Note: My opinions in this post have since changed. More information at the end of the post.
Following in the footsteps of 9rulers Matt Brett and Ben Gray, I have packed up and left Media Temple’s Grid Server for A Small Orange. While I’d like to have faith in Media Temple’s Grid Server, I simply cannot. I have tried and tried, but no matter what I do Media Temple continues to fail me.
The Promise
My story starts out back in January. After roughly two month of undergoing constant downtime, I finally called it quits and moved my site to a A Small Orange. Just as I was settling in with my new host, Media Temple posted its infamous Anatomy of MySQL on the Grid post. A (mt) rep contacted me and convinced me to switch my site back.
I was promised that the Grid server would improve, and the rep claimed it was only a matter of time before (mt) was back to its old self. Coupled with (mt)’s promise of MySQL containers, I believed the hype. I thought I only had to undergo another month of bad service before it was smooth sailing. I could not have been more wrong.
GPU Issues
In addition to the constant downtime that was still occurring, (mt) decided to start tracking GPU usage in late January. Sure enough, my site was over the limit, and I had to pay extra. At first I was not mad at all. I wanted to know why my site was consuming so much GPU. So, I contacted (mt) and inquired about my GPU usage. The support representative told me they have no way to track individual GPU usage and couldn’t tell me what was generating my overage.
Upset, I took things into my own hands and optimized my site like mad. I cached nearly all database calls and removed scripts which I deemed unnecessary. By the middle of February, the results were clear; I was still going to go over my monthly GPU allowance. Frustrated that I had run out of ways to optimize, I decided to suck it up and wait for the MySQL containers. Surely they would reduce my GPU usage. Besides, the release was only a couple of weeks away.
MySQL Container Beta Testing
Right before (mt) announced MySQL containers were delayed, I received this email:
A quick note to say you are on our list and we’ll get you provisioned soon. Looking forward to your feedback (good and bad – all is welcome)…
Would love for you to blog about this private beta, but we are asking everyone to be in stealth mode for a little while longer. Thanks again for signing up!
I was thrilled to have the opportunity to beta testing the MySQL containers. However, that excitement quickly dampened. After waiting several weeks and sending a number of emails, not once did Media Temple contact me. Furthermore, I noticed in the gibberish that accompanied my beta invite was this little note:
He has three posts about (mt) on his blog and one is pretty negative. He may still be a good candiate who could give us some positive blogging. This guy has a ticket in regarding MySQL problems and his ticket was attached to the MySQL incident. He has also received gpu overage courtesy emails and may have exceeded GPUs in previous periods. Doesn’t appear to have been tahitied.
So, it’s positive blogging you’re after? What a great way to enhance your image. Forget about the person who you’re looking for positive feedback from.
The Last Straw
Anyway, the MySQL containers launched and of course I never got to beta test them. However, being forgotten in the beta program was the least of my anger. Media Temple decided to charge for the originally promised free containers. The containers are of course priced way out of my pricerange with lowest container costing more than my hosting.
Update: Jason Mcvearry of Media Temple claims the new SmartPool v.2 system will give Grid customers a dedicated 64MB MySQL container should they require one in a burst of traffic.
I’ve been known to tolerate a lot of crap, but Media Temple just dished out way too much of it. Between the constant downtime (which is still going on), being charged for something I have no control over, and the horrible customer service, I’ve just had it with Media Temple.
Update: April 14, 2007
I’m back on Media Temple. I guess I didn’t completely loose faith in Media Temple after all. They contacted me and helped me work through my issues. If you think I’m a hypocrite, I understand. If you don’t, thanks for understanding.
Update: April 19, 2007
For those of you who are having trouble with GPUs, read my follow up post. I have some helpful tips to lower your GPU usage.
28 Comments
I’m just glad I’m not alone in my frustration. I also find it interesting that all three of us switched to A Small Orange. Frankly, unless Media Temple were to completely do away with GPUs and/or offer MySQL containers free of charge, I’m not going back.
Ronald (great name btw),
I was equally appalled to find out that the “optional” and “free” containers are now twenty dollars a month “extra” on top of the monthly fees. I e-mailed MT to see if they could give me a free trial period of these containers. My reasoning is, I’ve been having so many issues, why should I trust this containerization system to work?
Media Temple said that a free trial of the containers wasn’t possible. What?
Anyways, I am still with Media Temple, but if I have any of the GPU issues you guys have had, or one more reader e-mailing me with a downtime incident, I’m gone.
Thank you for your post.
(mt)’s (ss) is still fine..
I wasn’t aware that signing up for a SS account was an option anymore?
It’s not an option anymore. Andre just hasn’t migrated yet and with all these issues, (mt) hasn’t forced the migration.
Ah
I’m afraid that you may still have problems. I would assume ASO is still shared hosting. Yes I think it will be faster in general, though you may not survive a Digg, Slashdot, etc. type of effect. I know they are more expensive, but I’d look into the newer co-location dedicated servers.
Off hand, I know of a company that has a P3, 1.2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB HDD, 5 IPs, 1200 GB bandwidth, and very good uptime. Granted I used to work for them back when I was in college, but the company is doing rather well. I believe that setup will run you 50/month.
I think dedicated is the way to go. Plus it gives you more ability to do what you want. You can recompile MySQL, PHP, Apache to what you want. You are root. That kind of power is great to have!
I’m aware of the risks, but I’m taking them for now. Eventually I will be getting a dedicated server, but I don’t feel I’m ready for one yet. Should I run into any high traffic issues, ASO’s support team is very responsive and will help to ensure my site stays up.
Hey Ron, just curious, how do you measure your downtime?
Normally just by opening up my browser and realizing my site isn’t loading. I do have SiteUptime configured to monitor my domain, but I usually don’t check my reports.
@ Ron & Jonathan: Let’s see if you survive a digg then. I’ve submitted this post to social hell, as I like to call it, because people need to know how much trouble Media Temple has given you.
I don’t know what the deal is with A Small Orange and (mt), but I’m pretty happy with Dreamhost. Sure, they have occasional outages, but it hardly affects me. Plus, I’m not paying for hosting. A friend of mine has a ton of spare bandwidth, since he’s only using Dreamhost for his personal site, so he’s letting me host my site on his account.
Hey Ronald..one correction here, Matt Brett is back.
http://mattbrett.com/archives/2007/03/yeah-my-blog-is-fucked-i-know/
Ron, you would only go over on GPUs if your site is processor heavy. Measuring CPU usage on a Grid platform is necessary and new, so we understand your frustration.
our CEO comments on the pricing of the new containers here:
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/04/05/mysql-gridcontainers-launched/
We’re sorry to see you go!
Best,
Jason Mcvearry
jason@mediatemple.net
Thank you for the response Jason. As far as Matt Brett goes, I am aware his site currently resolves to Media Temple. I’ve tried asking him a few times about that but he hasn’t responded to me yet.
As far as GPU usage, I am aware my site can be processor intensive. My problem was I had no way to find out what the bottleneck of my site was. Was there a script that was not optimized? Was everything optimized but I just had so much traffic the all-around usage added up? Not knowing where the usage was coming from, I couldn’t lower it.
Thanks again for your response. You’ve always been very helpful and responsive.
The thing with a Dedicated Virtual server is that if your site is already CPU intensive, moving to your own server won’t fix that. All it means is that now you’re paying $50/mo and have to fix the problems yourself. Hosting is a widely available commodity, there’s no reason to pay Media Temple extra money for their brand.
@Smaran:
Actually I don’t do what I preach. My site is still on the company I used to work for, but its on their shared linux servers. I was going to move to dedicated, but I am unsure what I wanted to do with a website, so I think I’m not going to renew the domain when it expires. Once I am ready, or if I become ready, I’ll go dedicated. Until then, my own linux server at home does all I need, though the public can’t access it!
Wow, what a mess. Seems to be a lot of it in this industry. I were among the happy bunch who decided to keep all their domains with RegisterFly. And I’ve also been switching host every couple of years or so. What a hassle. Never been with (mt), although I remember it being the “cool” host, a few years back. Then a friend of mine got into all kinds of trouble with them. Basically he was accused of spamming, which he clearly wasn’t, and they shut him out. They wouldn’t even listen or try to figure out what had happened.
I’m having issues (not with mt) at the moment too. I didn’t realise how frustrating it could be to suffer excess downtime, but it really is.
I think you were right.
There have been a huge amount of blog posts about the negative Media Temple experience and I myself experienced first-hand most of the problems when trying to launch a product.
I got 500 Error, MySQL connection problems, query errors and _VERY_ slow load times. (For a few weeks)
What is so unusual about (MT) is that the “fans” are constantly giving them breaks as if Media Temple are paying us to put up with their hosting.
We all understand that these people are trying to make a living but you simply cannot promise 100% service and give 0%, sorry.
I find the MySQL containers to be interesting. I’m not sure what I would do with a grid server and a $150 month Mysql container. I maybe get 50000 hits per month on my main website and that uses up more than half of the GPUs. In order to use the capabilities of that container I would need probably need to scale 5 times this, and at this point I would be paying $500-600 a month for a site that could realistically be hosted on a couple of deds for $200-250 per month.
I strongly dislike mt. It has been a tad better lately but they are always down. For an expensive hosting service I am a tad disappointed;(
I’ve been thinking about media temple because I’m drooling at the idea of grid servers to help with bursts in my video content. I recently noticed that Servepath is offering a “private beta” as grid servers:
http://servepath.com/dedicated-servers/grid-servers/index.htm
Any thoughts on this?
@Eric: My advice is to look up a service orientated around huge, fast file hosting like Amazon S3 instead of a general hosting (MT doesn’t work basically)
i pay 20 for my grid server and i dont want to spend more just that the site is running like a ss server. i hope the guys at mt get this running. site loading times are real not good at this times…
As an update, their Grid service is beyond the teething phase and now into the “just plain doesn’t work” phase. See my thoughts on Media Temple’s latest issues here:
http://www.jimgoings.com/2008/03/sharepoint-not-the-social-answer/
Wrong link before. Correct link: http://www.jimgoings.com/2008/04/media-temple-kills-my-inner-child/
Sucks! That’s one of the drawbacks of the MT system I guess. I read on the hosting news that Hostingplex has launched a cPanel-based web hosting cluster, it will be interesting to see how it holds up against MT.
I wish I had read this before signing up with MT. Service was great for about 3 months, but after 3 weeks of frequent downtime and configurations changing without explanation to break my settings, I had to switch away from MT in order to preserve my business.
I can say without hesitation that it is the poorest hosting “solution” I have ever encountered.
In a nutshell, don’t believe their BS about the gs adjusting to the load as it changes.
If you are into punishment and like getting berated by tech support and told to check your settings that it is not their problem, then MT is right for you. On the other hand, if you want a solution that works, stay clear of mediatemple.net
Bob, you’re right on. Mediatemple’s tech support are the most stupid and rude non-support ever! right on day 1, problems cropped up. i was with dreamhost before this and i regretted throwing money just like that when that could have bought me a VPS in dreamhost. Imagine i was with dreamhost for m15 months, no major problems, i just outgrown their webhosting. i thought Mediatemple would be faster, lesson learned, no improvement at all. worst, you are berated and admonished like a newbie by tech support who answers only during US working time (big tip to non-US costumers there).. their cpanel (or whatever, it is not really cpanel) is also slow and very ancient tech. If you are a WordPress user, DON’T EVER THINK OF GETTING MEDIATEMPLE. their database problem is LEGENDARY. Try googling about it.
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