[cobalt-users] Co-location info and the Good Bad and Ugly

[hyrb <hyrb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Good,

There's been some questions asked about co-lo folks and Ideas for companies.  After this weekend I'll throw my 2 cents in.  I broke my server, twice, doing midnight installs of
*experimental* software from the site that GUIs forgot.  Dialtone not only had someone there in the center to do a hard reboot of my Raq, they even sent me an email within a
couple of minutes of it going down to ask if I wanted it rebooted or if I needed it down for some reason!

No big deal right? Simple monitoring of your clients boxes.  Except they actually do it instead of promise it.  They also responded with advice for the simple Linux idiot that I
am on how to check the logs to show me what the machine was saying I did to it and where to find the log files.  Nice to know I get what I pay for in a co-lo deal!

Pretty good!,

Cobalt, in using port 81 and having the gui on a 'back up' web mode made it available to input commands via the interface even when the main Apache server went down.  Pretty
smart!

Bad,

Cobalt's insistence in not providing packages for non-gui applications except in an "experimental" mode as RPMs only.  I'm not asking for support, just information!  The
knowledgebase seems to be updated only when they officially answer a question, which means it it hopelessly out of date.  By the time tech support answers a question, 1/2/3 weeks
on average, most everybody has turned to other info sources.  I could live with this OK if I at least had the info of how cobalt's set-up was different from a "standard" redhat
setup to use when installing software.  Let's face it. You run a business, it grows, and you need to make a server you've bought grow with it.  At least to the extent of offering
a backend database and admin tools!
Well, at least I'm 100% more linux literate than I was a month ago :)

Ugly,

Warranty?  What Warranty.