16 Mar
2009
16 Mar
'09
10:55 p.m.
Hi,
Some of you may recall the additional 120M RAM that was promised for
the end of January. If you don't know what I am talking about then
it's likely that you're one of the newer customers who already got
set up with the larger plans and none of this applies to you. If
you're not sure, see the price list on the web site which is current
and compare it with what you're paying.
The first attempt at this - just putting 48G of RAM into the
machines and rebooting them - hit problems when it turned out that
32bit Xen could not see more than 16G of RAM. That didn't provide
enough RAM for everyone to have the upgrade, and represented a waste
besides.
I then decided to use what was at the time a cold spare server to
experiment with a 64bit hypervisor on 32bit userland. If successful
then it would be something I could replicate on the other servers
with just some package installs and a reboot, as opposed to a
complete reinstall.
Well, it hasn't been as successful as I would like. Centos guests
seem to be incredibly unstable, and I think it's too risky to go
100% with that configuration.
In the meantime I have had to advertise the new plans on the web
site because the whole point of this was to keep Bitfolk
competitive. This became even more important recently when Bytemark
announced their plan upgrades.
My new plan is to install more hardware and build it 64bit to begin
with, and evaluate running 32bit guests on there. Why not 64bit
guests you may ask. The reason for this is that being able to move
VPSes around between hosts is essential for redundancy purposes and
therefore having only one host that can run 64bit guests rules that
out for now. This will be revisited in a few months.
If that proves to be stable then I will need to slowly empty the
current servers onto the new ones and then rebuild the old ones.
That's going to take months.
People are quite understandably keen to have the upgrade ASAP and I
do sympathise with this. It isn't right that new customers should
get more for the same price and that was never the intention. There
has been talk of cancelling services and then buying them new again,
which is more work for everyone involved but would force the issue
in your favour.
To try to avoid this sort of thing as much as possible I have had a
look and it seems like by not taking on new customers for a while
and shuffling a few guests around I can provide the promised upgrade
to all customers *on certain hosts*. With a bit more shuffling I
can *probably* allow same for most of the remaining hosts. I will
still need to eventually move everyone off of all the old servers
and rebuild them, because there's a total of 24G of RAM not
currently accessible.
So anyway, first up are customers on curacao. If you shut down
(*NOT* reboot!) and boot again, you should get an additional 120M of
RAM. If you aren't sure whether you're going to get extra or not
and want to check, look how much RAM you have now and then log on to
https://panel.bitfolk.com/ which will tell you what your plan is.
If your plan is bigger, shut down + boot and that's what you'll get.
In the next few days I will do the same on obstler.
Not everyone quite fits on kahlua or kwak if you all got upgraded.
I will probably give the upgrade to those paying yearly or quarterly
first and then attempt to move some things around to see if I can
give more. It's not far off working, so should be possible.
corona on the other hand is a bit of a lost cause. It was already
maxed out of RAM at 8G, so didn't get any extra, and there's nothing
that can be done. All I can do here for those who are desperate for
the extra RAM is try to move you to other machines.
I have stopped accepting new customers until the new servers are
tested because otherwise things are just going to get dragged out
more. There will be natural churn of customers so from time to time
there will be space for those on the waiting list.
In the meantime if anyone feels they are happy with their existing
amount of RAM and want to downgrade to the new plan that gives them
the same amount of RAM for lower cost, drop an email to
support(a)bitfolk.com and that will happen. People on quarterly or
yearly payments can too, and will get service credit back.
Any questions, feel free to ask on or off list..
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
17 Mar
17 Mar
9:50 a.m.
Hello,
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:55:05PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
So anyway, first up are customers on curacao. If you
shut down
(*NOT* reboot!) and boot again, you should get an additional 120M of
RAM.
Today's crop of support tickets suggests that I should have added:
Please make sure that you can get into your Xen shell
console *before* you shut your VPS down, as otherwise you
won't be able to start it again.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
12:15 p.m.
Hello,
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:55:05PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
In the meantime if anyone feels they are happy with
their existing
amount of RAM and want to downgrade to the new plan that gives them
the same amount of RAM for lower cost, drop an email to
support(a)bitfolk.com and that will happen. People on quarterly or
yearly payments can too, and will get service credit back.
People are asking how this will work. Bitfolk first started adding
new customers on the new plans on 31st January, so anyone who
downgrades will get service credit for the difference, pro rata from
there. Once Bitfolk starts accepting new customers again that
option will be off the table so please do contact
support(a)bitfolk.com if you're wanting this to happen.
Within the next week my priorities will be:
1) downgrade everyone that has asked for it, refund difference with
service credits
2) of those left still eligible for the upgrade, I will upgrade
everyone else that I can
3) downgrade the small remainder and refund with service credits, so
that no one is paying more than they should be. I don't want to
be in the position of trying to sell <240M plans for <£8/month
though.
Finally, sadly a couple of people got very angry and told me that it
was not legal for me to sell them a smaller plan for a price that
would get a new customer more.
I am sorry that they (or any of you) aren't satisfied, but in fact
it is extremely common for all types of businesses to offer new
customers promotions that are not available to existing customers,
and Bitfolk is under no legal obligation to upgrade anyone, ever. I
don't personally believe that is very fair though and certainly do
not want a reputation for doing it - this situation arose because of
a sequence of unfortunate deficiencies in Xen and was not a
strategy. I am doing my best to rectify it by at worst crediting
you service equal to what new customers have obtained. I would ask
you to bear with me in this.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
12:35 p.m.
2009/3/17 Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com>om>:
Finally, sadly a couple of people got very angry and
told me that it
was not legal for me to sell them a smaller plan for a price that
would get a new customer more.
This is something that happens all the time.. You just have to look at
mobile phones, banks (savings or loans), broadband, etc - almost
anything.
Just reading through this, it seems it was never Andy's intention to
end up in this situation, and that this (legal) injustice will be
sorted in due course.
/me shrugs
5:32 p.m.
Andy Smith wrote:
[snip]
Finally, sadly a couple of people got very angry and
told me that it
was not legal for me to sell them a smaller plan for a price that
would get a new customer more.
Well I'd like to say that I think you've been very upfront and honest
about the whole affair and I'm impressed by the way you've tried to be
fair to everybody, at a cost of what must have been a lot of
inconvenience to yourself. This is why I prefer to deal with suppliers
like Bitfolk rather than the faceless big boys.
There is of course nothing illegal about offering special deals to new
customers, and you've made it perfectly clear *why* you're doing what
you're doing. I fear some people are never satisfied.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
John
7:07 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2009 at 05:32:44PM +0000, John Winters wrote:
Andy Smith wrote:
[snip]
Amen to that! Andy, your communication and responsiveness is
first-class, and it was a very nice surprise to hear that I'm
apparently entitled to a no-cost service upgrade which I was never
even expecting.
Finally, sadly a couple of people got very angry
and told me that it
was not legal for me to sell them a smaller plan for a price that
would get a new customer more.
Well I'd like to say that I think you've been very upfront and honest
about the whole affair and I'm impressed by the way you've tried to be
fair to everybody, at a cost of what must have been a lot of
inconvenience to yourself. This is why I prefer to deal with suppliers
like Bitfolk rather than the faceless big boys.
There is of course nothing illegal about offering special deals to new
customers, and you've made it perfectly clear *why* you're doing what
you're doing. I fear some people are never satisfied.
Keep up the good work.
19 Mar
19 Mar
11:56 p.m.
Hello,
On Mon, Mar 16, 2009 at 10:55:05PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
So anyway, first up are customers on curacao. If you
shut down
(*NOT* reboot!) and boot again, you should get an additional 120M of
RAM. If you aren't sure whether you're going to get extra or not
and want to check, look how much RAM you have now and then log on to
https://panel.bitfolk.com/ which will tell you what your plan is.
If your plan is bigger, shut down + boot and that's what you'll get.
In the next few days I will do the same on obstler.
The above has been done for all customers on obstler now (except for
those who either weren't eligible, or who already asked to
downgrade).
To get the increased RAM, first make sure that you can access your
xen shell console. Then shut down your VPS (*NOT* reboot), and boot
it again.
Next will be to see what I can do for customers on kahlua, kwak and
corona.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
20 Mar
20 Mar
1:28 p.m.
Hi,
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:56:56PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
To get the increased RAM, first make sure that you can
access your
xen shell console. Then shut down your VPS (*NOT* reboot), and boot
it again.
Next will be to see what I can do for customers on kahlua, kwak and
corona.
The RAM upgrade was done for almost all customers on kwak as well
early this morning.
Aside from those not eligible or who had already asked for
downgrade, there were two customers who couldn't be accommodated.
They have already been contacted separately.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
22 Mar
22 Mar
11:24 a.m.
Hello,
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 01:28:34PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:56:56PM +0000, Andy Smith
wrote:
As above for kahlua now.
To get the increased RAM, first make sure that
you can access your
xen shell console. Then shut down your VPS (*NOT* reboot), and boot
it again.
Next will be to see what I can do for customers on kahlua, kwak and
corona.
The RAM upgrade was done for almost all customers on kwak as well
early this morning. Aside from those not eligible or who had already asked
for
downgrade, there were two customers who couldn't be accommodated.
They have already been contacted separately.
There were 11 customers who couldn't be given the upgrade; they have
been contacted and offered cheaper plans instead.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Encrypted mail welcome - keyid 0x604DE5DB
5511
days inactive
5517
days old
8 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Adam Spiers -
Alexander Mann -
Andy Smith -
John Winters