We really didn't want to post something like this, but our frustration, along with the lack of understanding and concern on burstnet's part, we really felt a need to vent.

We have been hosting a dedicated server with burst.net for a few months now, we used that server as a host node to deploy VPS out of it. We never asked assistance from bust.net except for rebooting the server. However since the last week we received some abuse complaints from them and we addressed each notice by responding to the alerts and as as solution for the abuse we simply terminated the VPS which were involved. Even then burst.net sent us a $50 invoice for abuse issues stating that we failed to respond to one of the notices which infact is not entirely true, we contacted them for removal of the charges which turned out to be the starting point of the problems we're facing now. burst.net told us that due to the recent abusive activities in which our server was involved also leading to blacklisting of ip's on spamhaus their management had decided to remove the abuse fees and terminate our service.

Now when such issues happen you need to look into the AUP & TOS, according to the same they do reserve the right to terminate any service involved in such activities, we do agree that our server was involved in abusive activities however it was not us but the clients that were hosted, and we did take immediate action and terminated the VPS leaving no abusive content on the server, burst.net kept on calming that we did not respond to one of the alerts, we requested them not to suspend our server. The ticket that we opened in respect of removal of the abuse fees was not respond for a period of 4 days until they sent us the final notice for the invoice, the ticket was created on "04-07-2012 - 02:24AM" and we received the first response on "04-11-2012 - 09:30AM" 4 days without a response, when it's clear to the world that their CS is available "8am - 5pm(Eastern Time) Monday - Friday "

On 04-11-2012 - 09:08PM our server went down and we opened a ticket with tech support, their response was;

Unfortunately this server has been suspended for violation of our TOS. This server will not be reactivated.

We called them we asked everything politely they said the server is not going to be re-activated

When we conversed with CS they gave us an option to download data from a URL, now here is where the tricky part comes into play;

1) The URL displays the data but is not complete
2) The URL will let you download but one file at a time.
3) Apart from downloading and accessing the directory structure we do not have any other kind of access, even directories do not have complete.

Now the whole issue is that we asked them to provide us a viable option to download the data which included;

1) compressing the contents of a disk and providing us a download link, it wasn't possible since the disk if 94% full which is sized 1TB we agreed
2) We asked them to provide SSH or FTP access, they kept on saying it's not possible.
3) We asked if we can order another sever and they can attach the disk for 24 hours and we can download data, they say they are not going to put the disk for online access
4) We asked about remote backup service, they didn't give a clear answer on this.
5) We asked them to copy the data on a 2TB drive and compress everything, we were ready to pay the charges, they said no.
6) We were also ready to pay the abuse or any other fees involved in getting the data back.
7) We also asked if they could ship the disk to us, the said no.
8) FTP access for a limited amount of time and even restricted to a specific IP address.

Now we have been explaining to burst.net about the type of access they've provided which isn't a viable solution because the data is around 900+GB and it will take ages for us or anyone else to download such a large amount of data when it comes to download one file at a time. We also explained them that the abuse incidents were due to some clients which were hosted on the node and their VPS were terminated with immediate effect after receiving notices, we also explained them that the data in there is not something personal but it's of the other clients which are legit.

We also sent them some screen-shots and a screen-cast which clearly explained the problem we are facing with the access they have provided. We are ready to bear the expenses involved in getting the data back but looks like they are not ready to understand our situation, they keep on repeating that in such cases they do not provide access to data. We made every effort to explain our case to both CS and tech support they kept on escalation our ticket to each other and eventually when the ticket was under tech support on Friday at the end of the day they escalated the ticket back to CS so that we would not get a response for

So the outcome of this would be;

We contacted them for the removal of charges, they do not respond for a period of 4 days until the final reminder for the invoice is sent to us, we request them not to suspend the server, they go ahead and decide that the service needs to be terminated however as a courtesy they provide us a URL to download data which does not help as we do can only download one file at a time when the disk holds around hundreds and thousands of files and directories and is not even complete, the server was running fine until the shut it down. We keep on requesting them to provide a viable solution even if there are any charges involved they don't seem to care about this, we explain them that it was not us but some client which are no longer hosted nor the abusive content resides on the server, all the respond "Again, the URL provided is all we can do at this point. FTP or other options are not available at this time."

All we think that any data is valuable to someone who owns it and our good and legit clients should not suffer due to this. It's been almost 9 days since we opened the CS ticket and tried to resolve this but looked like they were not interested in assisting us rather than just wanted us to suffer. We are just trying to get the data of our clients so that we can return it back to them and I we don't think this is something wrong. Now after this post they may state that they should not be held responsible for backups however this can be assumed in case of drive failures and data corruption when we know that they have the data.
ultimatehostings Reviewed by ultimatehostings on . Burst.net holding data refusing viable options to recover it. We really didn't want to post something like this, but our frustration, along with the lack of understanding and concern on burstnet's part, we really felt a need to vent. We have been hosting a dedicated server with burst.net for a few months now, we used that server as a host node to deploy VPS out of it. We never asked assistance from bust.net except for rebooting the server. However since the last week we received some abuse complaints from them and we addressed each notice by responding Rating: 5