When Jodo Upgrades

J

JBracken

Guppy
Let me start by saying I don’t want this to come off as huge rant but it is a disappointment. Perhaps someone can enlighten me and I can look at it differently.

I have been a customer since 04/2004 and have been happy with the service. I often do prototypes for friends, families and small business to help get started with running their own web sites. I also explain to them what I like about Jodo, that being you can do virtually anything you could possibly imagine (not limited to just asp.net), start small and move up as you advance. I don’t normally charge, my fulltime programming job keeps me busy enough to take on too much additional work and it does not leave much time to do stuff for my own sites.

Now, about a week ago I was having problems using the SQL Server Manager Studio and the SQL Manager in the Control Panel would not let me insert HTML tags. I found out that I had to use the EMS tool. Not happy but so be it. So I get my scripts ready to build my Database and it kept given error, I noticed that it was the SQL2005 commands. Turns out I am not on SQL2005 but on 2000.

The solution, sign up for a new account. What a pain, does this mean every time there is an upgrade of such I will have to sign up for a new account. I can show old in new but not new in old. Now getting a new account was one thing but there is no offer of a smooth crossover for email (which is why I started with Jodo service to begin with). Support tells me I have to create each mailbox over again, this is not acceptable, now I can probably bare with it for the 48 hours for the Name Servers to update. In addition I will need to contact a couple people that I do have and let them know they will need to reset their passwords and make a back up of their current emails. Web sites are not asbad just run each server until the DNS servers are all refreshed.

With this type of environment I cannot honestly recommend anyone of size to use the Windows Hosting Service (I cannot say for the other services because I don’t use them). I guess I will bare it for now but I will not do it again. It just so happens I am trying to prototype a small inventory application that is SQL 2005 driven. I have not figured out what I am going to tell them as to where to host their site if they decide to do it.

Thank you for letting me vent a bit, I am open to suggestions if I am see this all wrong

John
 
New accounts get SQL 2005, MSSQL 2000 servers can use the old SQL Management tools no problem there is no need to use another tool if you are on SQL 2000 still.

There is no upgrade mechanism to move an old account to new SQL servers be it MySQL or MSSQL, and upgrading of such servers is a risky and labor intensive operation that can and very likley would result in a 10+ hours downtime and some data loss, when the SQL 2000 is still working great for most people's needs on older accounts we can't really justify this process.
 
I don’t know how you point a person account to the different SQL servers in their profiles but it would seem like to me that you could give accounts upon request access to the SQL 2005 as a database option and not make them sign up a new account just to have the newer SQL version (even if it were temporary for a transition or a small temporary charge back).

I was not currently using my SQL 2000 (actively), I did not care about my data lost in my case (still don’t). Upgrading is a matter of Detach and Attach (after a back up of course) and then a couple of SQL scripts (like EXEC sp_change_users_login). This can be done without bring down the whole SQL server services or databases, I sure did not on the ones I had to do. Of course the developer will need to change his application at the same time. At the very least giving the user temporary access to 2005 and 2000 would give the user the ability to build the scripts to rebuild in 2005.

It just does not seem like to me that a solution of getting a new account is a solution to newer technology, more so for your long term customers. What does this mean when the day comes for SQL2008 which it will someday.

FYI: I have no desire to stay on 2000 and anyone who does, in my opinion is only causing heart ache and lose out on functionality for themselves by not staying semi current.
 
JBracken,

I mean there is not way for HSPHERE to, we do offer for $5/m access to the SQL 2005 DB we manually create it for you and it allows up to 100MB DB. It is not counted against your user quote.
I did not say it is impossible to move from SQL 2000 to SQL 2005 at all, just not in hpshere and maintaining a user management of the service.
SQL 2008 will be the same as the current situation should Parallels ever decide to support that version.
 
Stephen,

Thank you for taking the time to respond to help me understand. I am still disappointed that the upgrade cannot follow my same account since the one account handles everything. I will suck it up for now but don’t be surprised if I come back in another couple of years complaining that I had create a new account :D.

I will like to add I have been happy with the services at JodoHost as stated earler, the pros outweigh the cons. This was just one issue that disappointed me but it certainly did not ruin my day.

Thank you,
John
 
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