Operating and managing a large Minecraft server community can be challenging, especially when it comes to the technical side of things. Finding the right server host for our needs has always been daunting, but in most cases over the years we have been able to find hosting companies that not only provide what we are looking for, but are easy to deal with and engage with us in good faith.
This unfortunately cannot be said of the former host of our EU servers, Surf Hosting.
It must be said that, initially upon us coming on board with them, we were handled professionally and it seemed like they were doing all they could to provide a quality service. Indeed, the first time we encountered an issue, things were resolved amicably.
This first issue was in June when the EU server hosted by them went down for five days. They accepted responsibility for that outage, which was described as hardware failure on the machine, and moved the servers to another unit that they rebuilt.
We were also provided hosting credit - on top of three months we already paid - to pad us out until the rest of the year, something which we did not ask for and we thought of as a generous gesture. We would later be proven wrong about this.
Things would take a sudden turn on September 27, when the new server they had provided to us failed in the same way. We reached out to support, and after two days of no success, we were contacted by the Director of Technology at Surf Hosting, Connor C.
The immediate response from him was to ask us point-blank if we made any changes to the hardware of the server to cause catastrophic failure, and that it appeared that he was also blaming us for the first incident as well.
Our response was that we had made no changes except at the very beginning of service - changing the fan profile from temperature control to 100% speed, which is something we have done to every server that hosts us. In addition, Surf Hosting also provided hosting for us on a machine in Chicago which has not failed once despite having the exact same settings.
At this very moment, there are at least ten other machines running with this modification and our servers in other hosting companies, and none of them have ever experienced the kind of incident that Surf Hosting was accusing us of causing.
In fact, the only common denominator in this situation would appear to be Surf Hosting. With this in mind, we rejected any suggestion that we were the source of the issues and decided to appeal to management.
When moves were made to escalate to a SLA claim, Lev A., the Vice President of Surf Hosting, contacted us.
It became clear that not only did they hold us responsible for the failure of two of their machines, but that they would be terminating their further service to us as a result. Our request for SLA compensation was denied on the grounds that we were already receiving service "free of charge" until the rest of the year as a result of the incident in June - something we again, did not ask for and was provided for us, we assumed, in good faith.
To have that thrown back in our face at the first opportunity is not only frustrating but also extremely unprofessional. In fact, the credit that they provided only came into effect on September 6 - eleven days before the incident. It is with this loophole, that they created, that our service was terminated with no recourse left to us but to recover our data and move on to another host.
They did cooperate in the transfer of our data, and as of today we are no longer hosting anything on their machines, including the unaffected Chicago service. We have since moved to a better host with upgraded equipment, and everything is working smoothly again for our European servers.
Finding the right host is a tricky prospect for most people due to the sheer amount of services on offer, and it is disappointing to see Surf Hosting contributing to that difficult environment by treating a loyal customer in this way.
We would advise anyone considering to use Surf Hosting to avoid making that decision, and at the very least avoid anything they host in Europe.
Posted on behalf of the Craft Down Under team
This unfortunately cannot be said of the former host of our EU servers, Surf Hosting.
It must be said that, initially upon us coming on board with them, we were handled professionally and it seemed like they were doing all they could to provide a quality service. Indeed, the first time we encountered an issue, things were resolved amicably.
This first issue was in June when the EU server hosted by them went down for five days. They accepted responsibility for that outage, which was described as hardware failure on the machine, and moved the servers to another unit that they rebuilt.
We were also provided hosting credit - on top of three months we already paid - to pad us out until the rest of the year, something which we did not ask for and we thought of as a generous gesture. We would later be proven wrong about this.
Things would take a sudden turn on September 27, when the new server they had provided to us failed in the same way. We reached out to support, and after two days of no success, we were contacted by the Director of Technology at Surf Hosting, Connor C.
The immediate response from him was to ask us point-blank if we made any changes to the hardware of the server to cause catastrophic failure, and that it appeared that he was also blaming us for the first incident as well.
Our response was that we had made no changes except at the very beginning of service - changing the fan profile from temperature control to 100% speed, which is something we have done to every server that hosts us. In addition, Surf Hosting also provided hosting for us on a machine in Chicago which has not failed once despite having the exact same settings.
At this very moment, there are at least ten other machines running with this modification and our servers in other hosting companies, and none of them have ever experienced the kind of incident that Surf Hosting was accusing us of causing.
In fact, the only common denominator in this situation would appear to be Surf Hosting. With this in mind, we rejected any suggestion that we were the source of the issues and decided to appeal to management.
When moves were made to escalate to a SLA claim, Lev A., the Vice President of Surf Hosting, contacted us.
It became clear that not only did they hold us responsible for the failure of two of their machines, but that they would be terminating their further service to us as a result. Our request for SLA compensation was denied on the grounds that we were already receiving service "free of charge" until the rest of the year as a result of the incident in June - something we again, did not ask for and was provided for us, we assumed, in good faith.
To have that thrown back in our face at the first opportunity is not only frustrating but also extremely unprofessional. In fact, the credit that they provided only came into effect on September 6 - eleven days before the incident. It is with this loophole, that they created, that our service was terminated with no recourse left to us but to recover our data and move on to another host.
They did cooperate in the transfer of our data, and as of today we are no longer hosting anything on their machines, including the unaffected Chicago service. We have since moved to a better host with upgraded equipment, and everything is working smoothly again for our European servers.
Finding the right host is a tricky prospect for most people due to the sheer amount of services on offer, and it is disappointing to see Surf Hosting contributing to that difficult environment by treating a loyal customer in this way.
We would advise anyone considering to use Surf Hosting to avoid making that decision, and at the very least avoid anything they host in Europe.
Posted on behalf of the Craft Down Under team
