I read your post, and I feel your pain. Everyone who works in IT has felt their stomach drop into their crotch when they hear email is down, and emails are getting lost. But I have to say you're probably trying too hard to do everything yourself.
There's no way our company can or should pay for the redundancy a DNS server requires. I offloaded all our DNS info to Speakeasy's DNS servers. They're redundant and easy to configure through Speakeasy's web site. I never have to worry about DNS. If our router starts getting flaky, it doesn't mean our Internet presence suddenly disappears.
And as far as ISPs go, I have to say Speakeasy is fantastic. Maybe it's because we have a great account rep (shout out to Chris Lee, if you're reading), but it's one of the few companies where if I call them for tech support, I end up learning something. Speakeasy very wisely hires people who know what they're talking about on the other end of the phone.
And DNS isn't the only service we hired out. Email is offloaded to Mailstreet. Our website is on Bluehost. Even Jabber services are hosted by Dreamhost, although I'm not too crazy about that solution (more later).
This solution probably only works for company of a certain size. We're a relatively small company, so the amount of money we're paying per email mailbox with Mailstreet is totally worth it. I never have to monkey around with Exchange server weirdness, I don't have to sweat whether or not our backup server is backing up email properly, and if anything bad happens, I call an 800 number and they're incredibly responsive.
Same goes for our website. We aren't an e-commerce site, so our website doesn't get hammered, but it needs to be available as often as possible. Bluehost has what appears to be a 99%+ uptime, their support is fantastic, if I ever want to add a feature I go into their web interface, click a few buttons, and presto! PHPBB or PHPNuke or whatever is suddenly up and running. And again, I don't have to monkey with backup tapes (can you tell I hate dealing with backups?)
The only hosted service I currently have doubts about is our Jabber hosting on Dreamhost. Jabber services seem like a bit of an afterthought for them, so there isn't great support, and it isn't hard at all to administer a Jabber server, so I think I might pull that back home. Plus Dreamhost's support leaves a lot to be desired.
All us IT guys enjoy monkeying around with new servers and services. And when the company relies solely on you for email or DNS, you're a very important person. But that's a crummy way to get job security. I'm not trying to imply that that's why you're doing all the heavy lifting yourself. But job security through obfuscation is a known technique in the IT world. If you're the only guy who knows how to get email up and running, you're king of the world, but if anyone in your company can call Mailstreet for tech support, your value is suddenly less apparent.
My advice is to stop worrying and learn to love outsources services. Trust me, you'll sleep a lot better.
C
Slashdot Mirror
p.s. Can you tell this is my first Slashdot post? I assumed it would know how to handle a carriage return.
I read your post, and I feel your pain. Everyone who works in IT has felt their stomach drop into their crotch when they hear email is down, and emails are getting lost. But I have to say you're probably trying too hard to do everything yourself. There's no way our company can or should pay for the redundancy a DNS server requires. I offloaded all our DNS info to Speakeasy's DNS servers. They're redundant and easy to configure through Speakeasy's web site. I never have to worry about DNS. If our router starts getting flaky, it doesn't mean our Internet presence suddenly disappears. And as far as ISPs go, I have to say Speakeasy is fantastic. Maybe it's because we have a great account rep (shout out to Chris Lee, if you're reading), but it's one of the few companies where if I call them for tech support, I end up learning something. Speakeasy very wisely hires people who know what they're talking about on the other end of the phone. And DNS isn't the only service we hired out. Email is offloaded to Mailstreet. Our website is on Bluehost. Even Jabber services are hosted by Dreamhost, although I'm not too crazy about that solution (more later). This solution probably only works for company of a certain size. We're a relatively small company, so the amount of money we're paying per email mailbox with Mailstreet is totally worth it. I never have to monkey around with Exchange server weirdness, I don't have to sweat whether or not our backup server is backing up email properly, and if anything bad happens, I call an 800 number and they're incredibly responsive. Same goes for our website. We aren't an e-commerce site, so our website doesn't get hammered, but it needs to be available as often as possible. Bluehost has what appears to be a 99%+ uptime, their support is fantastic, if I ever want to add a feature I go into their web interface, click a few buttons, and presto! PHPBB or PHPNuke or whatever is suddenly up and running. And again, I don't have to monkey with backup tapes (can you tell I hate dealing with backups?) The only hosted service I currently have doubts about is our Jabber hosting on Dreamhost. Jabber services seem like a bit of an afterthought for them, so there isn't great support, and it isn't hard at all to administer a Jabber server, so I think I might pull that back home. Plus Dreamhost's support leaves a lot to be desired. All us IT guys enjoy monkeying around with new servers and services. And when the company relies solely on you for email or DNS, you're a very important person. But that's a crummy way to get job security. I'm not trying to imply that that's why you're doing all the heavy lifting yourself. But job security through obfuscation is a known technique in the IT world. If you're the only guy who knows how to get email up and running, you're king of the world, but if anyone in your company can call Mailstreet for tech support, your value is suddenly less apparent. My advice is to stop worrying and learn to love outsources services. Trust me, you'll sleep a lot better. C