The Byte Stops Here

Sean Corfield made an entry on Railo Support and Consulting Services. While its nice to see a simple four level support structure, the following didn't make sense to me:

• Silver -includes support for 1 server only, 5 hours of support for $1000, which is $200/hr (with an additional discount for more). I'm not sure how many people would pay $1000 per year just to support a single server? Plus there is a 8 day fix delivery for any issues.
  
• Gold – includes support for 2 servers only, 15 hours of support for $3000, which is the same $200/hr (with an additional discount for more). I'm not sure if there is a clear incentive to pay $1000 more instead of getting two Silver contracts. You will be getting a discount with the Silvers anyways for more hours (if you need them). The fix delivery is 7 days instead of 8.
  
• Platinum – includes support for 2 servers only (2 servers for a platinum??), 45 hours of support for $9000, which is the same $200/hr (with an additional discount for more). The fix delivery is 5 days instead of 7. I don't think anyone would use up 45 hours on two servers only in 1 years time, and if they do, they should be an "enterprise". Platinum seems out of place to me.
  
• Enterprise – includes support for 10 servers only (not sure where the enterprise comes in), 135 hours for 27k, which is the same $200/hr (with an additional discount for more). Whats interesting here is that the fix delivery time is still 5 days. I would rather buy 5 golds for 15k, which would cover 10 servers at 15 hours of support for each pair. If I need more than 15 hours, something is wrong… So for me Enterprise would not make sense.

So am I missing something? Is this just an initial draft? Why are three named after metals and the fourth called enterprise?

Ok, so I got CodexWiki installed and up and running with MySQL. However, I immediately ran into some weirdness.

For example, on the DashBoard page I wanted to create a link to a page that will detail the Product Management department. So I had code like this:

== [[PM:Product_Management|Product Management]] ==
Click to go to the Product Management area.

This created a link called "Product Management" to /wiki/PM:Product_Management.cfm. I use the "PM" namespace to differentiate this from other parts of the Wiki. For more information on NameSpaces, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namespace.

I wanted to create a link like so:

== [[IT:Information_Technology|Information Technology]] ==
Click to go to the Information Technology area.

And what I got was a link to Wikipedia itself! The link pointed to: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology.

I create a page with that new namespaces and then tried to add links and it still freaked. Am I doing something wrong?

UPDATE: I thought possibly because IT and SE are also country codes, that is why its linking to Wikipedia entries by county. But when I entered US, or IN, I got proper links…

Let me start by saying, we had hosted our servers at OpSource, a premier SaaS managed hosting company, with nationwide coverage for almost 3 years. We had issues off and on for a quite a while with them, and soon we knew we had to take things to the next level. Our servers were getting old, and so was their service.

Part of the problem was having a company so big, so global, that they, it seemed, felt no need to treat us special. So we had a strong urge to drop a remote host, for disaster recovery purposes, in favor of someone local, so that we could get some face time (and hopefully better service).

Our only option in Southern California was Intelenet, which recently changed their name to Latisys (they have merged and grown since then). They answered our questions regarding being in California, hence dealing with earthquakes right from the start. They showed how they were out of the quake zone, and that LA City, and other local clients, actually outsource and do disaster recovery with them being in the heart of Orange County, for those who are familiar with the area). 

They were quite aggresive from the start, always following up, and showed they were quite eager to earn our business, and to work the quote to meet our needs. They went the extra mile for us on several occasions. They have 3 major data centers spread out across the US due to mergers and acquisitions. Their upper management seemed quite brainy, and their data center setup is quite impressive. All their backups go to their Colorado facility. And they were also SAS 70 Type II compliant along with being PCI certified.

Overall, their pricing was decent, and despite some minor hiccups, we liked what they had to offer.

So there you have it. It took 3 long arduous months for us to find a host, and so far we are quite pleased.

Plusses:

• Go get 'em attitude
• National Coverage
• Willing to go the extra mile
• Brainy management
• PCI Experience
• SAS 70 Type II certified
• 1 Hour Hardware Replacement
• Medium Costs

Minuses:

• Not all together well-known
• In California (near quake zones, although they make up for it by being on the priority grid, and having 3 layers of monthly tested power backups)
• Some minor hiccups, turn around time took a little longer due to the holidays

Rank: Tier 3

AmericanEagle is a web development company that does big business for industry, government, etc. They have a couple data center, and listed on their website, was also PCI Compliant Hosting. However, from my initial contact, it seemed like their sales people weren't used to selling stand-alone PCI Compliant Hosting, and that most of their clients doing e-Commerce were also their clients for development.

Despite that, they were PCI Certified Hosts. However, it seemed the sales process hadn't caught up, and their quotes were a bit cookie cutter. If you are looking for a host to build the website and to host it, they might be a good option, however I couldn't tell if they had any ColdFusion experience.

Plusses:

• PCI Certified Host
• Web Development Knowledge

Minuses:

• Locked into their PC specs
• Cookie cutter quote process
• Primarily a web dev company
• Medium Sized
• New to Hosting Only concept
• Could not provide diagram of proposed setup
• Medium Costs

Rank: Tier 3

HostMySite is a name familiar to many CF developers. But have you looked to them for a solution beyond simple shared hosting and maybe even dedicated hosting?

From my discussions, they seemed to be new to the whole PCI area. Although they were able to provide a diagram, I wasn't always sure they got what I was talking about. Again, this has all to do with experience, not only technically, but in selling a solution.

Plusses:

• Extensive experience with ColdFusion

Minuses:

• New to PCI
• Unknown if they are Certified PCI Hosts
• Servers spec'ed were quite anemic (shockingly so!)
• Unusually high costs, relative to their experience and server specs especially

Rank: Tier 2