In the "huh, curious" category, the first e-mail address listed on the istrata site (info@istrata.com) does not work.

Stay tuned.

In terms of responsiveness, I'm not impressed with iStrata so far.

One non-working e-mail address, and only automated responses to sales@ and support@

Sound like we need to check out the other one - Dreamhost is it?

Dreamhost was brought up, but not dedicated, I think. Their dedicated is pretty expensive. Their shared has the conueries thing, where you kinda pay for connections, but with the MySQL bug ...

t goes to check e-mail

Look! Reply!

sorry for the confusion regarding the iStrata web site, it's actually not a production site yet however we have been selling the products for almost a year now. I'll answer your questions inline below.

The server comes loaded with RedHat 7.3 with all the standard web hosting software such as the Apache web server, PHP, MySQL, etc. We also install the Plesk control panel which in addition to giving you a web based interface for almost everything you would want to do, it also integrates POP, IMAP, and web based mail. The latest version of Plesk (version 6) also includes MailMan mailing list software, and we should be able to provide version 6 immediately.

You also get full root access to the server and are responsible for the management and backup of the server. However we provide an autoupdate service that will keep the server software up to date and apply all security patches for you, so there's little to do other than to maintain your sites and keep a backup on hand. The DS1 server is $99/setup and $99/mo (as I said the site is not in production, specifically the setup fee is not waived as stated). You can add raid 1 (mirroring) for $249/setup and $10/mo. If you need the additional 512MB of memory (most folks don't), you can add this for $129/setup, $0/mo.

Huh. So they don't do nightly backups?

I need to go look at my list of management services now.

They do have an automated nightly SQL backups, and a config backup.

Those are the two that I'm most nervous about, since I my code at home is never more than 8 hours out of synch with the site itself. Config, I have no idea how to start, and SQL -- backing it up across the pipe is really time-consuming.

I had assumed, I'm not sure why, that the istrata plans were fully managed the way the FG/IH plan was. So now I'm just wondering what else they might not be taking care of.

It seems like they backup the database but you have to DL it and are responsible for restoring it in the event of a problem.

It seems like they backup the database but you have to DL it and are responsible for restoring it in the event of a problem.

Given I've never managed to get a SQL backup file on my own, this is a step ahead. And 7 days of snapshots are kept on the server too, so it's possible to set up a grandfathering scheme with one a week offsite. I was planning on getting a bigger hard drive anyway.

I'll ask about file backup.

Can I just say that I feel so tidy and organized with all the closed threads archived, and us all dandy and ready to forge forth into the wild and unruly world of hosts? Because I do.

I just got the "cannot connect to remote server" thing again.