My company's web-shop relies on a VPN link between our hosting company and our office so that stock availability can be checked, and stock allocated when our customers order. At about 22:20 on 23rd Feb, 2016, I received an automated email from one of our servers telling me the VPN had dropped. On investigation I was unable to access any of the servers. I went to the A&A IRC channel and asked if anyone was aware of any problems and, even at this late hour, a staff member replied straight away and helped me localise the problem to within our building. It was too late to do anything about it then, so I set an early alarm for the morning.
When I got to work at about 08:00 my first action was to reboot the modems. Both lines sync'd, but neither would login. So I called the support telephone number and got an answer within two or three rings, and the person who answered helped me trouble-shoot further. He suggested some kind of EMI, and suggested a way of testing, and he was spot on! The PSU in our firewall had failed, nothing in or out of the network. Fortunately the device was supplied by A&A (it's a FireBrick). A&A were able to upload the config of the dead FB (they keep copies for just such eventualities) to a spare I had at home. I collected the spare, plugged it in and we were back up immediately. Including 8 hours asleep, travelling too and from work - twice! - our connection was down less than 12 hours.
A replacement PSU arrived by 10am on the following day and I had my home network back online in less than 36 hours since the problem arose.
I'm amazed at the diagnostic skills, the getting through to an intelligent person immediately, and that help was even available after 10pm.
It's wonderful to get through to someone who doesn't treat you as a moron by starting out with "have you tried turning it off and on again". There was no long drawn out conversation establishing the facts, their support team are really knowledgeable. Whenever I've called they've never kept me talking for more than 5 minutes - and most of that is waiting for BT diagnostics to run.
The swift and efficient resolution to this problem was excellent.
They may not be cheap, but support of this calibre has to be paid for somehow.
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