Context • Dedicated bare-metal Mac hosted by MacStadium • Used for production development work • No recent configuration changes prior to failure

Timeline (JST) • Jan 2–3: Machine becomes unreachable. Reboot attempts fail. Eventually stuck at Apple logo with progress bar. • Jan 3–5: Attempted to open a support ticket multiple times, but the customer portal would not allow ticket creation at all. • During this period, the server remained completely inaccessible. • Jan 6: Ticket creation finally succeeds. • Immediate automated reply states: • Basic support tier • First response SLA: 1 business day • Support hours: Mon–Fri, 9–5, data center local time

Support assessment • Support later states: • The OS appears corrupted • Safe mode and recovery are inaccessible • Re-image is suggested as the standard solution

Key issues • No way to contact support during a critical outage due to a broken ticketing system • No acknowledgment of the delay or impact caused by that failure • Process-driven responses applied to a situation where the machine was already fully down • No visible escalation path when the platform itself blocks access to support

Why I’m posting Outages happen. Hardware failures happen. What concerned me was not the failure itself, but how difficult it was to engage support when it mattered.

I’m curious: • Has anyone else experienced similar support issues recently? • Is this specific to the Basic tier, or has response quality changed more generally? • Are there recommended alternatives for reliable macOS bare-metal hosting in 2025–2026?

I’m not looking to rant—just trying to understand whether this is an anomaly or something others are seeing as well.