H-Sphere Upgrade to 2.5 Patch 8 on Feb. 5th 2007

[toddmain]

me: when is .net2 going to be supported?
vortech: blah blah
me: well, what about...
vortech: blah blah BLAH
me: umm, does that mean you will...
vortech: blah BLAH BLAH
me: so you don't want money, is that what you're saying?
vortech: BLAH BLAH BLAH

I was able to look up "Blah Blah Blah" in a new dictionary and found that it means "We don't care for Windows, so we'll do nothing and then we make excuses and then we take a vacation."

[Brangwyn]

Everyone asking every few days about .NET is not going to make any difference all you're doing is consuming Support staff's time that could be better spent working on genuine problems effecting all servers.

Everyone will have to just accept it's going to be a little while longer you've waited this long, a few more weeks won't kill you. I just don't think some of you realise how vulnerable these servers can be made with a default .NET installation, several things need to be done to make it secure on a Shared server and getting some of these right is a little bit trial and error especially when applications that claim to work in trustlevel xyz don't flipping work and your left wondering whether it's the app or your system.config causing the problem (DNN springs to mind which claims to work in medium trust but refuses to install correctly until around version 4.4).

Vortech will announce when it's available but until then asking or flaming tech support on the forums is not doing yourself or anyone else here any favours.

As I recall Brad may be OOT currently so don't expect any more updates regarding their current timetable until he's back

/rant

[PeterD]

Not really with you there B. This is also a forum for discussing shared concerns and if all we ever did was say "she'll be right", the good folks at Vortech would get the feeling that their customers were blissfully happy. Which clearly they are not.

BTW this is not a support issue, it's a collective customer satisfaction issue. IMO it's exactly the kind of issue that _should_ be popping up in front of VT.

In the stateless world of the web, the fact that we are customers - business people with customers of our own - gets put to one side. "Reseller" is such an un-word. As customers, we invest our money and faith in this supplier and accept to a large degree that we are locked in. We do NOT have to be happy about promised delvery dates that are pushed back, over and over again.

I care about my customers enough that I don't want to string them along but that's what I find myself doing in the case of .NET 2!

[Brangwyn]

Constructive discussion fine by all means, but lately the discussion seems to be heading in the direction of un-constructive criticism and sarcasm which isn't expressing dissatisfaction with Vortech, it's frustration venting which to a degree I understand, but to me personally and quite possibly Vortech too it's starting to feel like a Road Trip .............. Are we there yet?

IMHO it's fair to say the issue of .NET2 availability has been pretty well and truly discussed here on the forums (I'm inclined to say beaten to death actually) and as you quite rightly say it's not a support issue, yet on the other hand yourself and others seem perfectly happy to use the Live Technical Support System to ask about it. Yet as one of the respected contributers to this forum I suspect you already know what the current state of play is with .NET2 and that your unlikely to get any kind of answer from the "grunts" when it's Brad who'll need to have the final say anyway.

If you want to tell Vortech your unhappy, by all means do so on the forum constructively. I just don't see how taking your frustrations out on Tech Support does anything more than impinge on their time and impede their ability to support other customers with genuine technical support issues. Sure there is some frustration but honestly the upgrade has barely settled down, there are still numerous issues you may or may not be aware of or experiencing that need to be fixed.

Considering the number of people who post on this forum represent a very small percentage of the total number of customers, we by far get the largest say in what goes on, we all know that Vortech listens to constructive comments we've seen them listen and act on our comments in the past and I'm sure .NET2 is no different, they realise there is a demand and they will work to get it installed with the minimum of disruption possible.

I don't personally recall ever being explicitly promised .NET2 with the upgrade, perhaps it was and I can see how that would be frustrating for everyone, but I've always worked on the premise that the upgrade was only ever going to be a precursor to .NET2's availability so I'm continuing to take a don't count your chickens approach. My rule of thumb is when your relying on a 3rd party to provide a service, you don't promise it to your own customers until that 3rd party's delivered on their promise (unless you want egg on your face).

As an aside I think the demand for .NET2 is overstated, I received numerous requests to support .NET2 including the odd threat to change providers, so I thought OK the demand is there I'll put off some planned work, spend the 2-3 days it took to install and configure correctly and provide it to my customers ... now 6 months later I see the ratio of domains to .NET2 installations at around 3% (vs 72% for 1.1) this is only anecdotal evidence sure, but based on the number of requests I received and that many of these customers are .NET Developers, Community members and MVP's I would have predicted the uptake to have been much higher.

I may be out on my own here saying this but I do feel that in this instance people are starting to let their frustrations get the better of them and if I've offended any of you with my remarks then please accept my apologies as I'm not trying to single out or personally attack anyone here, I'm simply stating my take on things.

[bebop]

From Brangwyn today --
I don't personally recall ever being explicitly promised .NET2 with the upgrade, perhaps it was and I can see how that would be frustrating for everyone ..

Brad 1/25/2007 --
A: Yes, asp.net will be available on all new servers installed; we plan to install a new Windows server within 7 days of completion of the upgrade. Current customers can asked to be moved to this server and new customers can ask to also be put on this system. It will be off for new signups at first but any can be moved to this if they plan to use .net 2.0.

Brangwyn - You are now better Informed.

FROM Toddmain - I was able to look up "Blah Blah Blah" in a new dictionary and found that it means "We don't care for Windows, so we'll do nothing and then we make excuses and then we take a vacation."

BeBOP - I seem to me the last 10 servers purchases were for windows & the upgrade

Toddmain - You are now better Informed.

FROM Brangwyn - From Everyone asking every few days about .NET is not going to make any difference all you're doing is consuming Support staff's time that could be better spent working on genuine problems effecting all servers.

Brangwyn - This is not the ticket system (more on that later) - You are now better Informed.

FROM Brangwyn – Everyone will have to just accept it's going to be a little while longer you've waited this long, a few more weeks won't kill you. I just don't think some of you realise how vulnerable these servers can be made with a default .NET installation…

Brangwyn - In IMHO this is total B.S. Vortech has over a year to get ready while they were waiting around for P-Soft. In
All that time they couldn’t learn, or hire the learned?? Or set up a small test group A-la ColdFusion. Must everything be done
serially



From Bebop and to the point–

Every week or two I get a new e-mail - that begins New Server on Line,
New Mail server or New Windows or Unix Server or ColdFusion Server etc ….

Vortech is growing and growing, and we resellers cannot and should not try to tell Brad how to run his company.
Vortech keeps the mail up better than the US post office, and does so under constant and un-withering attack.
Better than any hosting company I have ever seen. Mail gets delayed, but I have NEVER lost either an email or
a customer over email with Vortech. I cannot remember more than one TOTAL network outage in three years.
The servers are up most of the time. As a percentage of the total Vortech has fewer server down than I do.

That said there is some corporate weakness on the Windows Side of the house. When ColdFusion switched from
Version 5 to Version 6, there was months and months of downtown, and we see outages still, far higher than the
rest of the cluster. The problems were never really (and maybe cannot ) be solved, but in my experience no one
has the ColdFusion problems Vortech has. The situation was contained however by isolating ColdFusion servers
to a small mini-cluster.

The same thing could have been for NET 2. If NET 2 is need by only a small number of people, do the same thing.
The whole NET2 thing could have been solved a year ago!!! ( There ARE people running NET2 on P-Soft 2.4 –
I can be done!! ) This was kicked around but never seriously considered. What it WOULD have done was given
Vortech valuable experience with NET2 in a small controlled environment, and for the people willing to run
on those machines, let them take their licks it they were down.

There is a anti-WINDOWS-bias at Vortech but I don’t think was coming from Brad. This is pure speculation
On my part but I think the problem was Dean. Brad ‘solved’ the CF thing. But he took some time off. Dean made
every effort to delay and frustrate (" 2.50 is out – Oh let’s until 2.51 why upgrade twice? ") and I think put the fear
of god into Brad about NET2 ( "We have over 150 custom templates to update" oh dear !!) Deans not around,
Vortech updates to 2.50, something they could have done many many months ago!! I may be all wet on this
but hum .. we all have options.

Second point – Why doesn’t Vortech have a senior MICROSOFT TRAINED tech in house who total understands
IIS , windows protections, NET framework2 and the windows operating system. They just had a round of new
hiring , bet a 5cent piece NOT ONE was Microsoft Certified in anything, or it would have been posted. (Not that
they didn’t hire good people but can you see my point ??). But oh dear !! … there I go trying to tell Vortech how to
run their company


As to the ranting. As resellers we have two choices – Yell or leave.

Some have left. I sometimes have wanted to, but I find people running clusters of 3, 4, 5 may 6 P-soft servers.
And the mail service – despite what some think – is fantastic. I customer can lose his website for an day but
cutting off his mail is like cutting off is air supply. You have his undivided attention,.

This leaves yelling – and again my option – yelling in public in a forum – like negative political campaigning – works.
Nobody likes it, but it works ….

Quote “You People Wanted Us to Upgrade and Now you have it “ Unquote”


Brangwyn – By the way ranting about ranting is ranting

[DigitalSkyline]

Yes Brad too has shown an anti-windows stance on several occasions which to me is ridiculous given the amount of money Vortech makes off of windows servers. Not trying to flame just stating the truth. Everyone hates on M$ but still uses them... there are many obvious reasons why people use them.

I guess the same can be said for Vortech, everyone here is using them, despite their apparent flaws, but still wants to go on and on about their grievances.

However, open threats to the ASP community like disallowing access-based sites (even when appropriate), and not supporting new technologies like .net2 etc, further disenfranchises windows developers, putting the heat to the fire for us to look for alternatives. I expect that our hosting partner Vortech would not take a bias against small developers or Microsoft technology and just provide what is industry standard service (at least as its advertised/promised to do).

Thats all I have to say on the matter.

[hex]

This is not just a Windows/.NET issue. Vortech has fallen way behind on other fronts as well. As software packages we use to run our sites continue to upgrade we can't follow suit because Vortech's infrastructure is not there.

What’s going on with PHP5? I’ve got several projects on hold on both the Windows and *nix fronts because I’ve got to wait till you get .NET 2 and PHP5 rolling.

[PeterD]

Originally Posted by Brangwyn

the 2-3 days it took to install and configure correctly and provide it to my customers

Now that's what I call service

[powvex]

I agree to these people who complaining.

Vortech/Brad; We are always said that Vortech is one of the best Windows shared hosting around, and the proof of that is why we stay here in years. but just think of that, when you're not going to upgrade with any latest version on essential software's like .net2, how can we keep our customers? and then how can we stay here?

Brad; many next WEEKs has passed, and all you can tell is that you're off town? and will back in 3 weeks??

[desirea]

"A network no matter what kind of network is only as good as the network admins running it."

... maybe these guys just aren't very good at Windows...

[bebop]

http://www.psoft.net/ ---
The page cannot be displayed


Oh great!!! - Psoft has left the building !!

[esites]

Their software probably broke... lol.

[benyblack]

does this forum have any admins?

[mknz]

this post got pretty crazy.

I just need info:

Is .net 2.0 ever going to become available?

When?

Should I start looking for another host?

Thanks.

[Brangwyn]

Soon

http://forum.vortechhosting.com/show...074#post105074