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OVH avoiding customer support.


Neil
30-04-2012, 17:15
Quote Originally Posted by Andy
That explains it, thanks. I swear down it has been £300 fixed price before! This was about a year ago when I last looked however.
Can't remember it being that, certainly not for internal hard drives, maybe USB where. Anyway this is the current price.

Andy
30-04-2012, 15:25
That explains it, thanks. I swear down it has been £300 fixed price before! This was about a year ago when I last looked however.

Neil
30-04-2012, 15:22
Quote Originally Posted by Andy
I'm sure this used to cost £300 but I've just looked at the USB page and saw this:



Reasonable now that's for sure. But why on the 26th April when the page was cached by Google was it £110 and not £135? Why has it been put UP since then? Just by coincidence happens to be within the time that this topic was started? Not accusing OVH of anything but it is strange...
The price does change a bit, depending on UPS's price, that is the current price at the moment. It has never been £300.

K.Kode
29-04-2012, 20:38
The SE Kimsufi's have lost a HDD each in the last few days too (http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...on%2Findex.xml)

Andy
29-04-2012, 20:17
Quote Originally Posted by Neil
We can send internal drives when they fail (as well as external). The reason for the cost is two reasons, firstly we have to cover the cost of the disc, since these discs are generally under guarantee so we can get a replacement, but if we send to you then we loose this option, see RMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_..._authorization

The other reason is we send via UPS from France to the UK to make sure your disc gets there quickly and securely.
I'm sure this used to cost £300 but I've just looked at the USB page and saw this:

To recover the old drive or its contents, we will send your failed disk by UPS package at a price of £135.00.
Reasonable now that's for sure. But why on the 26th April when the page was cached by Google was it £110 and not £135? Why has it been put UP since then? Just by coincidence happens to be within the time that this topic was started? Not accusing OVH of anything but it is strange...

3r1c
29-04-2012, 14:22
You could just put your server in rescue mode, and then copy the data from the HDD over the network to your other server.

On thing to keep in mind, OVH support is limited to replacing failed hardware only.
They don't fix software problems or swap drives between your servers because it wont boot.

Also keep in mind that the customer service staff are not actually inside the datacenter, so they cant physically do anything with your server.

jonlewi5
27-04-2012, 14:21
Quote Originally Posted by Neil
We can send internal drives when they fail (as well as external). The reason for the cost is two reasons, firstly we have to cover the cost of the disc, since these discs are generally under guarantee so we can get a replacement, but if we send to you then we loose this option, see RMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_..._authorization

The other reason is we send via UPS from France to the UK to make sure your disc gets quickly and securely.
AH, i didnt think about them being under warranty. Thats a good point neil.

Neil
27-04-2012, 14:11
Quote Originally Posted by jonlewi5
I also dont understand the price to get a HDD shipped out, as far as i was aware, they can send out an internal one, but for a price over £100??
We can send internal drives when they fail (as well as external). The reason for the cost is two reasons, firstly we have to cover the cost of the disc, since these discs are generally under guarantee so we can get a replacement, but if we send to you then we loose this option, see RMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_..._authorization

The other reason is we send via UPS from France to the UK to make sure your disc gets there quickly and securely.

jonlewi5
27-04-2012, 13:26
Yes i defiantly agree that a service like that could be offered and wouldnt take much effort on OVH's part to do for a price.
I also dont understand the price to get a HDD shipped out, as far as i was aware, they can send out an internal one, but for a price over £100??

Andy
27-04-2012, 13:22
This is true, but even so I would expect it to be offered for a small premium perhaps? I know they will ship the USB HDD's for an excessive price of 5-6x the price of the drive, but why not the internal ones too?

jonlewi5
27-04-2012, 13:21
Quote Originally Posted by Andy
You could always transfer it off one USB disk and onto another at the other end via something called the Internet? Sorry to sound snotty but it's been obvious to me in the past that sometimes OVH make things difficult even when solutions exist, and will not go out of their way to help loyal customers in any shape or form.
I do somewhat agree, and especially as it would be internal it wouldnt take long at all.
But again, its the difference between managed and unmanaged service.

Andy
27-04-2012, 13:15
You could always transfer it off one USB disk and onto another at the other end via something called the Internet? Sorry to sound snotty but it's been obvious to me in the past that sometimes OVH make things difficult even when solutions exist, and will not go out of their way to help loyal customers in any shape or form.

Neil
27-04-2012, 10:48
Quote Originally Posted by Draylynn
My husband owns a server, a very popular server that has been offline since Sat.

The XenServ 6 networks configured properly, it's been tinkered with repeatedly by serveral buddy technicians from around the world - who only confirm what we need to get onto a KVM to recover the data. It boots up fine according to OVH staff, jut won't connect online or respond to pings.

OVH won't let us use a KVM or upgrade to use a KVM, were only allowed to use a vKVM which is obviously doesn't help since it doesn't utilize the hardware effected hardware properly.

They won't move the USB HD (Which now has the recovered data on it) to the second server were using because 'once installed, it can NEVER be removed' - USB hard drive... U... S... B. USB..... sec... USB.
They won't allow for the hard drive installed in it to be mailed out for data recovery, because again, once installed it can NEVER be removed.

We've had many a data center over the last year who provided and knew their way around a server well enough to actually support the customer. Can anyone make these monkeys understand how customer support works please or the basic fundementals of information technology.

Because it feels at the moment they are purposely shunting any support for our server with no other purpose than to purposely distress my husband and keep our online-company offline, which atm is losing a very substantial amount of money a day. To have the server down for almost a week now is disgusting on OVH's part.
Hello

As Lemon as already pointed out our servers are unmanaged. I am unsure which server you have so please let me know.

Firstly you can order KVM in the OVH Manager, so if you need/want KVM then you should use the option there, but we have also offered to do a diagnostics for a charge so we can confirm it is a software issue, if it is not then we do not charge.

We do not move USB Drives and will never will, if we did it would create large logistical problems since we have more than one datacentre to start with.

_Lemon_
27-04-2012, 01:58
To address your concerns with what OVH will and won't do:

OVH provide the dedicated servers unmanaged and as such they won't address software issues such as software on the server not starting up. This is easily verified by seeing if the server boots into rescue mode: once it does, the hardware is pretty much a.ok (although this is no guarantee) OR by reinstalling: a fresh install should be a known "good" state.

If it fails to boot while not in the rescue mode or not after a fresh install then it's a software problem -- outside the scope of what OVH can offer. This is normal for unmanaged servers, it takes a lot of (expensive) knowledge and know-how to be able to diagnose and fix every problem a customer can throw at them in a reasonable time. Such services will be quite expensive (I believe Rackspace offer this sort of thing).

This is a good thing: it keeps the costs of the servers down. OVH are one of the cheapest hosts around so it's an important aspect.

Another part of keeping costs down are limiting the services that OVH will (physically) perform on a server, catering a USB move would almost certainly increase the costs of USB drives (as well as still placing a limit on the number of moves -- so it would still not be that great). Moving a USB drive takes time and they probably do not want the (costly) hassle of moving the disk: if they make an exception to you, then they'll have to be able to do it for everyone.

While you're clearly frustrated, your attitude probably does not help the situation (why would they make an exception after being called a monkey?).


As for a solution, I see a couple of options (probably best in this order):

1) Boot into rescue mode, move everything of value to your USB drive and reinstall the server (it should leave the USB drive alone but make sure to select "install to first drive only"). You'll get a fresh boot of the OS, it will start up and you can recover from the USB drive.

2) Boot into rescue mode, mount the USB drive, then on your other server rsync the data to your new one. If it's another OVH server then it will not count against your bandwidth quota as it's internal traffic. It will probably be faster than the time it takes for OVH to respond and move the disk themselves.

3) Ask for a quotation on a fix. I've never done this so I don't really know the steps but this is in the realm of "managed services", the VIP page suggests you can ask for a quotation for £20, depending on their diagnosis you might have enough information to fix it yourself or just want them to get it over with and correct the issue.

Hope this helps! You should also consider setting up your system so that you can recover from any failure (back ups...), especially if it has something substantial behind it.

Draylynn
26-04-2012, 20:48
My husband owns a server, a very popular server that has been offline since Sat.

The XenServ 6 networks configured properly, it's been tinkered with repeatedly by serveral buddy technicians from around the world - who only confirm what we need to get onto a KVM to recover the data. It boots up fine according to OVH staff, jut won't connect online or respond to pings.

OVH won't let us use a KVM or upgrade to use a KVM, were only allowed to use a vKVM which is obviously doesn't help since it doesn't utilize the hardware effected hardware properly.

They won't move the USB HD (Which now has the recovered data on it) to the second server were using because 'once installed, it can NEVER be removed' - USB hard drive... U... S... B. USB..... sec... USB.
They won't allow for the hard drive installed in it to be mailed out for data recovery, because again, once installed it can NEVER be removed.

We've had many a data center over the last year who provided and knew their way around a server well enough to actually support the customer. Can anyone make these monkeys understand how customer support works please or the basic fundementals of information technology.

Because it feels at the moment they are purposely shunting any support for our server with no other purpose than to purposely distress my husband and keep our online-company offline, which atm is losing a very substantial amount of money a day. To have the server down for almost a week now is disgusting on OVH's part.