Interesting discussion on LowEndTalk over the last week about Virmach, a provider that has been sharing offers with our community for quite a while.
Several users are reporting issues. Their Looking Glass (e.g., New York) also appears to be down. Virmach’s main page on July 17 was the typical hosting company page offering various services and touting various deals. Today it’s a redirect to their billing panel.
So what’s going on? On July 30, @VirMach posted a bit on his situation:
I’ve had to work every day, all day, for the past year or so as a result of the situation we’re in right now. So the number of hours spent are heavily skewed in my direction right now. We have two others working with us right now. We’re still a small company and always have been, but especially more recently.
Around the beginning of COVID we had our billing person leave, our hardware guy leave, and two sys admins leave.
It’s been OK until we also had to do a massive quantity of builds, deal with aging hardware, as well as migrations simultaneously over the last half a year plus. It probably also didn’t help that I made some badly timed sales and we had way more problems than anticipated with said new hardware. But yes, you are speaking with one single person right now who has been handling almost everything and not sleeping over a very long period of time especially since it’s the weekend and no one else is working today.
LET member @LordSpock (an awesome nick) speculated that perhaps they are having issues with one of their upstreams (ColoCrossing in this case), as systems based on CC are offline but others are up and working. If CC cut them off, then that explains why they are scrambling.
Sounds like a perfect storm of cash flow issues and thin staffing, perhaps similar to the NexusBytes story. Are you a VirMach customer? What are you experiencing?
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>Are you a VirMach customer? What are you experiencing?
They’ve moved my VPS to another IP address twice, first time in the beginning of July and now 2 days ago again, all without any notification of the planned migration and of IP address change. I had to navigate to the CP and check what’s going on, spotting new IP address these two times.
During the month period, I’ve opened 3 tickets, none of which received any reply.
Same story as above comment, have seen continuous degradation of service for a few months now. My servers IP address also changed a couple of times without warning or notice… Hope they continue to stay alive, they were really good a few years back…
I have vps on Dallas, Franfurt nodes that are working fine. I have 2 VM on NY Nodes. 1 is working fine and other is showing locked since 3 days. No reply to tickets even the priority ones got no reply in last 12 hours.
They sent an email a few weeks ago about a hardware upgrade, involving a change of IP, that might be done without a warning. The upgrade happened a few days ago. Without another warning. I noticed the issue shortly after it happened. Could read the new IP from the control panel, or my client area on their site. I don’t remember which. Had to reconfig the vps a bit to the new setting with the vnc viewer offered by the control panel. And it works almost fine after the reconfiguration. Just almost fine. Not perfectly. Because there is one issue which spoils the show for me. They don’t restore the rDNS I had before. The control panel is blocked from putting it back again. In short, I would be highly recommending them if there wasn’t the rDNS issue. I do hope they will settle that soon.
I am also a customer from 2019, purchased it via the lowendbox offer. Never faced much of downtime. A minor few hour hiccups due to network issues in July aug 2020. On July 2021 they shifted me to a new a new node. Everything was good until few days ago. They are again shifting me a new node and my VM says node is locked since last 32+ Hours. I hope they recover soon. Virmach is an awesome service and I love it.
Same story. They changed my IP and migrated to some ryzen node without prior notification. I updated my configuration, and then again they reassigned me another IP address without prior notice. Also the new nodes feel less performant, I’m getting mysql errors which never happened before (same configuration)
Been with VirMach since 2016 and considered it the best LEB-provider, but things have changed. My vps is frequently down, or gets migrated with new IP, without any notice. Tickets go unanswered for months. And this goes on and on for months…
Virmach has publicly stated that he couldn’t care less about answering individual tickets and will only post updates on LET/LES.
Like fine, I get it, at the prices you’re offering, you can’t offer hand-holding support, but the vast majority of tickets being raised are for real infrastructure issues. It’s become easy to just casually dismiss tickets as being pointless and a waste of time, and to get LETters to go along with it as though its fact. But the reality is that many customers still have underlying issues that are either being unaddressed or intentionally ignored.
They not even answering my tickets. My VPS were not working for months. Wasted money on renewals few weeks back as it got auto renewed. Also paid their migration fee believing that they need money to provide migration to working node. But nothing happened.
Why do auto renewal when you cannot provide services? Also why not refund your customer when your have issues in providing services?
It is not a proper company. It is just a one man show trying to take as much money and run away with that once all the money are moved to new bank account to avoid any kind of dispute from the customers.
The amount of Simping and apologia that goes on for Virmach is ridiculous. Yeah, Virmach used to be great, but they’re still capable of doing wrong. I find the whole “Virmach can do no wrong” narrative to be super obnoxious.
Looks like Virmach is officially dead!
Node locked since 3 days that too without warning, Tickets got no reply. Created priority ticket but seems like no one is gonna replay [ 12 hours gone].
First nexusbytes and now Virmach. It is so sad to see these providers falling to dust. They had awesome service and pricing. Dont know what management issues they are facing.
Hope God show them the path and they revive asap.
The end is nigh. With “recent” problems they earned such a bad reputation I do not believe they can survive in this business. I already moved all my services elsewhere and keep VirMach VPS only as backup of backups. Sorry VirMach, but you screwed this up royally…
Everybody faces hardship with business, and sometime things get out of hands. Virmach owner should understand this and inform the customers about their issues.
4th day gone still my node is locked. Noway to recover data. No reply on tickets even on the priority once.
I have 2 VPS in Virmach and now I can’t use both (1) Can’t install OS via ISO after the Migration (2) Still in Node Lock its been 3 days already.
My server has been offline for 6 days, open ticket with no reply, the data on the server is lost.
we have about 15pcs server in virmach ,after 4 days ,didn’t got any news !! big trouble with us ,many database no backup .why have not any email or news , we need 1-2 hours it’s ok,
I think there is noone to support customer now. The company owner is sucking up all the juice he can get and will be running away with it.
Their homepage is gone, no update on status page, looking glass pages not working, homepage and product page showing weird pricing. All these show that we are royally F****D.
Everybody on lowend enjoyed the low price and made them a part of Top vps providers and what they give in return is a big fat scandal.
My experience is much the same. I had two VPS servers with Virmach, one in Atlanta and one in Dallas. It’s been basically a month of no service from Virmach, multiple IP address changes, control panel outages and all the rest. A total disruption to my business, which I’ve moved to other providers. I opened two service tickets without response. Service has now been restored, but I can no longer trust Virmach to provide service.
I bought few on every black Friday. was hosting few static sites and WordPress blog. But it is certainly loss of business and work.
my vps came back up after a week of downtime. no rDNS on the horizon. Poor communications and decisions have been made. Unlike some posters on LET I actually used my vps and only had the single instance. Burn me once … shame on you. Burn me twice … shame on me. The decision to renew doesnt have to be made till NOvember. Could keep it just for a spare look into my network. The worse part is the tone of his messages on the site when you attempt to open a ticket , or request a refund.
Now that VirMach is down. Any alternatives that is currently good and can be recommended.
someone must ban them from LEB, this provider is deadpooled! i have 2 vpses and none of them online!
Finally after 5 days my vps got online and it has been shifted to a new node, the data is intact. Taking backup and moving. For now I cant rely on virmach.
But I hope they recover from issues and take their services to the previous level. I will keep the VPS now for testing purpose.
will be using VPS backup tools like Backupsheep or snapshooter from now. lesson learned.
vps repstored it’s good news,but our Dedicated Server dont know when can restore it .our all database on it ,and ip changed it’s big trouble for us ,hope can get the same ip restore soon ,a fews days no sleep …
Wait and see, hope they recover. I had to wait 5 days for my data.. now I am backing up all my sites. and keeping a copy of them on various platforms.
James when was your VPS restored and how long was it down for? I’ve been down for over a month, I am hoping there is still hope…
Justin said, our server no be restored
VirMach has left the chat.
I have two offline services:
One VPS
One physical dedicated server
VirMach, please assist with ticket #457274
My dedicated has been offline for 8 days now. Priority ticket opened on second day with no response.
I noticed one thing, I had my vps on NY10GKVM77 [New York Node] but now I have been transferred to CHI2Z029 [Amsterdam Netherland] . When I checked my previous IP the ISP is colocrossing and company is Virtual Machine Solutions LLC, but the new IP belongs to Havelocity [no issues with that] and owner is LogicWeb Inc. Dont know what relation between Virmach and Logicweb.
It seems something is cooking up and either they are merging or some other thing.
I feel that VirMach’s behavior is deceptive, is there a lawyer to follow up?
No lawyers involved yet. I don’t think he’s trying to be deceptive. I think he’s just overwhelmed with so many systems down at one time. IMHO
My dedicated box in the Buffalo datacenter (owned by CC) has been offline since the 3rd. I’m hoping this will come back, but after reading this my hopes are significantly lowered. I still have faith in this small company as I’ve always had positive experiences with them since the whole AlphaRacks incident.
after 10 days ,have not news , i don’t belive them , they don’t want solve any problem again ,i think ,our many database and file on it . very trouble for us , can restore 1-2 hours it’s ok. but they didn’t try solve any problem ,anybody will go to their office ?1600 Sawtelle Blvd #308, Los Angeles, CA 90025, United States
Just an update for everyone here. If you haven’t found it there is a thread on LowEndSpirit where VirMach has been responding to people about what it going on. He posts a few times most days.
They are currently trying to get everyone up and running, but it’s a matter of moving equipment, getting it set up etc.
It APPEARS that with all the migrating a colocation company may have shut down everything on their networks, due to virmach clients going to other locations with the newer systems.
Don’t give up hope. These guys have been great for me for over 8 years now. Once the dust settles I’m sure they will be again.
This “dust” did not settle down in 3 months, so it must be really huge storm! Some of us can not wait that long…
That’s understandable. I myself grabbed another dedi at another host to get my clients back up and running. Fortunately, I had backups for most of them.
Once things are back up I’ll use the new did as a redundant backup. And when they can I’ll move the backup over to virmach as well.
This issue has been huge for a lot of people. But in 8 years, I’ve never found a better host. So I’ll go back.
post thread
@ Civalo: Do you have a link to this thread where the VirMach has been responding to people? I can’t find it. Also, why isn’t he just responding on Virmach’s own support page and replying to support tickets? Which would be the obvious place to look for updates – not the comments section of a third party website.
My guess is that there are so many open tickets that he just doesn’t have the bandwidth. I have tickets that have been open for a few weeks now, so it sucks
My VPS has been offline for more than a week now, and had created a ticket but no resolution. My data is all inside – I’m terribly upset with Virmach.
Depending on what you consider down (I have various VPS that are down in different states), if you have access to the Solus control panel, then you can enter Rescue mode, and copy your data over `scp` to another server (I’ve done this for a couple of VPS I have with them). If you are unlucky enough (like couple of my VPS) where not even Solus CP is loading, then you are screwed until he resolves that issue
The problem is that we have to keep paying these clowns for a service that doesn’t work and is not fit for purpose. I can’t access my the data to copy it off the VPS because the networking is completely broken. And if we don’t pay the ongoing monthly subscription fees, these charlatans will just cut off our service and delete all of our files from the server. It doesn’t matter how overwhelmed they are, this is simply not acceptable business practice and quite likely illegal.
😂
Thanks J and Jon.
I discovered that the server is now up but it cannot boot. Returns a Boot from HDD – not a hard disk. Boot from CDROM – no CD rom found type of error.
All my data is gone!!! :(
😂
😂
Mybe all dedicated servers have not hope again .VPS maybe they can restore ,after 1 month ,any ticket no answer . Garbage service providers, nobody goes to their office to find them?
James, has your service been restored?
Should I sign up with Virmach? I want to get a few VPS in their Frankfurt, Germany datacenter, but I am apprehensive to pull the trigger after reading the recent comments on their ongoing issues.
Only you can make the decision on what is right for you and your VPS buying needs.
Before making any choice perhaps consider options listed here: https://lowendbox.com/tag/germany/
A month later, support responded to my ticket but only to tell me my title was bad so they will not be responding to me- despite including all relevant info.
LoL, oh well I don’t care about that as long as my service is working. And it does now.
In the control panel it said the server was online for some time now but I could not ping it. Turns out all of the OS’s I had tried to install were not working because some change, I finally found one that worked on my 256mbs, Centos 7 minimal. Sure my data is gone but I bit the bullet on that a month ago already when I started trying to reinstall OS’s. The trick was to verify in the web VNC client that the OS had booted and wasnt hung by a kernel panic.
Sharing my experience with Virmach in the Seattle datacenter…
SEAZ009 has been down for 14 days, with the most recent status update 7 days ago:
SEAZ009 (In Progress)Critical
Affecting Server – SolusVM
09/13/2022 09:06 Last Updated 09/20/2022 16:47
We are having continued issues while attempting to restore service on SEAZ009.
We are evaluating potential emergency migration if we can get the server to a semi-stable state.
SEAZ010 has been down for 2 days, with the most recent status update yesterday:
Overloading SEAZ010, FFME006 (Reported)Critical
Affecting System – SEAZ010, FFME006
09/25/2022 22:29 Last Updated 09/26/2022 21:07
We are currently looking into unexpected outages on SEAZ010 and FFME006 caused by overloading.
Sadly, Virmach’s low reliability will force me to cancel service as soon as I can transfer my data.
Where do you plan to rent your next VPS service from?
To entice people to try/use Oracle cloud service, Oracle has an offer for 2 free small virtual machines. So far, it’s been a month since I signed up for their offer and I’ve been very happy, especially when compared to Virmach’s Seattle datacenter downtime. Just be prepared for several friendly marketing-related e-mails from Oracle. I truly don’t have anything against Virmach and wish them well. Unfortunately, between their low reliability and lack of communication, I’ve decided to address my frustration by moving to a different VM service.
If you’re interested in the Oracle cloud free VM offer, you can see the details here:
https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm
The Oracle cloud learning curve is not steep, with the biggest difference being related to their support for a virtualized network (where VMs have a private IP address that belong to the virtual network with 0 or more public IP addresses, with 1 public IP address at no cost). Although the virtualized network adds a layer of complexity, it also adds a lot of flexibility. Practically speaking, for their free VM offer, it simply means I had to configure what inbound ports and protocols are allowed at the virtual network WAN interface (and within the VM since I also configured a firewall).
again they do it. my server is down for almost 2 weeeks now, and they didnt respond my tickets.
WORST! SERVICE! EVER!
I am their customer since many years. IP got changed a couple of times. But what is intolerable are SUSPENSIONS without ANY notice, without ANY warning, without ANY explanation.
Customer service is unreachable (they HAD chat back in the day, but not anymore). They ask 15,- to open a ticket and answered to one of our tickets MONTHS later.
Well, “get what you pay for”? I’d say: AVOID virmach at all cost!
We will not re-new our subscription.