Got Core?
Go Daddy's
dedicated hosting business has grown by leaps and bounds over the last few
months. Many customers are experiencing the "ultimate in performance,
control and convenience" by having a complete server all to themselves
with our Dedicated Server option. Up until now, we had been offering a
choice of both Celeron® and P4 processors, which was plenty of muscle for most people's
needs.
However,
beginning this week, Go Daddy® is proud to announce the arrival of Intel® Core
2 Duo processors into our dedicated server offerings. You can get one in
the 2.13GHz variety, or go all out and get a 2.66GHz edition (that will help
keep our data center nice and warm 
).
We've
expanded some of our other offerings as well. Instead of just being able to buy
single or double 120GB disks, you can now get 300GB honkers. You can mix
and match, and if you get 2 of the same size, you can also throw a RAID card on
there and mirror your data. Also, due to popular demand, we've made some
much larger FTP options available... all the way up to a 600GB space to store
all your backup data. These new disk and FTP options are available with
ANY of our dedicated hosting options.
Don't
forget that you can get our Assisted Service with any of our dedicated hosting
servers and we'll take care of all the setup, regular maintenance, backups, monitoring, and
patching. And, if you need advanced protection, we can throw a Cisco® PIX
501 hardware firewall onto the front of your server. Tip: always practice
safe computing.
We have
more stuff planned in the not too distant future, but if you've been holding
out on moving up to your own dedicated server, now's a great time to get that
"killer box". Hey, be the first on your block and make your
digital neighbors jealous!
I would appreciate if we can get the details information and setup of the Dedicated Hosting, like details informations about Domain Names, Email Server, DNS and details because i'm stucked with my Newly Installed Dedicated Server.
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You can visit our help center at http://help.godaddy.com/ for answers to most questions. For example, What Software is Installed on my Linux Dedicated Server? should answer your questions about what packages are installed on your Dedicated Server.
Dave.
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While you're adding features, how about giving us an easy way to password protect directories and manage users through the control panel. (Everybody else does!)
You do such a great job of helping us manage our sites through the control panel, this little shortcoming sticks out like a sore thumb.
Keep up the great work.
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We have a bunch of stuff on the board to do this year, and you could very well be seeing some of these kind of things. Keep watching, and thanks for the kind words.
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I already got it. But they need to offer more options as of what to install, like Debian for example. I had to do my own remote install of Debian to get anything like that working. Also there are many limitations to there current system, it took me over 3 weeks of testing and QA to get my server working with another Operating System, purely because they do not offer an option to do network booting from say another linux image, and installing via ssh.
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Whoah, you installed Debian on a Dedicated server? Way to go! I am impressed. That must have been challenging to do remotely. We will consider Debian, good suggestion. Each new OS gives us an array of testing parameters, so we choose carefully, what the most popular options are. The more requests we get for Debian, the better the chances of us adopting it are. One more check for Debian, going on the board!
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Hey dave, I could email you or just post a script I have made, which pretty much can do it automatically. There are a few issues I'd like to address right here, but there is an issue within Debian on the dedicated servers network interfaces, a bug which has been reported, and have been working on it for some time and so far think have pinpointed it's location. Maybe it was the way the routers inside the datacenter automatically assign? Base100-T/Half-Duplex.
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If we offer Debian, we'll make our own images from scratch. The process will not be start with Fedora, then convert to Debain. Pretty clever, though! I'm impressed.
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Hi. Do you have some cron functions in your premium accounts? I couldn't find it.
Or maybe you plan to add this functionality in the future?
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We currently do not support cron functions on our shared hosting accounts, but this is a feature we hope to add in the near future.
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I am very disappointed and unhappy with Godaddy. Their Dedicated Hosting help center does not offer any detailed help, just general answers. Submitting a trouble ticket does no good. They do not even read the question and just give a general answer. I plan to take my business elewhere. Godaddy is very disappointing and does not seem to care about their customers.
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I am sorry that you are unhappy with our service. I hope that you will reconsider. Our hosting service provides redundant networks, servers, filers, top notch security and 24/7 network observation. We are the best in the world at domain names and hosting! For the trouble tickets, unfortunately, some get canned answers when they require a detailed analysis. To get around this, be persistent, keep replying to support and ask them to look again, if the answer is not satisfactory. Tell them to escalate the problem to Tier 2 or 3. You need to get past level 1 support when your problem is deeper than what can be answered with a general reply.
Dave.
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One last thing about that stuff is that I was wondering if you guys have like a way I could help out, espcially in the way to integrate Debian, the faster its integrated, the more happy I and others will be. As well there is a number of things on a yet futuristic wishlist: MRTG Graphs to monitor per-ip traffic, ability to change your reverse dns lookups (ie. root ip resolutions ), maybe get a exception list for certain people who sign a extra agreement (Has to cover a lot of extra ToS) , and open up ports on a per-request basis. Anyways , yeah I never get replies to my suggestions. You're one of the few. My system is down again, due to my extensive testing, I reprovisioned almost 100 times, which is why I got a call from the data center telling me to "Stop reprovisioning so much". Anyways godaddy.com has treated me well so far, and has a robust customer service team.
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We have a lot of open positions, see https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/jobs.asp and click Open Positions for a full list. Feel free to submit your resume.
Reprovisions do require manual intervention, so the DC techs don't like it so much if you repeatedly reprovision. But, between you and I, do it as much as needed. As long as you explain that you're not doing it to abuse us, but for a ligitimate reason, they'll keep doing it for you
Dave.
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Please add this to the wish list.
Mandriva Linux because it has a security program “msec” that checks all files on the server and sends a report everyday. CentOS does not have anything like this. Also Mandrive will install the DVD on the hard disk, thus eliminating having to have the DVD in order to install a program that is not installed by default.
Change the reverse look up to what the customer needs.
Allow my mail server to send directly to the recipient and not relay through your mail server. Your mail server will not allow the sending of 400 emails at once. A spam agreement could be signed to open the port.
Response times to email tickets are slow. So far it has been three days and my problem has not been solved. I only get one email a day from support.
I could not get any support for Plesk either on their website or from your support. I had to reprovision my server to fix the problems that I was having with Plesk.
Thanks,
John Rosique
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John,
Mandriva, eh? It's in the top ten on DistroWatch! Everyone has their fav distro, some have unique things, some have different ways of doing the same thing. Mostly it's what you get used to. Package management across different Linux distros is interesting, each has a different way of doing it. The msec feature of Mandriva sounds pretty neat.
Reverse name service for your IP address is not something we get very often. It's not as simple as you may think, it would be a project; engineered, tested, deployed and maintained. We'd have to justify the cost with the need. In other words, more people need to ask for this.
We take pride in our spam blocking. We have a rate limiter and a limit on the number of emails each server can send per day. If we don't protect our network from spammers, the entire network will get blocked. We don't want to stop you from sending ligimate email, but we need to regulate how email is sent out of our network. Our customer support will work with you on increasing your daily limits, you just need to show examples of the emails and agree not to send Spam.
I'm sorry to hear about your support delays. Most support questions are answered within a few hours. Your problem must have been more complex and needed to be escalated to tier 2 and 3, who also had trouble with your request. When you have a dedicated server, you have full root/admin priviledge, which means you have the ability to mess up your server. Or, we made a provisioning error, or a Plesk bug corrupted some data; either way, each server has the ability to get out of synch with the norm. Taking the symptoms and trying to pinpoint the source of problems can be challenging. I'm glad you were able to reprovision and start over.
Dave.
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What port speed are these dedicated servers on? Do they have the same restrictions Vded do in terms of ports and others?
I'm also concerned that you don't have any 'real' servers, i.e. Xeons and highend opterons etc... All of your dedicated servers run chipsets that are essentially 'desktop' systems.
These are some of the questions I need answered if I'm going to even consider moving anything to ded with GoDaddy.
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Dedicated Hosting servers are on high speed, redundant networks, connected to our access switches at 100 Mbps. There is a policy on them that limits bandwidth leaving your server to 10 Mbps. This is a safety valve, for your convenience. For most customers, keeps them from grossly overrunning their bandwidth limit in case of a break out. For most, 10 Mbps is an adequate speed to host several web sites. If you need the full 100 Mbps, ask, our level 2 customer support staff can change you to a 20 Mbps policy or unleash you at 100 Mbps.
The performance of the Core 2 Duo systems is very good. It's plenty of horsepower for the needs of our customers.
However, there is an untapped market for high end, like Xeon, and other goodies like private networks and load balancing. We're investigating this exciting avenue with our market analysts and engineers.
Dave.
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Dave,
I understand the spam issues and it is good that GoDaddy is taking a pro active part in stopping spam.
I did work with your help desk and they changed the number of emails that I could send to 25,000 a day. But the one thing that they could not change was the number of emails sent at the same time, which are 100 emails with the same message. 100 emails are fine for most group sends but not for a list server that is being used to send questions and answers to the subscribers.
Your server and network worked great for everything else.
Thanks,
John
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Yeah to solve this little problem we bypassed Godaddy.com's relay server, it was a step to take matters into our own hands. But to leave Godaddy free of legal responsibility of our mail relay. I mean it was extra to pay for the server we route through. But then again it does offload the email processing onto another server. Maybe in the near future you guys will have a way of combating the spam, by filtering the through the people who get servers here.
Also the reverse lookup thing, I have made a request of it myself. Hopefully you guys will figure out how to rDNS like my friend who does his own hosting company.
Oh yeah btw, where is DEBIAN or the modified debian Ubuntu!
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Email - so you have a server at a third party location that does your mail relay for you? I think that's fine. I'll see what I can do about # of identical emails problem.
Reverse DNS for the IP.... I understand the scope of this. It would take many, many development hours to put this together. We'd need evidence this would benefit the majority to justify the cost. It's a cool idea, I really like it, it's just that we have to pick and choose where to direct our limited resources. I hope you understand. I'll keep it on the radar, maybe we can pick this up sometime.
Debian and Ubuntu will be considered, but is not in our immediate plan. We'd like to offer a wider range of operating systems for Ded/Vded. It's out on the horizon.
Dave.
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Thanks for looking into that, lots of this stuff on the blog should be ported to the support section so people could get there answers much easier. I mean I don't know about working for Godaddy since there strict policies and limit resources. I would rather just contribute the OpenSource communitity style and volunteer to give quality working utilities to help a good company with structural constraints. Does Godaddy accept such help or do they like paying for whatever they get
Also to take advantage like many other hosting companies have is trying to automate and streamline as much as possible in a data center. Too free the workload from there support teams, and to increase working efficiency within the entire company and network. I know it's not impossible just not enough thought has been put into it.
Steven
List of possible feats:
Reverse DNS (Another form of script can do this)
Additional IP Request form (This does require talking with ARIN and ICANN whoever you go through)
Ability to request a null-route of an ip at edge router, or complete shut off of IP (This is crucial to defeat DDoS)
Request form for exception to email relay server (Another firewall exception, but can have contract bound to the customer, to make them legally liable for damages, spam and etc. and attaching Zero-Tolerance for any reports of spam).
Adding a server for installing OS's from an iso (Using a server at an additional charge and uploading an iso to it to network boot from, this does require intense scripting of course, but works very well)
A Godaddy mirrored repository for mainstream OS's used (CentOS, FC4, FC6), for godaddy customers to use, to relieve network traffic for updates.
Disallow samba networks inside godaddy.com, they spam other server with broadcasts, on the same C blocks, and can be annoying when you are trying to teach a firewall good traffic from bad traffic.
Form a partnership with more than one ISP to provide more network stability, unless you guys already get a awesome deal I'm unaware with, Qwest is not the only great ISP in the West.
Defeat the evil people who sue Godaddy by binding them arbitration, which usually can make frivilious lawsuits turn a victim company, to a company with the upper hand when people just want more money and more money.
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We have a little more freedom here than on the Help Center articles, we actually get to interact. I'd like to see our HRC article pages allow customer comments, so we could all help each other on the issues. Maybe one day.
GoDaddy does not sub-contract programming work, so no, we cannot use you to do work for us. That's not to say we don't use open-source software to provide solutions, obviously we do: linux hosting! We also make use of open source programming languages like PHP. But, we don't solicit software engineering from freelancers. Thanks for offering, though.
We automate most of our dedicated hosting provisioning system. That's my primary job: manage a team of developers that automate the provisioning of dedicated and virtual dedicated hosting. Operating system, username, passwords, configuration, add-on software, are all automatically installed through our provisioning system. Some servers require human intervention for hardware modifications, but we engineer the process to streamline it.
You can get additional IPs, but have to negotiate with our customer service. They make you justify each one. They have an automated system for this, if each of your existing IPs has SSL on it already, they see that and can auto approve you for more IPs. There is a nominal charge per month, though.
Our networks are protected by TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention Systems, all accounts are protected by this, they're on the edge of our networks. Also, we're connected to multiple diverse upstream providers totaling 9 Gbps of Tier-1 Internet Bandwidth. See https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/hosting_technology.asp
for a little more info on our data centers and network.
Keep you eye out for "Godaddy mirrored repository for mainstream OS's used (CentOS, FC4, FC6)"
First request I've seen for disallow samba, I'll hunt around on that some.
Don't worry, we have an excellent legal staff that keep the evil doers at bay.
Dave.
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Does this mean that we will see those mirrors
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I'm not giving you false hope, we'll have the mirrors soon. Hold tight, takes time to work out the details. I'll post a blog article here about it, when we get it done.
Dave.
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We automate most of our dedicated hosting provisioning system. That's my primary job: manage a team of developers that automate the provisioning of dedicated and virtual dedicated hosting. Operating system, username, passwords, configuration, add-on software, are all automatically installed through our provisioning system. Some servers require human intervention for hardware modifications, but we engineer the process to streamline it.
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Does this mean you were probably one of those developers, to tell me to not reprovision so much in a week period
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Our networks are protected by TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention Systems, all accounts are protected by this, they're on the edge of our networks. Also, we're connected to multiple diverse upstream providers totaling 9 Gbps of Tier-1 Internet Bandwidth. See https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/hosting_technology.asp
for a little more info on our data centers and network.
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Oh I bet your 95th percentile or contract is expensive lol...
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Keep you eye out for "Godaddy mirrored repository for mainstream OS's used (CentOS, FC4, FC6)"
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So this means this is actually possible, or is happening?
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No, I am not one to tell you not to reprovision so frequently. That would be the admins, advanced hosting support or the data center technicians... someone that has to labor when you click the reprovision button. Granted, most of it is automated, but if you have a raid card or a PIX firewall, then their is a manual, multi-step intervention required for a reprovision. If too many people do repeated reprovisions, we'll have to charge for it to cover costs. Be glad we don't charge you for these, keep the numbers low, and we won't charge for it
Local mirrors for FC4, CentOS and FC6 is coming soon. I'll post a new blog article about it when we get it done.
Dave
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So your saying my suggestion actually went through! hooray!
Also I've been having issues with that new anti ip theft method. I know it's very good for everyone, but I think also we should be able to control what MAC addresses can use our ip's in some or another way. Cause what if we use VMware? It's a huge huge pain to setup without having knowledge of ebtables and much much more. Cause assignment of an ip can't be done through dhcp, cause it'll see that for example 208.109.xx.xx is binded to 55:55:FF:FF:55:55 and automatically assign that one to it. Not the additional available in that mac addresses pool. I'm gonna try getting a talk with a technician to see if this issue can be resolved. But right now I'm using a "very experimental" but working method, via breaking IP Layer 2.
Which causes connections to drop occasionally, because two machines manually bound themselves to 2 different ips' with the identical MAC address. If you are in the support department maybe you could get me some help?
Suggestion: Remove that flash bandwidth meter, replace it with MRTG, it's much more accurate, and updates much faster, at a very small tax to SNMP on the routers.
Filtering port 6667 but putting a firewall (specifically for irc) between it and the outside, too take care of the issues that were happening before.
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