I’ve been having a problem lately with people hitting my server more than I’d like. I’ve been using iptables to drop requests from these IPs, but I wanted something that took the load completely off of my server, and could be bypassed in case I put in a bad rule that locked me out. So I decided to try the SoftLayer hardware firewall.
This feature is expensive: $49 per month for a 10Mbps hardware firewall. That is a lot, but I figured it would be worth it to have the added protection for my server. Sadly, I was wrong. The interface to manage the firewall is garbage.
It shows a basic form listing all the firewall rules. You select the rule priority by numbering the rules 1 through however many rules you have. There is, however, no way to add a new rule to the top of the list (or the middle of the list) unless you re-number every single rule. If you have 20 rules, this can be tedious. If you have 100 rules, this can be extremely frustrating. Even worse, if you make a mistake and have a duplicate priority number then the page refreshes with all the rules set to a priority of “1”. So now you have to start all over.
Unlike iptables, there is very little help available for the firewall. SoftLayer provides a handful of knowledge base articles, but none of them include screenshots or advanced examples.
Within a few hours of using the service, I realized that it wasn’t going to work out and I’d be better off with iptables. I started a chat with the billing department, and was told they’d create a ticket to review crediting me for the service, and then they gave me instructions on how to cancel. I followed the instructions and the service was promptly removed from my server.
Sadly, I was informed that the terms of service prevented them from giving me a refund, and they said that the billing department only said they’d look into crediting me for the service, not that they actually would. How deceptive! Do they really expect me to believe that their own billing department doesn’t know what they claim is the standard SoftLayer refund policy? I likely still would have canceled the service, but I feel pretty ripped off having used the service for just a few hours, experiencing several issues with it, being told (from my perspective) that I’d get a refund, and then being stuck with the bill for a full month of service. Egh.
Overall, SoftLayer is awesome. Quality servers at great prices. In this situation though, complete fail. The firewall is garbage and they handled the situation very poorly. I’m not disappointed enough to start immediately hunting for a new host, but I’ll definitely be considering other options for my future server needs.