing the right thing by doing my best to make sure people could get their data and offering up some constructive options despite offering free offsite backup space.
Don't get me wrong I know no one asked me to do this, I could have simply called it a failure and stood up a new server else where with some random DC/Provider and recreated fresh VPS instances but I thought that would be a less favourable outcome for everyone to just ditch the data and move on and I am 99.9% sure a lot more people would have been annoyed by this.
I completely understand that @alexvolk has every right to be upset, but at least his data is not lost and he has a week to either accept the migration or get a refund and move his data with minimal (additional) disruption.
Just had a quick look in to your particular case, your tickets were answered in 3 minutes and 9 minutes during these issues, it seems you requested a refund and got a full one and were also informed before this that your VPS was available again for you to get your data.
So you actually got near enough a full most service for free and access to your data after a catastrophic failure, not really sure what else I can say about this. I do appreciate you stating everything was great though.
@AnthonySmith Yes, thank you, for restoring my vps, but my problem was not long downtime and data (I have always backups), I was expecting new hard drive as you said in first email, but after second email "node will be decommissioned by the 21st September" , that was the only problem I had. =/
I see, I can accept that would be a problem for some but I assure you it was not a simple decision, many factors were in play around the relationship and reliability in to the future with the DC, Frankfurt is the only location that did not have raid 10, dedicated KVM and a number of other things that have proven to be critical in times such as these.
The bottom line is I do not feel confident I can offer a quality service in Frankfurt currently and this backed that feeling up, I am now providing a significant amount of servers at a loss to customers who wanted to migrate as I did not feel it was right to ask them to pay extra for no fault of their own. I am not saying Frankfurt will not come back but certain conditions that have allowed me to offer a quality service in other locations must be met first.
I hope that clarify's the reasons for the shut down of the location, you are right it should never come down to a provider just shutting down a whole location, I am frankly less than happy with the concept myself, if/when it comes back it will be at a much higher standard and on a more bullet proof/sustainable level.
mdadm thankfully or I seriously doubt any recovery would have been possible.
Actually, from where I sit, what @alexvolk put together here, after a fashion, is a slightly biased, but pretty positive review of InceptionHosting, Anthony
His emotions aside, he described your actions at this juncture, which no reasonable person can fault. Especially anyone having had the displeasure of experiencing the "bigger players" like ChicagoVPS or UGVPS reactions to similar events. Given time, and perhaps wider experience with other providers, I think @alexvolk will come around to appreciate this, too 
Hum, which UGVPS are you talking about ?
UGVPS = Ultra Geek VPS. What? There is more than one..? Or did you mean to imply they don't qualify as a "bigger player"? Big or small, technical support wise, they are one planet removed from InceptionHosting (judging by this here "review"
UGVPS is nowhere near the size of cvps, actually, not sure it is half of inception hosting either.
The quality of support varies with size, true, but in both ways.
If you are with a big host you get fast replies, but it takes a few layers of support till you get to someone that can solve your problem and misunderstandings are more likely to happen, the longer the chain.
With a small host, you may not get fast replies, but there is only one tech person usually which knows what did there (we are not talking summer hosts here) and will be able to solve the problem.
Personally I prefer a host that only needs a ticket and a reply, at max to solve the problem. I also expect up to 24 hours delays, lower price and better service comes at a price, at times.
At present, I have 20+ containers hosted with 10+ different providers. Hence, I feel I do have a pretty good overview of the VPS landscape. And provider size is not the key here. Personal attention or supervision of customer support by the owner/priopriator/GM is what counts. ChicagoVPS was already pretty big when I came onboard and their support was pretty darn good, considering. But this was when Chris Fabozzi was still responding to some tickets personally. Then came Luc and other Johns, paid by the hour, who, obviously, couldn't care less. I have no idea how big or small InceptionHosting is, but judging from this here "review", Anthony still responds to tickets himself and seems to care about his business. This said, I have nothing against delegating jobs, mind you. On the contrary, I believe that is the key to growing any successful business. But the little mice you hire MUST be well trained and always kept on their little toes, aware the cat is lurking back there, keeping close tabs on them
Otherwise, what you delegate, is the job of screwing up all your hard work put into building your business. It's an occupational hazard. You set up one business, then move on to another - naturally more exciting - project, leaving the house for the mice to play in... been there, done that 
I have actually had a few support staff and got rid of them, because A) I am a control freek and
I was finding myself double checking everything they did anyway, so in the end I was just paying someone while doubling the amount of work I did.
I have a book keeper/accountant and I work hard to make sure things can be kept in my control, at the stage it is obviously too much I will take someone else on and they will become part owner in the company it is the only way to ensure quality at this stage I feel.
Oh and just for the record UGVPS and Chicago VPS are one and the same company or one is just a brand of the other it seems.
You rang, sir?
lol