My best experience with a company

Hello, everyone.

I thought I'd post my experience with Linode, as many others have.

Approximately two and a half years ago, I heard about Linode from someone on twitter after they'd read my post about another VPS provider I was using at the time. At the time, I was still looking for something better than what I had, as it wasn't all that great. After looking at Linode's plans, I decided they would be a good company to go with, as their plans looked great, offering more than what I needed at the time.

The sign up process was quick and easy, and within a few hours, I had all of my services compiled and configured on a Linode. I found it to be quick and responsive, and the guides in the Linode library were easy to follow.

Initially, I needed no help getting everything set up, as I'm a fairly proficient Linux user already. I already believed everything was quite easy to do and thought to myself, I won't need any help with anything here. Eventually, though, I heard about the backup beta and decided to contact the Linode support team. I did so, expecting them to be terse, simply telling me the service had been enabled and thanking me for their service. They told me much more than that, though, warning me the service shouldn't be relied on for production use and encouraging me to give them feedback on how everything went. I thought to myself, that was kind of them.

I kept an eye on everything as I always do and was glad when the folks at Linode opened a support ticket in regards to maintenance they were going to be doing on the host my Linode was on. I migrated when I got the chance, impressed with their devotion to their customers.

When I ended up getting another Linode, I asked them why network transfer was lower than it should be. It said nothing in the Linode manager about why that was the case. I was thanked for contacting them and kindly informed that my transfer was prorated. As is the case in many of my support tickets, I was encouraged to contact them if I had any further questions. Once again, I found their kindness and willingness to make their customers comfortable to be impressive, as it's not something I've seen in many other companies. Some time after I submitted that support ticket, I found that when I created a new linode, it stated at the very bottom of the Linode manager that transfer was prorated. I've often wondered if my support ticket got them thinking about placing that information there, or if it already had been and I'd just missed it.

I won't go over every support ticket I've ever had, but there is one more I'd like to cover. I was having difficulty with the ec2 kernel when I used it on my Linode, which, by the way, I don't recommend unless you're using Amazon's services, perhaps. I was using the kernel after following a guide for setting up Asterisk on Ubuntu 9.10. I was setting it up on 10.04 at the time, I believe, but the instructions were similar.

In my lish shell, I was getting the following messages:

[224541.998830] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 61s! [swapper:0]

[256530.883011] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 61s! [swapper:0]

[256834.847936] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#2 stuck for 61s! [swapper:0]

I was also having difficulties logging into ssh from time to time, and was having load averages around 0.7 to 1.3. I would have to wait a minute before connecting to ssh if I couldn't connect, but after that, the connection remained stable. After I explained what I had been trying to do, (run dahdi with asterisk), I was contacted within about forty minutes by someone on the support team. They informed me that they couldn't help me solve my problem, as the amount of configurations available when booting from grub is quite wide. They did, however, give me plenty of suggestions on how I might investigate the problem and run the dahdi module under Linode's kernels. I never did get the latter to work successfully until later on on another linode, but I did switch to Ubuntu's officially supported kernel for zen guests, not amazon's ec2 kernel. After I did that, the load avrages went down and I no longer had ssh connectivity issues.

Since then, talking with the Linode support team, and even seeing a nickname or two from the folks at Linode in the irc channel always brings a smile to my face. I feel welcome and comfortable speaking with Linode, because I know that they'll do their best to help me with my difficulties that I can't solve myself, and will keep me up to date on issues that might effect me. So far, Linode has stuck true to their company description, and in my opinion, have even gone above and beyond what they're supposed to. In my eyes, there's no other VPS company that offers as much as Linode, with the quality and politeness of their employees.

I will be sticking with Linode for many years to come because I know they'll do their best to keep me happy. After all, keeping me happy increases their income and keeps me as a customer. It's always an honor to speak with the support team, submit support tickets, and get my problems solved. I am beyond satisfied with the level of support I've received, and am glad such people exist in this world as those that work at Linode.

Keep up the superb service, guys!

Blake