Steve, thanks alot for your comments here, you've mentioned several things I was going to say. After reading every post in this thread, allow me to comment and offer my few cents.
For development, steve is correct. Offering and deploying the products on our planned roadmap happens regardless of a few outstanding issues in Astaro v5. While certianly the V5 rollout could have gone much smoother, the product now works effortlessly at thousands of locations and we're in the process of addressing some issues remaining with a very focused effort. Some of the "features" that have been included lately in v5 are the result of mass requests from several large installations that share a common need, so as such, Astaro has adadpted to fill a need in our offering.
For licensing, every company has it's system. I personally feel that ours is much more generous that others, as some of our competitors never offer the ability to remove ANY ip from the license table, even after a reboot. The licensing system is being tested continually to prepare for the future, to ensure at that time the policy is accurate and correct. During this phase, always remember that regardless of the past, no enforcement was done, so as such the only real drawback was a few extra emails in your inbox which could have easily been worked with. I don't understand why this caused such an uproar, unless it's from the people really exceeding their license agreement, or businesses that do not posses the proper license for their installation?
Lastly, when it comes to willams comments on hardware. V5 does require more resources yes, but to say that ASL requires a 2.4 ghz with 512 megs of ram (hardly at 300-400 dollar tower at todays prices anyways, but that's beside the point) is simply inaccurate.
Myself personally run a very busy website with over 3000 unique vistors per day, encompassing some 10-12 gigs a month of traffic, and it runs flawlessly on an aging p3-550 with 256 megs of ram, using FULL ips and handling about 500 smtp emails per day.
Now this system runs at about .5 load and while its below the recommended 800mhz cpu its more than adequate for my purposes. obvisouly the SHEER amount of scannign that must be done in virus scanning each file, applying content filtering, or ripping apart each packet to match against patterns will add to this list. But the folks here running their 300 mhz cyrix or p2's with 128 megs of ram are going to simply have to face the fact that v5 was not designed to run on a 25 or 50 dollar machine. Stay at v4, or upgrade your hardware to something minimal. The new framework for v5 is necessary as we expand to meet our overwhelming demand.
For responses here, this forum is designed for users to help other users and is no way a reflection of Astaros support team. For the thousands of registered businesses and users with support contracts, they consistently recieve what is often mentioned as the best tech support from any security company, with quick and thorough response times. What very little time is left as 'spare' lately has been devoted to a few other projects we have on the go, and as such the UBB gets attention when other more important obligations have been fullfilled. Thanks to users like Steve and Simon, and Redman (to name just 3 of many) the ubb often has users that recieve replys from non-astaro personnel that are more than qualified to answer such questions.
The ubb is provided as a service to you, the end user, free of charge to share info and educate each other, not as an official support medium for home users (and lurkers alike). Many questions here have been answered in some form, and a simple search reveals the results.
I hope this addresses a few concerns, thank you for listening to me ramble. [:)]
[ QUOTE ] I hope this addresses a few concerns, thank you for listening to me ramble. [:)]
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Thank you AngeloC! Your response goes a long way in if nothing else "setting the record straight". I think many people just needed to hear some aknowledgment direct from Astaro. Hearing it from Steve is one thing, but it just does not hold the same "weight" (sorry Steve, no offense intended).
Like I said I'm fine with Astaro not using this UBB for support, I think the problems start when Astaro employees do respond to a few posts, it's almost human nature to expect that they should always at least aknowledge users complaints or reports of bugs here. I know that's the trap I fell into. And I apologize for any comments that I made that were "over the top". It's just that I saw Astaro replying to some issues and not to others. I know we should just appreciate what ever input we get from you at Astaro here on the board and not ever "expect" it, but it's really hard. I wonder if you have ever considered having Astaro Employees not posting here at all, so as to not raise any expectations?
Anyway thanks again for the clarification, especially for us naive newbees! [:)]
And sorry for the ruffled feathers!
[ QUOTE ] Hearing it from Steve is one thing, but it just does not hold the same "weight" (sorry Steve, no offense intended).
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Quite alright, Patrick. I would like to restate that Partners like Office Defender exist not just to sell Astaro licenses, but to provide support as well. We can't do it for free, but we can do it reasonably. We don't limit providing support to just Astaro customers who buy a license through us. We offer a per-incident support plan, which Astaro does not and may prove useful to admins in a crisis. Our toll-free number is in my sig line.
[ QUOTE ] We offer a per-incident support plan, which Astaro does not and may prove useful to admins in a crisis. -Steve
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I can see that coming in handy, and sounds like a good alternative to paying for a service plan every year. I must have missed that point when you mentioned it earlier. This may be a good route for our small organization. Thanks Steve!
[ QUOTE ] We offer a per-incident support plan, which Astaro does not and may prove useful to admins in a crisis. -Steve
[/ QUOTE ]
I can see that coming in handy, and sounds like a good alternative to paying for a service plan every year. I must have missed that point when you mentioned it earlier. This may be a good route for our small organization. Thanks Steve!
