One final thing to add here is that both Cameron and I have dealt with
this for many years, so it's not like our objections are philosophical,
they are based in the constant reality we had to deal with. I'm going to
end with one story about an issue I spent a long time troubleshooting
that is my goto when people ask me what the difference is.
In a previous job, I once had a customer who would have their billing
randomly fail in the middle on seemingly random nights. They believed
there were all kinds of different factors contributing to it, but all I
would see in the billing logs were that billing just stopped at some
point, and then later on, there would be seemingly unrelated errors
hours later. After looking at these for a while, I came to the
conclusion that something must be hanging the billing process on this
customers server, and then when it came back to life hours later, things
started failing due to disconnected SQL connections, etc.
So I start digging through and trying to correlate the customers that it
fails on. Did they all have some kind of special event happening? Were
they in some group that was triggering a background process that caused
a failure? Was it bad memory, or some kind of CPU issue? I was dredging
through dmesg, syslog, the billing logs, everything I could find, and
nothing added up. So I added a ton of logging to the billing process and
pushed a patched version to the server. It didn't happen again for days,
but when it did, all my logging would stop at the same time - it was
like the whole billing process was just seizing. So I started putting
external logging in. Was cron killing something, was some external
process like MySQL locking up? Waited days again, and looked at the logs
- everything was puking. So then I start thinking, it must be some kind
of hardware error, but I really don't like to go to a customer and say
'your server is broken' when I don't have any evidence. I spent a lot
more time reading Stack Overflow, looking for examples of other people
having these kinds of problems, until eventually I had to tell them 'I
just can't figure it out. It seems like your server is completely
freezing. Do you have any monitoring in place that you can look at, or
can you call me right when it happens so I can SSH in and take a look?'
Customer says, 'What server?'
I say, the server your system is running on.
Customer says, 'Oh. It's not on a server. I'm running it in a VM on my
laptop.'
Me: ...
'Yeah, I just close the lid at night when I'm done working and go home.'
On 10/18/2017 8:51 AM, Cameron Crum wrote:
We did do a couple of on-prem installations for people, but there were
always issues and plenty of finger pointing at times. When the
customer's server reboots in the middle of a billing run who gets the
blame, and how are we, as the software provider, even supposed to be
aware of it? Am I now responsible for setting up external monitoring
processes just because you don't understand or aren't comfortable with
cloud based services? It's hard to defend yourself against things like
that even though the answer seems obvious. Also, on prem people want
the same level of support, but also a discount because you don't have
to host it anymore. The truth is, most of the time, the on-prem guys
require more support, not less. Tracking down a problem and trying to
determine if it was the software's fault or the hardware's fault is
time consuming. We won't have easy access to server logs and other
diagnostic tools, and time spent acquiring that data means more
support hours. Support, as in man-hours, cost a lot more than hosted
servers. And to be clear, Wispmon didn't go out of buisiness. We were
approached by Sonar for an acquisition and it was a good deal for all
involved. Nobody from Wispmon was or will be left high and dry. We, at
Sonar, are working hard to ensure transitions are as smooth and hands
off on the customer end as possible. With that, have a good day, I
have a lot of data to move ;)
On Wed, Oct 18, 2017 at 8:22 AM, Mike Hammett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
IIRC, version 3 you could have some of their services (not
billing) on-prem. Version 4 had an on-prem ability, due to the
very reasons I stated... a VM on your host is no different than a
VM on my host from an OS\application perspective.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions <http://www.ics-il.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *"Josh Luthman" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*To: *[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent: *Wednesday, October 18, 2017 8:20:17 AM
*Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
Wispmon was cloud only wasn't it?
Josh Luthman
Office: 937-552-2340 <tel:%28937%29%20552-2340>
Direct: 937-552-2343 <tel:%28937%29%20552-2343>
1100 Wayne St
<https://maps.google.com/?q=1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373&entry=gmail&source=g>
Suite 1337
<https://maps.google.com/?q=1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373&entry=gmail&source=g>
Troy, OH 45373
<https://maps.google.com/?q=1100+Wayne+St+Suite+1337+Troy,+OH+45373&entry=gmail&source=g>
On Oct 18, 2017 9:16 AM, "Josh Reynolds" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
He always has a choice.
On Oct 18, 2017 7:14 AM, "Matt Hoppes"
<[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
He didn't have a choice. His cloud-based billing provider
went out of business and sold to sonar. So he doesn't even
really have the option of running old software, he's being
forced to upgrade.
On Oct 18, 2017, at 07:55, Josh Reynolds
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Please don't become a Sonar customer just to demonize
them because you don't like their service model.
Seriously. That'd be a super shitty thing to do.
On Oct 18, 2017 6:52 AM, "Mike Hammett"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I will be using it shortly as Sonar bought WISPMon.
All of the major billing\OSS platforms with modern
features are also cloud-based, so there's not
really anywhere else to go.
That's fine for you that it works that way, but
many WISPs are increasing their use of on-premises
virtualization. What about your monitoring, DNS,
RADIUS, syslog, Unimus, mail, etc., etc. servers?
Yes, my reasons do outweigh arbitrary reasons to
keep it in a cloud environment.
Actually, I've been fairly quiet on this
particular issue and will be increasing my
advocacy efforts in this regard to all billing\OSS
platforms. As I said, it's the SFP port of the
billing\OSS world.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
<http://www.ics-il.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL><https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb><https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions><https://twitter.com/ICSIL>
Midwest Internet Exchange <http://www.midwest-ix.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/mdwestix><https://www.linkedin.com/company/midwest-internet-exchange><https://twitter.com/mdwestix>
The Brothers WISP <http://www.thebrotherswisp.com/>
<https://www.facebook.com/thebrotherswisp>
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXSdfxQv7SpoRQYNyLwntZg>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *"Darin Steffl" <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
*To: *[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent: *Tuesday, October 17, 2017 10:08:47 PM
*Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] Sonar
I'm in agreement with Simon that it's much faster
and reliable to host in the cloud than a server on
site. It would cost me many more hours, hand
holding, and worry if I had to host this server in
my network. If I went on vacation and something
happened, I'd be stressed.
With sonar living in the cloud, there's less to
worry about as it's hosted in a much more reliable
datacenter than I could afford to build. It's also
managed by sonar's team so if there's an issue,
they take care of it. Stress free for me.
I see why you might want to host it in house but
those reasons do NOT outweigh all the benefits of
letting sonar host it in the cloud for you and
take care of the problems.
Mike, if you don't like Simon's decision to leave
it in the cloud, shut up and move on. There's no
reason for you and Matt Hoppes to keep beating a
dead horse and sound like a broken record. Use
something else you're happy with and let the rest
of us grow our business and make more $ while you
two complain about a product you don't even use.
Jeez ha
On Oct 17, 2017 8:31 PM, "Seth Mattinen"
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
wrote:
On 10/17/17 6:14 PM, Mike Hammett wrote:
Expect repeated harassment until a good
reason is presented or you capitulate.
It's the SFP of the billing\OSS world.
I always welcome my competitors to have
external dependencies. When they try to hand
wave their problems away as vendor or cloud
problems it helps me gain new customers.
~Seth
--
Simon Westlake
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (702) 447-1247 US / (780) 900-1180 CA
---------------------------
Sonar Software Inc
The future of ISP billing and OSS
https://sonar.software
