Frequently Asked Questions

Is there anything I can't use a Virtual Private Server for?

Well, we are governed by the law of the land, which in our case is the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. Thus, anything which is illegal in the UK or The Netherlands, you can't use your VPS for. Aside from that, when you want to run an IRCd listening on an external interface, you should let us know in advance, so we can avoid putting your VPS in a data center where that is not allowed.

Can you do a VPS running Windows?

No. Xen requires the Operating System to be ported to the Xen architecture. Such a port was attempted, initially, by the Xen developers, but due to licensing restrictions, they were not allowed to make it available, and Microsoft is also not selling it. Consequently, the port appears to no longer be maintained. You could, of course, run qemu in your VPS and run Windows inside that, but you may not like the resulting performance...

How can I pay you?

We can take payment using paypal, bank transfer, or cheque (in pounds Sterling). Which ever is easier for you.

I just got an email from you saying that my VPS is "at risk" due to maintenance. What does that mean?

It means that we will be doing some hardware work in the data center that should not normally affect our customers, but involves some risk of things going wrong (e.g. accidentally pulling the wrong cable...). Rather than just quietly doing the maintenance work, and inform customers afterward when something went wrong, we think it makes sense to warn customers in advance that there is some risk, so when something does go wrong, they know what is going on.

Note that when we do maintenance that will actually involve anticipated down time for customers, we will announce it as expected down time, not as "at risk".

When I reboot my VPS, it doesn't come back up. What am I doing wrong?

You aren't doing anything wrong. There is a known problem in Xen in that soft reboots have a high chance of running into a panic during boot due to Xen incorrectly re-initialising the virtual machine. We are aware of the problem, but we don't have a quick fix. Rather than trying to fix this bug asap, we are currently working on a secure hardware console for customers, so you can do a hard reboot, which is more useful and makes this problem less urgent.

In the mean time, when you want to reboot your VPS, and the soft reboot didn't work, just contact us on IRC or by email, and we will give it a hard reboot for you.

As customers ask us more questions, this FAQ will fill out some more. If you have a question, please email us on info@contextshift.co.uk