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http://www.cihost.com/about/virtual-tour/cdc03.php It looks like their Chicago facility has already been robbed.

OK, I'm no datacenter expert, but C I Host has a photo tour of their datacenter at http://www.cihost.com/about/virtual-tour/cdc03.php . Looks pretty cheesy security-wise to me. And is it normal to have GLASS man-traps?

Okay Frankie. Youse got da info we need to break inta da place, right?

Yeah boss! Lookie here, on da webpage!

Name: CDC-03
Location: 900 North Franklin, 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL 60610
NPA/NXX: 312/640

Not bad, Frankie...not bad! Uh-oh...what's dis? Dis could hold us up...

No signage, nondescript building

No problemo, boss! See? They gave us a picture!

*snort* An dey call us teeves dumb...

This is the douchebag y'all should be going after.

The place is 10000 sq. ft. Not at all unreasonable that they could have cut through away from where the Night Manager was stationed... Especially if the Night Manager was making his rounds of the upper floors or something, while they cut in on the ground.

Spooky...

Take anything said by Chris Faulkner or CIHost with a really big grain of salt. I worked for CIHost for a short time so I have a good base for my opinions.

Yes they did tatoo the guys head [they also were the first to advertise on a boxer's trunks with Evander Holyfield.] but I'd be amazed if they actually got 800 new clients with it. If CF says 800, it's probably closer to 8.

For examples of Bullshit statements by CF see the following:

MyDoom Virus - Claims that his technicians created Doompster to filter out copies of the virus. What really happened? He just made the Sr. Unix admin create a sendmail filter to drop all attachments, regardless of whether or not they were infected.

Witty worm. I can't find a link to it at this time, but I believe he put out a release saying that his technicians developed software to recover the data from the trashed drives. The reality? They bought a copy of Restorer Pro 2000 [An awesome utility BTW! Saved my ass a few times].

And finally, those Backup drives they claim to have upgraded. They didn't exist in the first place! They have one functioning backup system that gets their website and some [not all] of the shared hosting machines. None of the dedicated machines are backed up [as they claim]. Even the customers who pay for a tape rotation on their machine? Doesn't happen. The backup just overwrites the tape from the night before.

Their Rock Solid Infrastructure?. Yeah right. They constantly lose power because there isn't enough power coming into the building. The servers are plugged into $1.50 powerstrips like you'd get at office-max, and they are dangling from the powercords of the top servers. Sounds rock-solid to me!

Oh the things I've got on this company would make you run screaming! :)

The point is, don't believe anything from this creep! He's either a criminal, or he's criminally negligent in the way his company is run. I'm SOOOO glad to be out of there.

Anonymous, because his mommy [he's only like 27] is a lawyer and they like to sue people.

This has been done by CIHost. They attributed 800 new clients to the stunt. With acquisition costs around $50-$100 in the hosting industry, the $15k or so they paid was pretty much a bargain if this is true. Only difference? The guy had the logo on the back of his head, not the front.

If he doesn't want us to think of him as a big pansy, he needs to ... actually have some balls.

"The true travesty is the way the legal system is. Complainants can file tons and tons of actions and the defendants, if they don't have the monetary resources to bombard the plaintiff, are taken advantage of in the court system. We were taken advantage of in this case because we will never recover all of our costs. We spent an excess of six figure defending this."

Man, can this guy spin numbers... I'm assuming that these are these M$ ONLY hosting providers - MYHosting.com
First, 32,810 customers is not all that much when you consider the 5th largest hosting co in the world has 150,000-200,000 (CI Host. Where I believe hosting.com is around 500,000.

Then lets go into these numbers a little deeper...
49% (153K) to be upgrades from other Windows platforms (.49*32810) 16,077 (15.7K), 5% (16.5K) to be migrations from Linux (.05*32810) 1640 (1.6K), and 1% from FreeBSD (3K) (.01*32810) 328(0.3K), ...

The guy either missed a decimal place, or was thinking in terms of kilo bits...
Also, from being in this industry for a while - of the 1600 people migrating from linux, I can tell you from experience that a lot of people love this frontpage thing but it IS a pain to support and administer. Since myhosting.com is NOT a linux shop and does not seem to offer linux - those 1600 people would have to come from another hosting co - why did they leave???? Also, what kind of churn rate does this place have? 42% of there customers are from the last 3 months - no hosting company grows like that...
Put simply - these numbers dont mean squat. They are surveys (bought by M$) from company's forcing an upgrade on there customers - most likely shared, who doesnt know any better. Ill bet you ten to one, that the remaining 2% are bigger clients that WILL not move to 2003.... From my experience in the hosting world - the ONLY reason you find customers on M$ boxes are because of frontpage/ASP, everyone else uses Linux.
I wonder what these numbers would like with the big guys (cihost,hosting,yahoo,etc..). Oh - and lets not forget that these are meer hosting customers - NOT general company's like the headline elluded...

Here's a low-voltage wiring guide which should help out if you want to run cables.

100mbit connection from cihost, let's see what type of load testing the slashdot community can provide... www.pchopper.com/mirror/server/

• interesting overall view
  
• neat to look at, shows you that Linux users include www.thawte.com, Rackspace, www.dialtoneinternet.com and www.cihost.com
  
• a neat look at sites with linux in their name
  

Have you seen monster controls? It's what CIHost uses. It's nice :)

Two come to mind:

1. Catalog.com - Their Linux servers have really jumped in price, but they are running a special on slightly beefed up Raq3's (extra RAM). I don't have any personal experience with them, but I have heard decent reports from abroad and was highly considering them when I was looking for a dedicated server. I read on their forums before that a couple customers ded's got hacked, but they seem to take a pro-active approach to helping to secure servers.

2. CIHost.com - I am currently hosting a shared (virtual) account there and have been for about 6 months. I have had no major problems thus far (granted, it's not a dedicated server), but what issues I have had (questions, setting up databases, etc) have been handled promptly. As well, I just noticed that even though I used their online Credit Card processing page to pay for my last month, the charge never appeared on my CC and my account hasn't reflected the payment. Yet, my page is still functional and there has been no break in service. :)
As well, they are running a special on Dedicated Servers. Lease one, get one free :) That's a pretty cool deal if you ask me. They have an into ded. server (special doesn't apply to this package) that goes for 99 bucks a month. For hosting one domain, that is fairly adaquate if you ask me.

There are plenty of others out there, but these are the two I was really looking at when I was in the market for a ded. Still don't have one, figured a new car should come first =)

Good luck in getting everything resolved!

I have recently gone through several hosting companies. I started with pagecreator and finally had to leave because they couldn't administer their mysql server well enough for me to be able to create tables in my own databases. I moved on to cihost just before their dns servers died. I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a while but the last straw was when I was finally able to log in again only to find my home directory gone and them with no backup. Both of these companies gave me a hard time getting my credit card reimbursed when I cancelled even though I was withing the trial period. I have since settled on phpwebhosting and am very happy with the service. Their online sign up is great. You simply fill out the form and they create your account automatically. You instantly have a mysql database with the same name as your username which you log into with your selected password. Within 10 minutes of signing up you can log into http://yourname.phpwebhosting.com which will always be available in case you opt not to get your own domain. They transferred my domain for me within 3 days. You can pay month to month or anually which gives you a small discount. Storage and bandwidth are unlimited and the whole package is only $9.95/month. My site is still very much a work in progress so I can't comment on performance but I recently ftp'd all the packages required to install linux from scratch from all over the web to my directory on their server and then down to my local machine and was very happy with the speed in downloading 145MB. Suffice it to say that I'm pleased with the service.

Pretty damn interesting how their accounts database is down but they sure as hell managed to prematurely bill me for another three months of service today!! And I faxed in my account cancellation YESTERDAY. Also nice how the cancel.cihost.com site is not accessible (which is how they claim you _must_ cancel your account on their website).

RE: Send me to mars

If my ISP promises me a trip to mars as part of my contact, then I better be getting on a rocketship...

Check out Kimmel and Silverman, the Computer Lemon Law Attorneys.. They advertise: Simply call Kimmel & Silverman, The Lemon Law Attorneys at 1-800-LEMON-LAW (800-536-6652). You can also fill out our form and submit by e-mail. We'll do the rest, quickly and efficiently to get you a NEW COMPUTER or FULL REFUND at absolutely no charge to you. That's right, Kimmel & Silverman's service is FREE, win or lose!!
I have no connection with them, but I called them, and they say they handle this sort of thing.

Check out Kimmel and Silverman, the Computer Lemon Law Attorneys.. They advertise: Simply call Kimmel & Silverman, The Lemon Law Attorneys at 1-800-LEMON-LAW (800-536-6652). You can also fill out our form and submit by e-mail. We'll do the rest, quickly and efficiently to get you a NEW COMPUTER or FULL REFUND at absolutely no charge to you. That's right, Kimmel & Silverman's service is FREE, win or lose!!
I have no connection with them, but I called them, and they say they handle this sort of thing.

cihost.com

They offer dual PII 450 machines with multiple OC-3 connections and 12GB bandwidth. There are also lots of features including SSH Telnet access, compiling C/C++, Perl, PHP, usw. About $20 PCM.

(no, I don't work for them)