Complaint Review: Peak 10

I used to work at Peak 10. For the sake of full disclosure I did not enjoy my time there and did resign. Everything I am about to say is true though. The culture at Peak 10 fostered an environment of failure. These are some of the main problems I know of.

Consistent Failure of Customer Backups

This is the biggest problem I feel they have. I do not have statistics or reports on them but I know for a fact customer backups failed reguraly. By that I mean everyday many backups would fail. Normally for a company providing a service like that a customer might expect a failure once a year on one backup. Not everyday on as many as Peak 10 did. I'm guessing as many as 5-10% would fail daily. Again I don't have exact numbers on that.

One instance is happened to a company where their backups didn't replicate for 55 days.

I do know of another instance a few years before I started (may 2009 or so) where the company switched from using NetVault for backups over to CommVault. After some time they ugraded the versions on CommVault in each market. They never didn't notice that the backups weren't running. By that I mean all of them. For up to 90 days.

They had 100% of all of their CUSTOMER BACKUPS for up to 90 DAYS!

That's just negligence. The complete disregard for safety and security that's easy to accomplish. A business could go under if they didn't have a needed backup.That's one of the most important services for a business like Peak 10.

My time there I saw no effort to fix these problems.

VMs Were Not Automated

As of the time I left none of their VMs were automated. Which is fairly easy to accomplish. VMs are "virtual machines". These are servers that exist on a larger network of computers and run as their own servers. Much of the Internet run on these types of machines. Automating them is pretty easy.

In reality they could manage all their VMs without a problem but that's pretty unlikely on the scale they have. It's just too difficult to manage that much without automating things.

I know of one problem that could of been prevented of a customer's failover VM not being turned on. Their disaster recovery failed.

Slow Support Response Times

Getting a same day response for an issue is highly unlikely. I saw instances of people getting same day responses but few and far between. It's highly unlikely.

Poor Security

Security at Peak 10 is a joke. They had key card access doors that could be opened by just pulling hard on them. I know of another instance where a security camera was broken for months. I don't know if it was ever fixed. I worked in the office and not a data center itself so those are the only ones I know of but I'm quite sure there are a lot more incidents.

Weak Protection of Customer Data

At Peak 10 they have customer forms called CIFs (Customer Information Forms). These are forms customers fill out for various services. This can include contact information, server IP addresses, login information, and root passwords.

It's necessary and perfectly fine to collect data like that. Nothing wrong there. However the way the information is encrypted in the database is a major vulnerability. I can't get into technical specifics because that would create a security problem. However I can tell you the way they do it does not require an encryption key to decrypt the data.

I personally feel they should like their PCI and HIPAA compliance over that.

Another security flaw on the technical side is how one of their programs interact with their databases. Again I can't get too technical because explaining it would be another security problem. I can tell you they're open to a major security breach.

Conclusion

Everything I've stated here is accurate to the best of my knowledge at the time I worked at Peak 10. Yes I have personal problems with the company that go beyond the services they provide their customers. And yes I would not recommend anyone ever work there. That does not change these issues I've layed out. Everything I've stated here is the truth.

If you asked some people at Peak 10 about these problems they'd either be clueless or give you some explanation. They're really in denial. They could show you some study about customer satisfaction or their award for Best Places to Work in Charlotte but that doesn't change these facts.

I could go into why these problems exist for both technical and cultural reasons. But just know not to do business with Peak 10.