General
What are your support hours?
Blue Box Group provides 24-7 support for emergency issues, but our regular business hours are between 7AM and 7PM Pacific time, Monday through Friday. If you require support outside those hours, and your issue cannot wait until the next business day, please feel free to escalate your issue through our ticket or phone system (when you send us e-mail or leave a voicemail, instructions will be provided) and our on-call technician will be in touch ASAP.
What size VPS should I purchase?
This is a tough question, as there are a lot of variables involved. For static or PHP driven sites, this is almost entirely dependent on what kind of content you serve, and how many visitors you get, but if you can give us a general idea, we can suggest a package that would best fit your needs and budget. For Ruby on Rails sites, we tend to recommend at least a 1GB VPS, as Rails applications tend to have higher memory demands.
Whatever the case, keep in mind that we can always up/downgrade your VPS, and can usually do it live with little to no downtime. We also only charge you for the time you use, so don't be afraid of making the wrong decision about VPS size. Also, don't assume that you'll always need to upgrade if your resource usage is running high -- we can often offer suggestions and insight into how to squeeze the most performance out of your particular package.
Technical Specifications
What OS do you run on your servers?
You can chose between the following OSes for your VPS: Centos 5.4, Debian 5.0, Archlinux 2009.08, or Ubuntu.
Will my site be backed up?All of our VPS packages do include nightly backups, but be aware that you will need to get in touch with us to get that set up. Once you have your files in place, we just need to know what directories need to be backed up, and we can configure everything from there.
Migration
What is "up and running" support?
Once you've opened an account with us, we will help you in any way you need to get your site running/migrated/etc on your server with us. This includes but isn't limited to setting up DNS, setting up a web/database server, installing required applications, and transferring site files. We invite you to ask us if you're not sure whether or not something you need is covered, and rest assured, we will never charge you for any services without first providing a quote and confirming with you ahead of time.
Upgrades
What if I want to upgrade to a larger box?
No problem! You can simply open a support ticket, or give us a call and tell us what you need. You can change the level of your service at any time.
What if I want to add e-mail addresses?
You can easily do so through boxpanel, if you have that option turned on. If you would like to get that turned on, please contact us.
What about other services?
Most other services can be added from within your personal control panel: BoxPanel. Once you have set up your account, you can add additional solutions like New Relic server monitoring, or other great add-ons, at your leisure.
Virtualization Technology
What size VPS should I purchase?
This is a tough question, as there are a lot of variables involved. For static or PHP driven sites, this is almost entirely dependent on what kind of content you serve, and how many visitors you get, but if you can give us a general idea, we can suggest a package that would best fit your needs and budget. For Ruby on Rails sites, we tend to recommend at least a 1GB VPS, as Rails applications tend to have higher memory demands.
Whatever the case, keep in mind that we can always up/downgrade your VPS, and can usually do it live with little to no downtime. We also only charge you for the time you use, so don't be afraid of making the wrong decision about VPS size. Also, don't assume that you'll always need to upgrade if your resource usage is running high -- we can often offer suggestions and insight into how to squeeze the most performance out of your particular package.
I want to know more!
If you have more questions, please give us a shout!
