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If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

joyent.com

71–80 of 170 posts

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#71

With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut up. [1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist "as long as we exists". A couple of months back they sent an email that they are "discontinuing" lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many people (including me) agreed to the…

Red herring. Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans.

The problem is that I have no more trust into them honoring an agreement.

I'd very much like to keep my lifetime account (I rarely use it for anything, but when I need it, it's there, it's paid for and I can just use it). Problem is, the new Textdrive was essentially launched out of trying to avert this PR debacle, and neither Joyent nor Textdrive have published any information on how this endeavor is funded or supposed to sustain itself (does Joyent pay for the existing customers, as long as Joyent exists? Will it go bankrupt if it can't support the existing customers off of new customers?).

The guy running the new Textdrive seems to have all the right intentions from what one reads on the forums, and I wish him to succeed, but at this point I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund).

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#72

With the lifetime account fiasco still ongoing [1], they should probably shut up. [1] Joyent/Textdrive sold lifetime shared hosting accounts for a one time payment in the beginning. Those accounts would exist "as long as we exists". A couple of months back they sent an email that they are "discontinuing" lifetime accounts. After uproar from the community they offered refunds. Many people (including me) agreed to the…

"lifetime" "unlimited" "forever" etc products should always been looked at sceptically for that reason. Anything that is either finite or requires up-keep cannot be offered on these terms, it is just impossible. I actually avoid unlimited products on purpose because I think a lie is a bad way to start doing business together. Be it web-hosting, broadband, or anything else. I would prefer they just be up front and the…

So, what do you think about CrashPlan. A very much known, sort of trustworthy business? They offer unlimited accounts too.

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#73
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I know is I get a time-out when connecting to joyent with https-everywhere running, and a normal webpage when it's disabled!

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/joylent.com It's not just you! http://joylent.com looks down from here. edit: 11:12 UTC it's back up again.

It's joyent, not joylent.

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red herring. Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans.

> Red herring. Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans. From what I know of the story, if they do honor lifetime plans, it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They had every intention of flipping the lifetime planholder…

> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring?

That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed.

p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red herring. Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans.

The problem is that I have no more trust into them honoring an agreement. I'd very much like to keep my lifetime account (I rarely use it for anything, but when I need it, it's there, it's paid for and I can just use it). Problem is, the new Textdrive was essentially launched out of trying to avert this PR debacle, and neither Joyent nor Textdrive have published any information on how this endeavor is funded or suppo…

> I have no simply no trust left that this will go well (which is why wanted to take the refund).

Hindsight is 20/20, but lifetime service claim sounds too good to be true anyway. Besides, was that 5-6 years of hosting for $500?

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#76
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Red herring. Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans. From what I know of the story, if they do honor lifetime plans, it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They had every intention of flipping the lifetime planholder…

> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.

Whether you fundamentally trust your provider to try to do what they agreed 'isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability'?

Did you really mean that?

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Red herring. Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? > Besides, as far as I understand, Textdrive is in the process of being relaunched, honoring all the lifetime plans. From what I know of the story, if they do honor lifetime plans, it isn't out of the goodness of their hearts. They had every intention of flipping the lifetime planholder…

> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.

> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing a 180. How is pointing that out a red herring?

>> That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it?

The claim being made is unlike Amazon, they won't let reddit down. It's relevant to point out these guys have made tall claims in the past and failed to deliver. I won't do business with someone who let's sales swindle customers. Even if the engineering is awesome, there is no guarantee sales didn't sell you something they couldn't deliver.

As far as service quality and stability goes, the only way to evaluate it is to actually switch.

> Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed.

It's possible to do PR without bullshitting. You can always publish your actual numbers viz. number of customers, downtime history, avg issue resolution time. If you are resorting to bullshit, that means you don't have actual goodies.

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here is a company with a history of making tall claims and then doing an 180. How is pointing that out a red herring? That isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability, is it? Maybe it's just me, but I try not to pay much attention to PR bullshit, since they have to make bold claims in order to succeed. p.s. that their blog was down for the last three hours is somewhat ironic, though.

Whether you fundamentally trust your provider to try to do what they agreed 'isn't particularly relevant to service quality and stability'? Did you really mean that?

The whole lifetime plan debacle was a really big blunder from PR standpoint, but I wouldn't go as far as to call it a rip-off. Deal that started in 2004-2006 and lasted through to 2012 is 6 to 8 years worth of hosting. As far as I understand, they also offer one more year of free hosting as a compensation, which makes it 7 to 9 years. 7 to 9 years of hosting for $500 is okay in my books.

Of course, that doesn't make their PR blunder look any better, they should've just swallowed the costs, but I don't 'fundamentally distrust' them based solely on this case.

Re: If I was your cloud provider, I'd never let you down

#80
post #43
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joyent is some former Sun guys who are still committed to "the OS is a differentiator". They use Illumos, their fork of OpenSolaris... I'm pretty sure python, postgres, and redis all run on Solaris, but Joyent's value add is NOT at the application layer, but in OS features that facilitate application workloads better. Their SmartMachines (or zones), ZFS, dtrace.. Solaris is an epic environment to develop in. I probab…

OK, so they use "zones" (beefed up multi-user, which should have less overhead than virtualization) and a fork of OpenSolaris (interesting features, reputed to be very stable). I wish they'd just say that, as it makes their "Faster than VM" claim seem a lot less wild. Shared hosting is actually more efficient than VMs, but it got a bad rap due to massively oversold hosts.

Sun engineered some amazing stuff but eventually got bought out by a company with weaker engineers but much, much stronger sales team. After being burned in this way I could see how a bunch of former Sun staffers might use their former technology but call someone else in and say 'look, we can't market for shit - you have a go'.

And that's my guess on why their marketing spiel might seem a little vague to a tech person.

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