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Comment by pvnick | Hacker News Reader

This is great news and makes a lot of sense considering their new CLI (https://github.com/linode/cli).

I just want to say how happy I've been with Linode so far. Their prices are unbeatable if you're a decent sysadmin, and their support is amazing. I'm probably in one of the lowest tiers of customers as far as how much money I give Linode every month, but their support has never failed to be very responsive and make me feel like I matter to them. I once wanted to migrate from one datacenter to another, so I opened up a support ticket. Within two minutes they had it set up so all I had to do was press a button and my setup teleported a thousand miles with minimal hassle. Kudos to the Linode team, and if you happen to work for them and see this message thanks to you personally for making my life easier :)

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Seconding all of this, and further noting, first, that I only need to log in to the Linode dashboard a couple of times a year, if that; second, that I love how, every time I do so, there's new stuff waiting for me. Just now, for example, I logged in to find that one of my Linodes is ready for a free upgrade that doubles the storage capacity and RAM available. I've been a Linode customer since 2004, and by now I can't imagine wanting to host my VPSes with anyone else.

My problem with them is they keep getting hacked and then try to hide it.

[citation needed]

Google it. They have a long track record of hiding incidents (not just security).

I will never understand why people act like they are some wonderful company.

I have Googled it. I found mention of a couple of compromises, both of which I already knew about and which haven't substantially damaged my opinion of the company. I have yet to find any information regarding Linode attempting to conceal either those compromises or any others, which is the sort of thing I'd expect would be all over the web. What do you know that I don't?

Here is an example I wrote about:

http://julianyap.com/2012/03/01/compromised-linode-vps.html

Really? There have been two _major_ security breaches at Linode, and both times they were extremely opaque and even hostile towards customers who asked honest (and reasonable) questions.

I'm a Linode customer, and I like them.

But everyone fawns over their support ("I got a response in 3 minutes!"), and while that sometimes happens, it often does not. I've found recently the typical response time is around 15-20 minutes. I've had other tickets (including one that was critical) go for over an hour with no response, and finally I had to call them to see what was up.

Not saying they are bad - I'm a customer, after all. Just saying their support, in my experience, is not quite as amazing as some make it out to be.

For comparison: Media Temple typically takes a couple of hours to respond to a ticket. So that's still not bad.

As does Rackspace, even with their manage server services. More times than not when I go to Rackspace Chat to speak with someone, there is a bit of troubleshooting but then a ticket needs to be opened and response time is usually 4-6 hours. Not ideal at all.

I'm on that boat too. Most recently had a ticket about their DNS servers not picking up changes. If I recall correctly the initial response was quick but every subsequent response was from a different person that would run through a script, one step of which was "disable your firewall completely," even though that had been shown to not be the issue not to mention just being a bad suggestion in the first place.

Ended up after a few back and forth replies it was escalated to the "DNS team" but they weren't around until the AM. It ended up being the next evening, after I followed up that I got any response. I ended up making a change on my side to at least get websites back online, but it was over another week before any real "answers" were given.

Of the two issues one was due to certain CNAME records not being supported/allowed by their servers (not documented anywhere) which took over a day to get a final answer on. The other issue, one of their servers connecting/disconnecting to mine (seen in my logs) but not actually doing anything was labeled as something to just be ignored. My logs still fill up with those errors.

I've been with linode a long time and do like them, but as they've gotten larger their support has increasingly gone the way of other large companies...largely useless.

> I've been with linode a long time and do like them, but as they've gotten larger their support has increasingly gone the way of other large companies...largely useless.

Yup, me too. Been with them since 2005 and the quality of their support has really tanked in the last 2 years. I think once a company becomes a certain size, it's very hard to provide support that's not just a bunch of drones reading from a script. It's very unfortunate.

Their support has been awesome the past 3 years when I started with them. There really is no comparison.

Can you clarify what kind of CNAME you're referring to? The only CNAMEs that aren't "supported" are CNAMEs on the root of a zone, which are a violation of the DNS spec, as CNAMEs cannot coexist with other records, which must exist at the root of the zone.

Response from support in less than in an hour is not amazing???? For anything non-critical such response is indeed amazing.

I once had an issue with Google and GAE on a corporate account. Spent 3 hours hunting down a contact form and had no response for 7 days if that makes you feel any better.

>> and while that sometimes happens, it often does not.

Try any other hoster for a year or more. Linode's Support is the best. It exceeds many companies today in the tech business or not.

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