Kudos to ColoPronto / ServerPronto
I’m sure many have read some stories about these guys, and wondered if their “almost too good to be true” colocation prices are worth taking the leap. Well, I decided why not, and gave it a whirl. I had a few non-critical sites I needed to host, and I had a nice little 1U server available. They make the process pretty simple – you sign up, they give you the network provisioning info (IP address, gateway, etc.), and you ship the server ready to plug in. They took a couple days after receiving the server to rack it and power it up, and once there I was on my way.
They are connected by Cogent, which raises other concerns for many people, but so far any outages I’ve noticed have been slight (a minute here and there, typically at off times). Since I didn’t traceroute the outages, it could very well have been Comcast or some provider between here and there. Network performance has been quite reasonable, I’m getting all of the 10MBit switch port I’m paying for.
The real praise comes in when I needed these guys, and is the fear of anyone who colocates a server. “What happens when a component in my server fails?” This is exactly what happened to me. I noticed the box wasn’t available on the ‘net, so I submitted a ticket asking for them to take a peek. The response was not what I expected — the box wouldn’t power up, suspected failed power supply. What’s worse, is they didn’t have a matching 1U supply on hand – and why would they, it’s not THEIR server to be worrying about! What came next really floored me. They actually peeled the lid off the server, stitched in a regular ATX power supply, and got it back on the network. They even ran the server opened up and running on their bandaid supply until I was able to locate a replacement supply and get it shipped out to them! This is service well above and beyond what I would have expected, and it was obviously VERY appreciated both by myself and the folks who visit the sites hosted on the server.
So if anyone at ColoPronto/ServerPronto happens to stumble across this little blog post, thanks again.