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For more than 3 years I was a happy customer of BurstNET web hosting provider… But, recently I discovered, that, actually, I was a lucky customer of this company. Yes, I had some issues with their service, but not ones, that I interpreted as critical! However, some of their customers appeared to be very unhappy (I saw a post on some forum claiming, that the author cannot get his/her data for more than a half of year)…

So, why did I get interested about the quality of their service?.. On the previous week I got an email, notifying me, that I have a month to… get away from them! I did not believe, that this could be the truth (this could be fake), so I googled for the problem… And, expectedly, figured out, that I was not the only one. Yet still I did not believe, so I decided to ask the support team for a confirmation and to wait, if more people get such emails (normally people share such news)…

Unfortunately, this appeared to be true… I’m not sure about the reasons (and they did not share any reasons in their emails), but BurstNET drops all its VPS customers (and I use Xen VPS). As I understood, the company got bought by DigiPLUS, who decided to close the VPS business. It’s not normal, it’s rough and it’s stressing, but it’s true… I wondered, why they did not sell the VPS data center to some other hosting company, but accepted this as a fact and started looking for a new provider…

I used to spend a month making a research for the best hosting provider three years ago (this way I chose BurstNET), but this time I did not have the month (thanks, BursrNET)! So, my damn quick research showed, that, probably, the best options were RamNode and DigitalOcean. When I was about to ask my social friends for recommendations, I got another email from BurstNET… This time they were pleased to say, that they got an agreement with Hostwinds and the latter is going to take their VPSes over… Including me… If I wish. At the same time this is going to be a migration – i.e., they do not move the hardware, but just data… Guys, if this were in the first email, I would go with Hostwinds! Really! But three days later (or so), after I made the research… No, thanks! I see better options now (sorry, Hostwinds)! And am able to move my data myself (by the way, they suggest to move data yourself too)…

So, I decided to move to DigitalOcean… Why DigitalOcean?.. Well, it looks to be one of the best, it has a simple and nice interface, it is for developers (and I’m one), it supports Debian and even has the documentation describing, how to upgrade Debian (unusual for hosting providers)…

As BurstNET did not give me much time, currently I’m in hurry to get my new “droplet” running… And I aim to finish it on not later than July 25th (the time BurstNET asked me to get out until). Certainly, like in the last time (that was only 8 months ago), this means, that users of my website will experience some downtime related to the move…

But, additionally, the following issues will take place:

• Subversion repositories are going to be moved first, so they will become unavailable some time before the actual move.
• After the move I will change the IP address associated with my domain, so DNS caches may need some time to get updated (up to a day, accordingly to some information – most DNSes, however, will update in seconds).
• After the move your browser sessions will definitely get closed, so you will be forced to relogin.
• Some other issues can be experienced some time after the move… But I will be working on fixing them as quickly as possible.

While I’m not happy with the way I need to move out from BurstNET, I need to say, that I was happy with their service… So, thank you, BurstNET, for being especially kind to me these +3 years (considering other users’ complaints I was, perhaps, a very special customer)!