Under Renovation?

Tagged Articles by Brent on March 8th, 2007

Imagine my surprise when I wake up this morning to a disconnected database. Here’s the scoop…

Last night I got the Wordpress “Cant find database” screen (I’m sure some of you saw it) so I call my hosting provider to see what’s up. After being on hold 6 times and waiting for 20 minutes or more, I am informed that the servers are under “routine maintenance.” I have been in technology for a while now and know that routine maintenance is a mostly translated to “we don’t have a clue, but we’re working on it”. This was further tipped off by the tech’s statement, “you should be up in a few hours”. A FEW HOURS! Holy Crap!

Now, I host at three data centers in 3 different states for various client sites, so I know that a “routine” several hour maintenance window can happen (rarely) and so I dealt with the news and decided to wait it out. To my delight, iBAM was back up in minutes after my call. Hmmm, interesting…

All disaster averted, I went to bed to sleep in peace.

I Awaken this morning, check the posts, SITE DOWN AGAIN! This time, it was the same error. I threw up my recently generated renovation screen and started digging into a solution. After an hour or so, I discover that my database password had been reset to some default crap. “That’s sweet!” I think to myself. A quick check to my Mint page and I see that it happened around 1am this morning (oh yeah, mint db never went down at all. Yet another interesting development). Now, a late night outage isn’t the end of the world but in my book, burn me once… (you know)

So, I’m off to Mosso! I will begin immediately to switch iBAM to my Mosso account, where it should have been all along. I don’t expect any funk on the switch process, but there is a chance of loosing some comment data if it happens during propagation. This is just a friendly note to all to expect some hosting related posts for a bit. Mixed in with the Mac posts I have in the queue.

Anyway, thanks to all for your patience and support. Any tips on moving Wordpress to Mosso easily are welcome. I imagine it’s pretty straightforward, but you never know, right?

Talk soon,

Brent

Derek Punsalan

Good luck with the move. Who were you hosting with and what made you decide to go with Mosso?

Brent

I shutter to say because everyone will say "Why were you surprised?" iBAM started at Media Temple on the grid server back in December and that didn't work so I moved it to GoDaddy (where it sits now) as I had an open account on my list. Always with the intention to move somewhere soon, the recent issues have forced my hand. Mosso, here I come!

Dave

Good to see it only took a day to resolve the issue. Always a crap shoot when working with hosts.

Astorg

Interesting... could you detail what went wrong with the Gridserver ?

Derek Punsalan

One of the greatest issues that MT suffered early on that I vividly remember was up time and MySQL database connection errors. What MT experienced were growing pains as large sites saw the GS as an oppotunity to save money. On paper, GS is an INCREDIBLE deal. Even now more so than ever as improvements have been added. Keep in mind that MT was attempting to offer a service to customers at a price hard to beat. Check out this post as an example of what customers experienced. My understanding of the issues was explained with this comment.

All-in-all, the GS is a new service, new technology for MT, and something that is continually receiving improvements based on customer feedback.

Should you be worried still? That's difficult to tell. I haven't heard of any recent developments that have forced site admins to pull their hair out about. Hosting is one of those tricky things that you can say something like "you get what you pay for" but may still find yourself looking at a website that doesn't load. There are no perfect hosts, but there are great overall customer experiences.

If you're someone looking for complete control over you site (root access), consider moving to a Dedicated Virtaul 3.0 (DV). That's what I use and I took a massive hit from Engadget, Apple Insdier, TUAW, and Digg all in the same day and the site loaded like normal. I've gotten to the point that if my site isn't loading properly, it's probably because I accidentally broke something myself.

Brent

That basically sums up my experience. GS was patchy for me at forst so I was apprehensive in going back to MT. I have been looking at the DV option and that does look like a great solution. I'm gonna give it a try and hope I have as great an experience as you, Derek! Thanks for the insight.

Edit posts above: Mosso -> Media Temple

Astorg

I have two hosting accounts with MT.

The first is a (DV) account which I use for hosting two serious sites including my own. This initially experienced some downtime but more recently has been performing flawlessly.

The second is a (GS) account which I have been using as a test site and on which I offer free hosting to friends of mine on the understanding that they may experience frequent downtime. Initially the experience was disastrous with daily downtime, but since the middle of February, following a major overhaul by MT, downtime on the GS acount has all but disappeared.

The main drawback of GS, from my point of view, is the lack of root access and also, of course the lack of individual IP addresses for each website hosted.

But for hosting a large number of small sites, it is basically unbeatable in my view and quality issues appear to have been ironed out.

Brent

That's kind of what I'm noticing. I just happened to join MT with a GS at just the right (wrong) time. So, based on the feedback here and via email. I'm gonna give MT another whirl. I'll keep everyone posted as to how it goes.

Fingers crossed...

Brent

Brent

Made the move this morning... hope everything works right now

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