[kwlug-disc] Any experience with cloudatcost.com VPS?

[Giles Malet]

On 14-06-29 12:31 PM, Chamunks Arkturus wrote:
> At this point I can no longer recommend CAC I am happy with what I have but
> that doesn't mean in the current time/place I would really recommend it
> now.

To revive the old thread, I bought a small "lifetime" system for $35 or 
something a few months ago, and as above I would not recommend anyone 
using Cloudatcost. In fact I would strongly advise keeping away!

A few weeks ago I found my root (and only) filesystem read-only. I had 
to get on the console and fsck and fiddle around to get it running 
again. A couple of days later the same thing. Then a few days after that 
the server simply disappeared! I couldn't ssh to it, the web console 
wouldn't connect, and nothing I could do from their web interface would 
work. So I sent in a ticket. It was over two weeks later (I was on 
vacation for some of that) before I got a response, which I think was a 
generic mass mailing, which included the following:

---
"CloudAtCost has been experiencing extended storage outages due to the 
underlying Fiber channel Locking technology. Since our environment has 
grown so large we are constantly getting lost locks which is a manual 
process for us to track down and fix where the process of fixing one 
virtual server can take up to 15-20 minutes."

To avoid this from happening in the future we have been moving to NFS 
SSD arrays."
---

In the meantime I'd moved all the stuff that mattered off the server, at 
some inconvenience to others, so I did not care too much about this any 
more. Anyhow, within a couple of days my ticket was closed, with advice 
to fsck etc. I found I could again reach the system, got it going, and 
it ran for perhaps a week or two ... until yesterday morning root was 
read-only again. So I fsck'd it again, and got it running. And this 
morning it was read-only again, and I'm fsck'ing as I type.

All in all the system in not usable for anything that matters. It would 
not surprise me if I simply lost the contents of the disk one day. The 
$35 was worth the risk, and I'll find a use for the system, but be sure 
I have backups and not depend on the system actually running all the 
time....

g