Something a bit different (about our server)
Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:54 pm
It's not often (in fact, I'm not sure this has ever happened to me) that I feel the need to share the contents of a support ticket; but this one - sent to us from Jest, who runs Jestservers and provides our ArmA2 server - is so different that I wanted to share it with all the guests:
I plan to send comrade Jest a note to say thanks and to wish him well. If any of the other guests fancy adding a message, I'll be glad to include them.
I'd like to add a rider to this: A few days ago Jest emailed me and asked if I'd mind migrating the Folk server to a new (and better) bit of hardware. The deal was that I wouldn't have to do anything, and the only change would be to the IP address. Oh ... and we'd get a month free for our trouble. And throughout, he never mentioned anything about being in Japan.Jest(Kevin) here. I'd like to state everything is fine, I'm fine, Jestservers.com is fine and stable, my friends are fine.
This is mostly to new customers who may be like "well I heard great things, but support seems a bit slow"
Also to our older customers who have seen a delay in response and support.
I'll have a more detailed blog post soon.
I have had a lot of demand for eastern Europe/Asia servers, so I shopped around and found a few datacenters in Japan that met our needs.
They invited me to take a tour of the datacenter and have a business meeting, as Japan business is Very personal I have learned.
I'm not going to list all the appointments I had, but here are some:
https://www.wansecurity.com/
http://www.attokyo.co.jp/eng/service/basic.html
http://www.equinix.com/data-center-loca ... ta-center/
I've used Equinix before and it's amazing quality. So what do I do when I got free tickets via credit card points to anywhere in the world and friends in Tokyo?
Go to Tokyo for a tour of the datacenters I'm about to send a lot of expensive equipment to of course(not to mention I love sushi and arcades)!
I had 1 tour of the attokyo datacenter scheduled on March 12th, which unknown to me at the time would not be possible.
I arrived in Tokyo on the 9th, 1-2 days before the quake (dates are a little weird since it's across the "date line")
I'm recovering from jet lag in my tiny hotel when the 9 magnitude earthquake woke me up.
I'm from Texas so I've never been in a earthquake, let alone a massive one.
I panic of course, end up parkouring down 6 flights of stairs trying to get out of the hotel half asleep.
I make it to the streets and look up at my hotel swaying back and forth, but they build them tough here.
I then join about 3000 people on a bridge (high ground) and watch on a giant TV as the tsunami hits Chiba and other shore lines(I took one picture at this time I'll post on my blog).
It's all down hill from there.
From issues with Gmail connecting me to my customers, to radiation panic, I end up evacuating to Osaka.
I catch up with work on the 4 hour train ride at this time.
While in Osaka I then learn about the damage to the reactors, and try to get a plane ride home sooner.
All flights are booked to the US(though I have my return ticket, for today).
I could have flown to Europe, however it was out of my price range since I'd then have to catch another flight back to the US from there.
So I stayed in a hotel most of the time, waiting on today, doing tickets at the opposite time I'm use to.
Numerous other issues delayed support as well, from recovering from a nasty stomach virus(darn you American sushi) to my bank detecting me in Japan as fraud and suspending my only way to get money.
All in all, it's been a wild ride, but everything is fine now.
Support will return to normal in the next 24 hours when I arrive back in Texas.
While our plans to expand to Asia are on hold, one of the datacenters called me up to make sure I was okay. They also did not have any downtime.
I will be going with them soon to say the least.
I plan to send comrade Jest a note to say thanks and to wish him well. If any of the other guests fancy adding a message, I'll be glad to include them.