Have Legend/Thus killed DSVR?
For once I actually have a decent excuse for not having posted lately — work has been completely hectic, and to be honest I’ve felt totally drained.
A couple of weeks ago, in the early hours of the morning, there was a big power outage at the data centre that’s home to our main server (and this site). Unfortunately, rather than the UPS taking over until the backup generator kicked in, something fried/died, and it took the hosting company — DSVR — nine hours to get everything up and running again.
Even once DSVR had got all the servers back online, web and FTP were crawling, and mail was totally dead (something on the internal system was utterly screwed, quite possibly related to DNS).
The problem meant that not only were we without our main email accounts for the best part of two days, but so were over a dozen of our clients. As you can imagine, this didn’t go down too well, and when we weren’t sat watching the queue of emails growing in Exim, we were trying to placate clients.
Luckily we have our .com domain mail server hosted on a completely different server, for contingencies such as this, so at least we had some way of getting emails out. Nevertheless, it took until after the weekend for the backlog of emails to clear from our main server.
It wasn’t always like this with DSVR; when we signed up with them some years ago, we chose them because they had what turned out to be a well-deserved reputation for excellent service. Yes, they were more expensive than some, but the good up-time, versatility and great support was well worth the money. Support tickets were answered quickly, and the staff took an active role in discussions on the customer forums.
On the rare occasions when there was a problem with the service, DSVR’s status page would contain detailed explanations of the problem, and the steps being taken to rectify it and ensure it didn’t re-occur. The support staff would also happily discuss the problem in the forums, often with a refreshing honesty.
Sadly DSVR were bought by Legend Communications (formerly Business Serve, subsequently bought by Thus) in 2004, and the service has been going downhill ever since. Earlier this year there were big problems when they moved data centres, and despite lots of promised improvements, things just seem to be going from bad to worse. There aren’t any of the original DSVR staff left either.
Leaving aside the point that a power outage shouldn’t be able to screw up the servers for a couple of days, to add insult to injury the communication from DSVR/Legend/Thus has been almost non-existent. Little more than “Blah, blah, power outage, some customers experiencing problems with email, engineers working to restore service as soon as possible” on the status page for a couple of days. Certainly nothing like a decent explanation.
Rumour has it, because Legend/Thus are a PLC, any communication (including the status page) has to ‘go upstairs’ for approval by management in case if impacts on share price. Hoorah for capitalism!
Legend weren’t any more forthcoming when the Register reported on the problems:
They gave us a standard “we apologise for the inconvenience”-type response which, after days of their customers losing business, is unlikely to smooth relations.
They added that the email issues were caused by high volumes of traffic. Now, we’re not systems engineers lads, but we thought your business was all about dealing with high volumes of traffic.
Indeed. Except that the email issues weren’t caused by high volumes of traffic, they were a symptom of it. The problems seem to be related to their DNS system getting hosed, which is pretty worrying.
Sadly this is the large bundle of straw that’s broken the camel’s back, and we’ve decided not to renew our contract with DSVR at the end of October. It’s a real shame, but with the unreliability of DSVR’s service reflecting badly on us to our clients, our loyalty has been stretched to its limit.
So we’ve now started migrating our clients to our new server, which means lots of extra work — moving databases and domains, changing secure certificates, getting new IP addresses, updating payment gateways etc.. We’ve been pretty snowed-under with work lately anyway, so the extra hassle of moving servers is something we need like a hole in the head (we haven’t had a weekend off for a few weeks now). Anyway, enough self-pity….
I was planning on switching from b2evolution to Wordpress soon anyway, so the move to the new server seems like as good a time as any to convert. I haven’t yet finished the new look for World of Badger, which does mean I might have to go with the default Wordpress look until I’m less exhausted. Do not be alarmed though, the drabness won’t be permanent.
It’s not just me then. I’m working my busters off, including weekends, and then having to fret about something that I didn’t need to worry about in the old days of DSVR is just the icing. Want a laugh? The day the servers went down is when I was going on holiday.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you’ve written about DSVR. In the old DSVR days, because I could always rely on a good techie answering the 0800 support line within two rings (remember when Legend intoduced the paid 0870 support number as an, ahem, improvement to its customers – don’t you just love bean counters?) I used to resell hosting to customers saying, “We’re more exensive than most but we’re more reliable.” Legend / Thus have embarrassed me in front of my clients. When I come to needing a new VS I’m definitely going elsewhere and will probably migrate my existing customers too. How I wish I could find a company like the old DSVR – where have you moved to, if you don’t mind me asking?
All the best,
Zarg
No, definitely not just you Zarg. We also used use the “more expensive but more reliable” approach with our clients, but we can’t get away with that now that a gust of wind in the wrong direction seems to make DSVR’s servers wobble. I get misty eyed thinking about the old DSVR.
Anyway, based on the recommendations on DSVR’s forums, we ended up moving to Clook. We’ve only been with them about 3 weeks (still migrating clients’ sites…), but so far we’ve been very impressed. They only do support via email, but all our requests and questions have been answered within a few minutes, in a helpful, eager-to-please manner. Oh, and there’s a thread on Clook’s support forums by ex-DSVR customers!
The bad news is that Clook don’t have any VPS accounts left at the moment, but perhaps a reseller account would suffice? Think they offer a money-back-if-not-satisfied period, so might be worth a try.
Cheers
Thanks for this post. We’ve had a vs with dsvr for a while now. Were only hosting some really basic sites for friends and small businesses. But its no fun none the less when things go wrong. I was first introduced to dsvr through a web development company I worked years ago and they swore by them at the time.
I too have noticed a decline in quality over the last year and I’ve been thinking of moving. I’ll check out this Clook.
Hope all goes well with the move.
Cheers
Thanks russco. We moved the last of our clients across on Saturday, and closed our DSVR account on Monday. The move was surprisingly painless, and the support team at Clook were very helpful. Do feel quite sorry to be saying goodbye to DSVR though…
Hope your hosting situation improves too.
we moved in June to DSVR and it was huge mistake. Their servers have been down at least 9 times. We cannot access support as their host panel system is down (yet again). Every time its down they blame it on a power outage.
Their support is almost non-existant with unanswered tickets and no-one answering their help-line.
Total waste of time and money.
Jeff, sounds like you’ve had a pretty bad time, even by DSVR’s standards. I hope the service changes for the better for you soon. It must be hard for you to believe that DSVR’s hosting used to be top notch.
I FUCKING HATE DSVR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! can you recommend an alternative, they can fucking stick their shoddy hosting where the sun don’t shine. and i agree with you badger, it never used to be like this
I can second Clook as a solid alternative to DSVR.
We migrated from DSVR in the middle of our contract after the infamous outage (was it one week or two ?) where, at the time when customers most wanted to know what was going on, and no support emails were being answered, DSVR took the decision to switch phone support off. That bears repeating. They…switched…the… phones…off…in…the…middle…of…a… major…outage. Genius.
To compare and contrast: Clook recently migrated their servers, and couldn’t have been more open for the reasons why, how it would happen, when it would happen, pictures of where it will happen, postings on the forum while it was happening, and when it went slightly over schedule, the reasons why (a broken lift, if I remember right). Long story short, they treated their customer like grown-ups, and have gained a hige amount of loyalty as a result.
Taken together with the experience of another DSVR-to-Clook customer, we’ve got nearly a year of comparison between the two hosting companies. In that time, DSVR have had three major outages, four other significant problems a (current) huge email problem, and for comic value, managed to lose all domains that begin with “C”. (And no, I didn’t make that last one up).
In the same period, our Clook server has had 99.989% uptime, and it rarely takes longer than a few minutes for replies on the support email (which we rarely have to use, I might add.)
@Grishma – I have to say your comment made me (and my business partner) laugh out loud when it arrived this afternoon; it rather vindicated our decision, and its honesty was particularly refreshing at the end of a very long week (project managers – can’t develop with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em!).
That said, I don’t take any pleasure from hearing this about DSVR; I’d much rather be sat her thinking ‘perhaps we were too hasty, they’ve obviously got there act together…’. As for alternatives, one name does seem to keep cropping up here, but of course that depends on what you’re after.
@ Nick – the irony of the data centre move wasn’t lost on us either. A month or two after the disastrous move at DSVR, our new hosting company – yes, Clook – announces they’re moving data centres. Cue ‘oh god, here we go again’ thoughts here.
But as you say, Clook couldn’t have been more open with us, from sharing the reasons for the move, to posting photos of the new facilities (not just generic stock shots, but ‘here’s a variety of views of our rack space’ before and during the transition etc.) and even photos of servers being loaded into the lorries.
On the night of the move, a specific thread on the forum was updated almost hourly with progress reports (you’re right, the only problem during the move was that the service lift at Redbus broke down, so they had to use the passenger lift to transport hardware out of the old building. This delayed things by an hour or two, but was relayed to us at the time). For us, the transition was seamless – none of our clients was aware that their sites had moved about a mile down the road.
Apparently, now they’ve moved, Clook are going to be able to start offering VS hosting again, which may be of interest to disgruntled DSVR customers. For the record, we’ve contacted Clook a few times for support (e.g. a suspiciously-named-but-innocent client name triggering Apache’s mod_security) and many times when ordering/setting up new IP addresses and SSL certificates, and without exception they’ve responded within minutes.
And, as a bonus, Clook haven’t managed to lose all domains beginning with C.
Just can’t disagree with anything that’s been said :-( I would argue that it was Legend that did em in. I was a DSVR customer from mid 2001 until March 2006. All was went very well until Legend appeared – mid 2005 we had frequent but minor hiccups – stuck with them becuase for 5 years I’d had a wonderful service. Late 2005 – we had a major problem – but again stayed by them as – only one major problem in 5 years seemd worth forgiving. Turn of the year 2006 – every day, seemed to provide a new problem – until it totaly collapsed Feb 2006. Spent a weekend transferring all my domains to my own dedicated server – and have never looked back
At the risk of repeating all that has been said, we were DSVR clients from 2000 and had three servers with them during this time. We have just finished removing the last of our clients last week. We haven’t moved to Clook but to a company called Rackspace http://www.rackspace.co.uk who have a positively extraordinary service ethic – all tickets resolved in minutes and friendly, knowledable staff who are required to answer the phone in under ten rings!
We made the mistake of putting all of our eggs in the DSVR basket and paid the price for more than six months while we transferred away. Now we have all our domains held by 123-reg pointing to rackspace (on the basis it will let us change hosts far quicker, should we ever need to) and we plan to get a replica server with another provider in case Rackspace should ever ‘do a DSVR’.
I still cant believe had badly the service dropped and how fast it all changed. I now watch a webhosting.info report each week. DSVR always lose at least 100 domains per week and have on occasion cracked 1000 in a week. Nice to know we are not alone.
Well judging by all these comments, we needn’t have felt guilty about being disloyal to DSVR in their hour of need. Shame though.
@ Travis – I’ve looked at Rackspace for some of our clients; they do have a great reputation, but that level of service and reliability doesn’t come cheap. It’s a shame that there’s not more quality hosting available for those with more modest budgets/needs though.
today their servers have been down since god knows when. No access to control panel and no help line support. There really seems no justification in the amounts they charge, given that sites we have hosted elsewehere for £60 a year have never given anywhere near as much hassle. This is now the 11th time their server has been down since June. By my reckoning the maximum uptime we have had is 94% which looking around is the worst record i have ever seen.
After the server was down yet again for the entire weekend we moved – 6 months before our hosting plan was due to expire. So far as i am concerned moving to DSVR was a huge and costly mistake. The control panel was rarely accessible, support was nil, outdated versions of apache software, the servers were a nightmare etc etc.
I’m convinced legend/DSVR just want to hive off and close their hosting but can’t do it because of contractural reasons, so therefore have let the servers fall into a state of utter disrepair.
Hello from another one with the same gripes about DSVR. We’ve yet to jump ship but it’s proving to be hard work; I’m also looking for recommendations for reliable virtual servers. All the good recommendations (to their credit) stop taking new customers when they’re “full”, which isn’t much use when you’re looking to move!
Our most recent outage was 62 hours for a minor software update, because nobody noticed it went wrong on Friday evening and nobody could be reached to fix it until Monday morning. That was a week ago.
When I do get to talk to DSVR they sound really keen to keep DSVR going as part of the Demon brand; imho they simply don’t have anyone left who knows the systems to keep them running in the meantime. I think Legend saw off all the decent people, and then sold the remaining turkey to Thus based on its previous reputation.
Hi,
Just foudn this thread here. Same complaints abuot DSVR, same memories of a superb service DSVR back in 1998 when I joind (account number 3944).
I moved finally last month to a company called knownhost.com, they seem really switched on, excellent packages, very good an quick support, chioce of control panels, very happy so far,
Nik C
Oh dear. I co-founded DSVR back in 1997. And we worked our nuts off to give the best hosting solution anywhere. We had competition with the likes of iServer but their system did not offer a true VS environment.
I haven’t done too much research on the hosting front myself and have just plumped for a standard cpanel account with no shell login. Not for long though.
One of the main sales techies who helped greatly with DSVR is now working for fubra – their new service that’s coming out soon is pretty hot.
http://www.fubra.com/blog
Austin.
Since the Demon brand took over from the DSVR name the service has gotten even worse (I honestly didn’t think that was possible). I think the appauling level of service could do Demon’s brand an awful lot of damage.
It’s such a shame, as DSVR really rocked when I first joined up.
I agree with all that’s said, DSVR of old were a great investment and the money we made was great, but in the last 18months they have cost me some £34,000 in lost revenue as our main client dumped us!
We paid for the highest and best service DSVR had to offer but the support was useless and second rate, They accepted no responsibility for loss of service and always refer to these mythical creatures “systems guys” in London who are looking into it……remind me of the back to the future saying “cosine pressure angle of the flux capacitor etc etc” as if that helps!
Anyway enough ranting, let all put to and start a new DSVR, one in which we and our customers matter!
regards to all
This brings back memories… I remember DSVR being the dogs when it came to reliable webspace. I don’t know what happened once they were taken over… Quality of service dropped which was a pain cos the servers went down more often after they were bought. Did they move from Manchester business park?
Businessserve are absolutely terrible.
Wow, I can’t believe this post is still turning up in search engines! Thanks to everyone who’s commented on what turned out to be my most popular post ever. Clearly a lot of bitter ex-DSRV customers out there…
I’ve no idea what became of what was left of DSVR, but I hope the people behind it (when it was still a great company) have managed to find somewhere where their services and skills are appreciated.
18 months on, and Clook are providing an excellent service.
@Austin Delaney – it must have been pretty galling for you to see how DSVR ended up, having co-founded them. I’m sure I speak for a lot of ex-customers when I say thanks for your hard work.
@Jint – I’ve not had any experience with Businessserve, so perhaps you could let us know why you think they’re terrible?
Unusually for this article I’m actually going to post a response that has positive comments about the Demon/DSVR platform.
One of our main clients has an extremely successful database driven ecommerce web site and we hosted this on our dedicated dsvr server however the traffic to the site increased to such a level that the site needed to be moved to a dedicated box of its own. As we too had suffered lots of issues with the move to docklands and the power failure described above a decision was made that as the site was being moved anyway that we would try a new provider. We chose UK Fast as they make such a big play on the awards that they have won etc etc – all I can say is what a bloody nightmare!
Their server was down more than it was up cost our client a vast amount in lost sale and their reputation. Bearing in mind that the site had run happily on our dedicated box with dsvr for some years and our server hosted more of our other clients sites as well email. The fact that the UK Fast server was only hosting 1 site and no email etc this was very very bad and to add insult to injury UK Fast blamed guess what us, saying the there must be something wrong in the code/database etc. Anyway we moved the site temporarily back to our box and all worked fine as it had before the move to UK Fast whilst we provisioned another dedicated server with DSVR to which the site was finally moved more than a year ago and since everything has been great.
So the moral of the story is whilst the grass may look greener on the other side sometimes you are better off with the devil you know!
@ DoubleSpeed – It’s certainly good to know that Demon/DSVR are providing a good service to some (and hopefully all) of their clients now; let’s hope they’ve turned the corner in that respect.
However, for us the grass was greener on the other side. I’ve no experience of UK Fast (unless that’s just a guise of Fasthosts, in which case I’m not surprised…), but their site seems to be having problems right now ;)
Anyway, thanks for your comment. The original post about DSVR was meant purely as a moan, so I’m happy to read any positive comments too.
I think we can all agree that finding decent quality UK hostng shouldn’t be this traumatic, should it?! Or perhaps we – or at least our clients – just demand too much for too little?
DSVR are providing a fantastic service again, the problem is their products have not moved with the times, an example being the amount of disk space you get with the servers, it’s so stingy when compared to other hosts!
I suspect one stupid manager is to blame for all this, it’s always the way with these medium sized businesses. One idiot in a key role brings down the whole company.
It’s a shame that the director will only find out what’s going wrong once his desk is being loaded onto a back of a lorry by the liquidators!