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JohnCompanies Collocation - Resource List and Testimonials
Hello! Thank you very much for your interest - JohnCompanies is an independent ISP that has existed over the course of three
years and specializes in FreeBSD and Linux Server Instances.
Before you read any further, allow me to emphasise that I have built my company on the philosophy of unlimited, personalized service. No
customer of JohnCompanies (and we have over 600 now, making us one of the largest collocation providers in the world) has ever been shuffled
around a ticket system, been given a number, or received a cut and paste "knowledge base" answer. We know you by name, we know what you run
on your system, and we know what hurdles you need to overcome and we will provide very personalized support to you for whatever you run into.
Support requests will be handled in 24 hours or less, and they will always be answered by a UNIX expert - there are no such things as
support levels, or escalating a problem - no matter how simple or complex your issue is, it will be addressed from the beginning by a UNIX engineer who
writes code, understands OS internals, and will explain the theory behind their actions.
Please visit JohnCompanies Collocation for more details, or email info@johncompanies.com with any questions you may have.
How should I contact you ?
If you are a new/prospective customer, email info@johncompanies.com. If you are an existing FreeBSD
customer, email support@johncompanies.com, and if you are an existing Linux customer, email linux@johncompanies.com.
Existing Customers with an Emergency
Please send an email to the appropriate support address with the word EMERGENCY in the subject line - procmail resends those requests to a pager carried by multiple on-call engineers.
Testimonials posted by kuro5hin.org users
The following are actual testimonials posted by kuro5hin.org users who became (and remain) our customers.
I had been Verio for hosting various servers out-of-house. After signing up with JC almost a month ago, based on their responsiveness to issues and the service they provide, we're dumping those Verio accounts and ordering another server from JC.
Besides all of the technical features of the service, the basic things impress me the most. Like getting a notification email about the sendmail issue rather than having to ask about it (like I did Verio, which gave varying responses from "It's been addressed" to "We're working on it", depending on who you asked). Or the fact that they were on top of a problem I ran into this morning... 6:30 AM on a Sunday. I get an email back a couple of minutes later telling me that they're aware of the problem and it'll be fixed in 90 seconds. And it was.
In terms of cost, I was paying Verio $500 per month just for one dedicated server. For $75 a month, JC's collocated server has better performance and offers much better service. My only regret is that I didn't find these guys a year ago.
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I just discovered this forum here so thought i'd post my comments.
I got a freesbd account and it was all set up well within 24 hours and seems to be working fine.
I've had fairly rapid and good responses to the stupid questions I've asked and when I messed up my installation and asked them to reset the server back to it's starting state they have done so easily and efficiently.
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Well I've still to see any major problems with JC. Tech Support has always been there. Even put up with some DOS attacks. Its been so good that I've even started up my own company using there servers. That how confident I am in them
Rus
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65535.net - Hosting and stuff
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So far in my tenure as a JC customer:
1) I've had zero problems getting reverse DNS configured. I do my own forward DNS through register.com.
2) I've had zero problems getting an answer back when I asked a question about the service and service limits.
3) I've had zero problems with uptime or stability.
4) I've had zero problems with connectivity.
5) I've had zero problems with backups.
My only complaint is that I'm not part owner of the company :-)
There are 10 types of people in this world:
Those who do know binary and those who don't.
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I've had a FreeBSD virtual server there for about a year. It's been exactly as promised. I have absolutely no complaints about support or uptime. Hell, there's even a discount if you're a free-software developer. I think that, combined now with being a K5 sponsor, is really cool. If you're comfortable being root and administering a system, I recommend it.
Faster, faster, until the thrill of...
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I've been using johncompanies for several months, and have nothing but good things to say about them.
The service, as everyone says, is excellent. If this was ebay I'd call it A++++++++++. The machines run like the wind, and I have nothing but good things to say about the whole operation.
The only bad thing I can think to say is that the servers are located in the states, which means I have to live with 190ms ping times... but that's not exactly a complaint.
Really, get one. I had a dedicated server from rackspace before this one, costing something like $300 a month. The JC server feels much faster, service is way better (even with rackspace's "fanatical" support), and I have no intention of going back.
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I've long wanted a machine which had a reliable internet connection, on which I could do whatever I wanted without problems with my broadband ISP. I can do most of the things I want to from my own broadband-connected machines, but not reliably - broadband goes down too often - and not in an agreeable way, as I've had my cable modem turned off before for running servers.
I came up with a list of reasons why to get a server in an attempt to convince my friends to sign on with me. They are:
- The ability to have a reliable, always net-connected machine where servers are not only allowed but encouraged (as opposed to the Rogers policy) would be sweet.
- I'd really love to have a machine which can collect all my mail and put it into an IMAP mailbox, always available for my retrieval no matter where I am or what machine I'm on. This becomes particularly important when I get a laptop. Another possibility is adding webmail to the mix, so no matter where I am I can check my mail.
- I'd really like to be able to host a public Subversion server, so I can start developing using it for a while. I don't imagine that my Sourceforge project would go away, but I would definitely be interested in trying out svn for a few things.
- I've gotten the idea of having many people on this machine, and with a sort of unified journal script, you could easily make the datum of which person's journal to retrieve configurable. Then you just load their web template, fill in the entries and away you go.
- A shell server for bots and tons of other fun things.
Well, they decided this was a good idea, too, and we signed up. There have been a couple of bumps in the road - hardware failures mostly, which we think are behind us now - but all-in-all the new virtual Linux server is wonderful.
Of course, I've got a "Johncompanies service is great" story. We have a Linux virtual server, and the virtualization software limits the amount of memory you can use. Well, because of the way we've got this set up, we don't use the stock servers for much of anything and so we lose the ability to use shared memory for our processes. I e-mailed John about this, and - I am not kidding - 4 minutes later I was running with a higher memory quota. He fixed it and replied before my e-mail client had a chance to check for new messages again.
Now, the reason we don't run many stock servers is a good one: we're running Debian on our virtual Linux server. No, not as the boot operating system, in a chroot, but it's mostly indistinguishable from the real thing. We have two IPs: one of them refers to the Red Hat server, and one to Debian. You can ssh to either independently, and never know you were on the same physical machine (except that they have the same name).
Red Hat happily boots up the few services we still have running on the old IP, and then executes into the chroot and starts the rest of the services we have on the Debian IP. It's really quite elegant, and while there are a couple of snags which wouldn't be there if we didn't have to boot with Red Hat, I can't complain.
I will be writing up and posting a document on just what we did to get Debian up and running on our server, but anybody with enough knowledge of Debian can do it.
The short of it is: Debian users, rejoice and get a Linux virtual server from Johncompanies now!
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My initial experience; a positive one! (none / 0) (#73)
by Matadon on Thu Jun 13th, 2002 at 11:39:58 AM EST
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I also recently just started hosting a server with John, and I'm quite satisfied with the quality of the service. Emails are responded to promptly, and he gives a 10% discount for paying year-in-advance, which was most welcome.
The equipment is responsive, and I'll post more after I've had a chance to really do some testing on the software I've been installing.
--
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"There's this thing called being so open-minded your brains drop out." — Richard Dawkins.
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My experience (5.00 / 1) (#65)
by tekan on Wed May 29th, 2002 at 11:31:57 PM EST
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It only took three days or so to get my account active (due to paypals "verification" process, not the hoster). I was sent an email with a standard user account and password, as well as root's password. There is a full ports collection to use which made a lot of the grunge work proceed pretty easily (installing GD, libpng, etc, etc, etc). Compiling and installing PostgreSQL, Apache 2, and PHP 4.2.0 (cgi and module) were all done very quickly and without any problems whatsoever. The only services running were cron, syslogd, and sshd. Nothing else was running which was a pleasant and welcome surprise since I'm use to having to turn off a lot of services that I never use (portmap for example) that come pre-installed in some distro's and setups. The only issue I ran into was that I needed a relatively new JDK/JRE (version 1.2.2). FreeBSD has a native JDK build, but its version is 1.1.8 and it didn't work properly with some of the jar files that I have. I attempted to install the linux 1.3.3 JDK via an available port (/usr/ports/java/linux-jdk13), but I ran into a problem where the linux_base package was trying to use "mknod" (which is one of the few tools that you don't have access to under the virtual server) and failed. I sent an email to support and within half an hour the problem was solved. The JDK installed successfully and runs fine via Linux emulation.
Overall, I'd give johncompanies an "A" for quick technical support, a robust and open environment, and the affordability of the whole package. I'm very pleased, thanks.
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I decided to take the plunge and signed up earlier in the month. I got my server set up about 10 days ago, and have spent 10 busy days getting it ready to roll.
So far, I've been outlandishly impressed.
Let me expand on that statement.
The server was a little slower in getting set up than we'd anticipated. Parts had been incorrectly shipped by a supplier, However, during this time John kept me informed as to what the status was and didn't just leave me hanging. Score +1.
Once I had access, I set about getting re-accustomed to the ports system and started to populate my virtual server with what I needed to get going. Compile times are screamingly fast (I've never seen emacs compile that fast). Added to that, download times for the source were very impressive. Score +2.
Server response is very good. I don't know how many other virtual servers are on the same physical hardware but I do know that it's amply equipped to handle them all. It'll be interesting to confirm that as everyone starts to load up their servers the underlying hardware has the horsepower to cope. From what I've seen so far, I have no doubts that it will. Score +1.
Technical support. Emails are replied to promptly and accurately. I expect John is juggling a thousand requests given the recent interest in his virtual servers, but this doesn't show with delayed or hurried replies. Score +1.
Value for money. Outstanding. I was really interested in this plan since most of the virtual hosting companies I've seen so far fall into the 'one account, one domain' mindset. That's fine for many, but I have a couple of active domains and a bunch of vanity domains that need hosting but aren't worth a $10/month plan of their own. I could go on in detail but if you're read this far I'm sure you know all the reasons already. Score +3.
Firewall. If you provide ipfw rules, John will install them on the network border. Having dealt with remote machines before, my biggest nightmare is trying to deal with the firewall setup. Sure, the freebsd change_rules.sh helps mitigate the risk but I hate the idea of changing the firewall and being locked out. By having the rules on a separate machine I know that they're being changed by someone 'local', and that the dreaded lock-out scenario is far, far, far less likely to occur. This is also a service that I've not seen offered elsewhere. Score +1.
After saying all that, there are a few quirks associated with the virtualized server that I've noticed. None of these are showstoppers but they're worth mentioning if only briefly.
There's no loopback interface, and under the freebsd virtual server no possibility for a second IP to be assigned to the server. This means you can't run tinydns and dnscache at the same time (they can't both bind to the same port, since dnscache would normally expect to have 127.0.0.1 available). All this means is your connections take another 5ms to answer due to the reverse lookup taking place on the local nameserver, not the local cache.
There are a couple of FreeBSDisms (such as in /etc/security) that show the server is virtualized. For example, the security script sees the mountpoints on the host system that aren't on the virtual system and reports a 'mount point not found'. A one line change takes care of this, and frankly I'd rather have a vanilla install with quirks than be given a hybrid system that hides the differences under the carpet.
There you have it. Zero problems. A couple of very minor quirks. A large number of plusses and big plusses.
Certainly at some point I'd like to step up to dedicated hardware, but for the time being this suits my needs, and suits my budget. My only regret is not getting it set up sooner.
-- Dave Baker.
M-x revert-world
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After the original ad campaign here on Kuro5hin, along with some overtime coming through I decided to give it a try after some bad experiences with my last host.
I have to say I am impressed ... I signed up on a Friday afternoon, and got an e-mail back the next day (Saturday) saying that it'd be done that day ... check my e-mail and there's all the details for me.
After that, log in, load some essentials (apache, php, mod_perl, bind, imap) and apart from a small downtime (which they were upfront about the reason for - i didn't even realise it'd gone down) I've had no problems - after the reboot they even helped (within about an hour) make sure that all the services were started at boot time.
So now I'm running everything I want, learnt more about the workings of bind, imap and apache then I thought possible :)
Overall I'd give them an A+ for tech support and A+ for the overall system - if you know UNIX, want a dedicated host but don't want to pay over the odds, and get possibly the best hosting tech support I've ever had, make no delay, sign up today :)
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