I'm currently with Media Temple's (dv) Managed VPS products, but I am finding some things annoying: - Poor so called 24/7 support, slow response times and phone support merely take a message and respond back via email. Can take 1-2 days sometimes to respond. Also 50% of the time, the answer is pretty rubbish and they end up fixing nothing. - Scope of support is constantly invoked to get out of fixing things, even on unmodified standard software. I was having a plesk issue, and they referred me to plesk even though that was within the scope of support. - Managed Plesk, OS and LAMP (linux, apache, mysql, php) updates, however, they are quite behind the 8 ball, they are running PHP 5.2.5 with no APC or caching, they really should be on 5.3.* or at least 5.2.13, same with apache, mysql etc, they are not very good at keeping up to date. - No backup options, they charge extra for backup which is not even automated!
I would go self-managed since I have a basic knowledge of managing a linux machine, but like the comfort of knowing there are better smarter people for help. Also, I really don't want to spend time constantly keeping up to date with updates, security patches etc etc etc.
So I'm looking for a managed VPS host which: - Have proper 24/7 phone and email technical support who don't take forever to respond and have clever people on the other side who can actually fix things. - Manage the OS and LAMP stack, updates and security. And like Media Temple's claim, the updates are tested before being applied to servers for production use. But unlike Media Temple, are not 3-4 years behind on versioning. - Have a scope of support to manage the LAMP stack, but don't cut off support just because you've done some modifications or installed some extra software, things like APC or other packages. Media Temple is really annoying on this because they have limited standard packages (which is fair enough, since no one wants a fat server), but why do they need to cut off all support because you've added extra packages such as PHP APC or mod the PHP, MySQL settings? I.e. they stop support if you've made a PHP.ini change. - Included backup options which is bloody automated! - US based
Not worried about price, since i'm willing to pay for good service. I am paying $150 USD per month with Media Temple and essentially, its self-managed consider they do rubbish all. Maybe a VPS update every year or two. Blah!
