Hi everyone,
I just want to let you all know that you need to be very careful of who you deal with when/if you get a cpanel licence.

I contacted one of Cpanel's NOC's, I won't say who, but it was the cheapest on the list, I told them that I had a few rackshack.net servers, all with ensim, and I wanted to upgrade all of them to cpanel. They told me that they have installed cpanel over ensim several times, and not to worry, since they will backup the entire server for me and then install. Seeing "backup" from them make me feel very comfortable, so I bought cpanel, and gave them all my information.

About 4 hours later I can an email back telling me that the install failed, and I need to issue a restore from rackshack.net. I emailed them back and informed them that rackshack will only restore back to the ensim image, and not to a clean operating system. They ensured me that was okay, and they they have a full backup of the server with all the accounts that were on the server.

I issued a restore, and I must say, rackshack restored that server very quickly, even knowing that I only ordered the 2-24 hour server. The server was back up in less then an hour.

I notified the NOC that the server was restored, and that they may continue. I get an email back telling me that the install once again failed, and that they cannot continue the install, and that I needed another restore. At this point I am steamed, I cannot believe this. I get yet another restore, I emailed them back, told them that the server was back up, with ensim, and that I no longer wanted cpanel, and just to restore the server back to the why they first seen it.

I get an email back from the NOC telling me that the tarball of the backup that they have is damaged, and that a restore would be impossible.

As pissed as I am right then, I keep calm, and nice, and I simply tell them that I would like a refund of the cpanel licence, and no hard feelings. THEN, I get an email back telling me that they have a strict policy of no refunds, and at the bottom of the email it said that the ticket was closed. I can clearly see that there is no way that they made a backup, since the bandwidth only moved 185MB, I don't think you can get a 9.6GB tarball gzipped down to 185MB.

So here I am, with a empty server, 3 cpanel licences that I can't use, jerks of an NOC, and several very upset people that don't have a site. Not to forget all the money that I just lost. I'm glad it was only one server, and not all three.

The moral of the story is; Know the NOC, ask a lot of questions, have them show you proof of everything that they are doing. And if you need to get a restore after one shot, it's probably in your best interest not to continue with the upgrade.

How did you pay?

Credit card, paypal, MO.? I would issue a chargeback on this.

I used my PayPal debit card, I didn't even think about doing that, I'll file a complaint.

If you used a paypal mastercard debit card as a credit card, paypal should be able to do a chargeback easy enough.

If you paid for the license and install as a package, you did not get what you paid for, even sounds like you incurred extra cost for restores.

Not to be rude, but why would you entrust anybody but yourself to your server's backup? If the data was important, you should've backed it up yourself.

That is a valid point, and I should have made sure that I had the backup on my personal computer, or even on another one of my servers, but I was stupid, and trusted them.

Yeah, best thing you did was remain calm, now the damage is done there is really nothing that can be done. I wish you luck at getting your money back.

Beverage,

If you still want to install cPanel over ensim I am willing to help. Free of cost. I converted my RS server from ensim to cpanel without much hassle. If you want the help let me know.

Also, since that box is a fresh install anyways without any clients theres really no risk.

Beverage...that SUCKS! Sorry to hear that. Please keep us updated as to how things turn out.

hehehe...is it hosting24-7?

can you post or pm the name of the NOC?

It would be helpful to know the name of the NOC so we don't accidentally "trust them."

Please do not post the NOC...PM the original poster if you would like to know.

Or Beverage can post anything he wants to http://www.webhostingtalk.com as that is more appropriate for discussing hosts.

I did get the money back for the licences, thanks to paypal, thank you ljprevo for pointing that out to me. I will not say who the NOC is, since I'm not one to start a war between web hosts. I won't fight for the restore fees, since I strongly think that was my own fault, this has been a good lesson for me.

Ouch!
I'd agree though, know your NOC's.. I had a client who was moving from a NOC to a private server, and the clown charged him some $500 to move everything accountwise from X to Y server. Of course the person could have easily given him access to backups through WHM, but wouldn't, could have given him (temporary) root access as this had some 500 accts on it, and was a ded server, but (again) wouldn't. Sounds like we're probably dealing with the same NOC here.

As someone said, if you need help re setting up your server w/ CP, let me know, I'll do it for you free of charge.

next time just uninstall ensim over ssh with a uninstall ensim script

Matt

Sorry, but I'm knocking on my head here trying to figure out what a NOC is. Sorry for the newbie question.

noc=netwok operation center ;-)