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. [:)]
[/ QUOTE ]
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!
First, a big thankyou for making a post on this thread and the acknowledgement to myself and other posters.
A few points to raise in response to your post:
Feature addition: OK fair enough if that's the companies policy. Have Astaro considered a public bugtrack system? Or possibly a semi-public one where you have to be a paid-up up2date user to be able to access it? (Or similar restricted access). I think this would address a lot of issues.
Licensing. I think the system is fair if it worked. At the moment we have to configure our systems in a certain way in order to comply with licensing. Unless we are blocking ICMP and setting certain packet filters then the first portscan we get shoots the license count way up as we get scanned. I have a public IP DMZ and unless I have firewall tight every IP in that Class C ends up getting counted. I am very close to exceeding my 50IP license (And will have to order a 100 license soon due to staff increases) but I am not exceeding 50IP's unless I open firewall for testing, or I am building test machines.
For instance, we recently upgraded all our programming staff PC's. This temporarily doubled the number of programming PC's behind Astaro (for 1 week) before I retired the old ones. (Meaning I had 24 instead of 12), this pushed license over and I had to reboot. More annoying than anything. It's the ICMP thing that gets me most often. (End up with 100's of IP's in use).
Hardware: Hardware requirements I'm not too fussed about. That's why I bought an Athlon 2800 with 1GB RAM for work [:)]
However, it seems some systems appear to be running v5 a lot slower than it should on the hardware specified. I think this may be due to individual pecularities of the hardware in use though. (Bad RAM, bad NIC's etc etc)... Unsure.
Forum: PatrickS's comment is good. It's confusing when Astaro staff are very active in certain threads and others get totally ignored. I think Astaro need a policy on this.
Either: A) Astaro staff don't post at all. B) Astaro make an official statement, "We *may* comment on a thread or we may not" blah blah. This is more confusing because on some occasions Astaro staff have stated that they keep a close eye on the UBB. C) Astaro comment on all threads where a response from Astaro is requested... This is of course the most work. I think everyone would be extremely happy if outstanding issues had a post, once a month say, to say "We are still working on this" Some threads HAVE had a response from Astaro, then nothing for 3 months with still no fix. A follow up post would be great. (I'm sure you haven't forgotten the issue but people being what people are I'm sure they start to feel ignored).
Anyway, thanks again for the response, it is MUCH appreciated. And ASL still beats Smoothwall and other similar products hands down.
Wasn't there a time, when Astaro was glad to have those home power users, helping to make the product what it is today?
Aren't the home users the ones, that really test ASL and play around with the features, pushing new ideas into the product?
Companies just compare the list of current features of the products. I don't think that a 1000 PC Admin starts playing around with ASL!
Don't get me wrong, my ASL box is licensed, but I don't think it's fair to leave those home users standing in the rain!
Advising Astaro to stop posting in this forum is something that can be done easily when having the chance to just call the support...
On the other hand I know for myself, that I first search the forum, when having a problem. But when no new help is posted here, I'll have to start bugging the support! And compared to that, letting some employees look in the forum 2 days a week is less effort.
Wasn't there a time, when Astaro was glad to have those home power users, helping to make the product what it is today?
Aren't the home users the ones, that really test ASL and play around with the features, pushing new ideas into the product?
Companies just compare the list of current features of the products. I don't think that a 1000 PC Admin starts playing around with ASL!
Don't get me wrong, my ASL box is licensed, but I don't think it's fair to leave those home users standing in the rain!
Advising Astaro to stop posting in this forum is something that can be done easily when having the chance to just call the support...
On the other hand I know for myself, that I first search the forum, when having a problem. But when no new help is posted here, I'll have to start bugging the support! And compared to that, letting some employees look in the forum 2 days a week is less effort.
Agreed THoehne. I'd much prefer Astaro staff to post here as much as possible.
I always come here first before asking support. (Not that I've had to ask support for help much). Mostly I've chatted to Gert and Tom and Oliver about new features/beta testing etc...
