NFOServers.com Review

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Speced
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NFOServers.com Review

Post by Speced »

Short version

Services used;
Managed/Unmanaged VDS
Webhosting
Standalone gameservers
Time with NFO hosting;
About 2 years in total, maybe a bit more?
Server performance;
Great. They run very well for a VPS with "dedicated HT cores" (that's sounds pretty gimmicky tbh). Whatever they're doing though, you'll have a very responsive server.
Their webhosting, even on the lite plan, works wonders. FastDL is well, fast, and generally no real complaints.
Network quality;
Excellent. In both their Chicago and New York locations, pings have been great. My playerbase is mostly US East and they generally have no complaints about lag caused by network.
Support;
Excellent, replies under 2-3 minutes generally and are helpful, absolute best I've come across with the half a dozen host I've used before landing on NFo
Would I recommend?;
Yes for everything that isn't an unmanaged dedicated box.



Long version

Please note that some things that I list here may be implement or are no longer issues. I've basically tried a lot of what NFO offers at some point or another.

Managed VDS/Gameserver Control Panel - It's very good, but as usual there could be improvement. Let's start with the good. Their game control panel for managed (V)DSes and standalone gameservers is great, offering most of the customization without the need to dig into config files, great for new server owners. They certainly took the game for each game and didn't make a blanket control panel just to cover as many games as possible. The control panel is great for people who run 1-2 servers. Now, for those guys who run half a dozen servers or more (such as communities), the control panel can be an annoyance. There's no start/restart/stop all servers or servers that match specific criteria. The option for multiple FTP logins is also not supported.

Unmanaged VDS Control Panel - Not much I could really ask for. It offers console view via VNC, ability to start/reboot/stop your VDS, reinstall OSes and basically anything you'd need to do physically to a computer... with the exception of uploading your own ISOs. I never really found the need to do that, but it's still an option some may want. Otherwise, it's great. It has bandwidth graphs and well everything you realistically need.

Dedicated servers - Not something I've personally used, but in my interest of getting one I've asked around for some information. I can't comment on it's performance (because I never used one), but I'd imagine it'll perform like any other server of the same specs. But with that said, there's a few things that come standard with pretty much any reputable dedicated provider that are lacking at NFo. IPMI or similar is not provided with NFO dedicated servers. Why? I don't know. The lack of IPMI or console view can make bad firewall rules and OS updates a somewhat nail-biting experience. No IPMI also means simple mistakes such as disabling network adapters is a harder to solve. I'd imagine you can contact support, but let's face it, they don't want to go into DSes just to enable an adapter and you don't want to have to bother support for things that you could technically fix yourself provided they give you the tools. They also don't support reinstalling OS without having to ship an entire new drive to the datacenter. For this reason, I would not recommend getting an unmanaged. Managed DS for gameservers are fine though.

Forums - It works. But come on, it looks 4000 years old. :P Click bold actually puts the [.b][./b] tags instead of a WYSIWYG. Otherwise, functional and I guess that's what matters.

Main website - It works. They allow you to upgrade and downgrade your servers easily. Ties in well with the control panel. Order page is informative. Not really necessary, but it'd be nice if you could pick which one of your servers you want to upgrade and it automatically populates it's current configuration then you can make your changes.

Support - Staff is polite and helpful, 2-3 minutes responses during regular hours and within 1 hour at like 5AM. Somehow they manage that with not very many staff members. Maybe they're robots, I don't know. The CEO, Edge100x, is very responsive. Escalated tickets are handled within a day for things that the support agents can't fix. Overall, not many complaints.

All in all, best host I've used. Very happy with pretty much everything and would certainly recommend.
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Re: NFOServers.com Review

Post by Edge100x »

To clarify on a couple of points you mentioned --

The ability to stop/start all servers on a host is provided for managed VDSes and dedicated servers. There is not an extra tool to restart based on a filter (such as all of those of a particular game) or a tool to restart all servers on all hosts, however. If customers are interested in filters, they are something that I can investigate.

IPMI is not provided for security reasons. There have been so many exploitable holes found in it that we just don't feel comfortable exposing these interfaces to clients or the internet -- we don't even assign them public IP addresses. Additionally, at least in many versions of the IPMI interface, it's not possible to give customers access to mount a virtual CD without making them an administrator, which would allow them to lock us out; since machines are all remote for us, this type of sabotage would be expensive to fix, as we'd have to have a hired technician go to the cabinet and manually reset the interface. All that said, we haven't specifically tested the latest IPMI versions and may still offer this service in the future. Thankfully, it doesn't come up much (we are responsive when customers need something fixed through the console, and there usually isn't much need in general).
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