Problems using MediaTemple as host

[nflgrid]

OH I am looking at the location of this thread. I am using 1.5.7 on 5 so my settings assume you are in the here and now on your versions. Not sure about older configurations.

[pmpodcast]

I have a few 1.1 as well as 1.5 sites hosted at Godaddy and Powweb. My traffic has grown and I need faster hosting. Based on much research my two finalists were Mosso and Mediatemple and I finally decided to try Mediatemple's Grid Service (gs). I'll be moving my first (1.5) site over this week.

Does anyone know if the issues discussed in this thread only apply to the 1.1 installs or if they also occur with 1.5?

Thanks!

Oh... I contacted (mt) late November and asked them for a comment on the issues described in this thread. Their answer: "I have not heard that issue on the (gs) Grid Service, every website is different I recommend you try the service and see how well it performs for your website." Oh well...

[yerg]

I don't see these issues as being of any consequence.

I have a client with 10 sites and another with 5 and they are having none of the issues discussed.

You could choose worse

[bhubbard]

By default Joomla tries to use absolute paths when you perform your installation. We will need to change this so Joomla will use the correct dynamic paths. Failure to do so may cause your website to stop loading in the future.

1. Login to your (gs) Grid-Service with FTP
2. Browse to your Joomla Directory and find your configuration.php file.
3. Open the configuration.php file and change the tmp and log paths:

NOTE:
* Be sure to replace #### with your site number
* Be sure to replace mt-example.com with your own domain

* var $log_path = '/home/####/domains/mt-example.com/html/logs';
* var $tmp_path = '/home/####/domains/mt-example.com/html/tmp';
4. Save the changes and verify the change was successful.

Taken from http://kb.mediatemple.net/questions/1571/

I would also suggest any (mt) customers wanting to use Joomla get a MySQL Container, I have seen better performance with this add-on service.

[yerg]

Thanks for that .. saw that in the MT admin when you setup databases etc.

If you know that then there isn't an issue with Joomla.

Haven't seen the necessity for a MySQL Container so thanks for the heads up there. Will check out a mate who told me a couple of days ago that he switched over to that.

[pmpodcast]

I would also suggest any (mt) customers wanting to use Joomla get a MySQL Container, I have seen better performance with this add-on service.

What type of performance improvement did you see? Do you have a hard number or is it more of a "feel" for how fast it loads?

Thanks!

[SuperGoofy]

Any MediaTemple customer here who signed-up as a beta tester for their (GS) MySql 5?

[mgp396]

im having the same problem

[yerg]

im having the same problem

Same problem as who?
What problem exactly?

Getting useful answers to issues requires that you need to articulate the problem clearly.

[pmpodcast]

I've been using the Mediatemple (gs) service for about 3 weeks now. So far I migrated 3 joomla sites to it (http://www.cornelius-fichtner.com, http://www.pmopinions.com and http://www.pmlectures.com). They are all on 1.5.x

So far I am happy with the service. Much faster than what I was using before.

If you have a lot of visitors then you may want to consider purchasing their dedicated SQL buckets as well. They come in several sizes (cheapest at $20 / month). I may have to upgrade to that to be able to respond to my many "bursts".

I'll move my Joomla 1.0.x sites soon and let everyone know here if I get any of the problems that were reported in the thread.

[deleted user]

Joomla works perfectly fine on the (mt) gridserver, but you have to be aware of some of its unique requirements that will make setting up PHP/mySQL applications a little different there compared to other hosts. Unfortunately (mt) doesn't emphasize this quite enough on their site and in the mail you get when you set up an account.

To get going with Joomla on th grid, follow the directions mentioned earlier in this thread and in the (mt) knowledgebase entry here: http://kb.mediatemple.net/questions

The Main Things:

1) Forget localhost. You have a unique internal and external host ID.

2) Your full directory path as detected by Joomla during setup should not be used. If you do use them, Joomla will work but eventually you will run into problems, like not being able to upload extensions via http.

Also of note, you can edit your php settings via php.ini
http://kb.mediatemple.net/questions/137 ... Service%3F

The main value of the (gs) is that you can host multiple sites on one account with no extra fees for doing so.

The worst thing about the (gs) is that it still lacks mySQL 5, so you have to use version 4, and some apps only use 5 or higher.

[deleted user]

On second thought, I have been using the Media Temple gridserver (gs) more actively now for Joomla, and I am getting irregular connectivity, as if Joomla bogs down on really long queries and just leaves FF's wheels spinning. However, this happens while logged into the backend without any unusual extra javascript running, so I am wondering if it is a problem with session handling on the (gs). Most of the time the (gs) seems quite fast.

I opened a support ticket at Media Temple about this and--after a day--got a boilerplate list of obvious things to try. Most puzzling was the suggestion that I purchase a dubious 3rd party caching extension for Joomla and that Joomla itself might need an SQL container to run properly with almost zero traffic.

The user self-support forum at MT has turned up a few old threads about similar problems, but no solutions appear to have been determined. Last time I posted there about the lack of mySQL5 on the (gs) --which was supposed to happen in Fall 08 -- a "moderator" was extremely hostile and suggested that another user who wants to install Elgg (mySQL5 only) should buy a dedicated hosting plan.

This sort of thing is deeply disturbing. Steadier performance (and mySQL5) is available from ss and vps providers that are far less expensive than the (gs) and still very high quality. The cluster service and mySQL 5 are due to be out soon at (mt) and I want to see them prove to be a good Joomla host. Years ago I used their shared server hosting for MovableType and it was blazingly fast. (At the time movable type used a berkeley database, then mysql but mostly static files.)

[yerg]

Do you have Google Gears Running?

This makes a big difference on all servers and particularly GS and Joomla

[deleted user]

Yeah, I JUST set that up. You wouldn't expect (mt) to need it.

Media Temple has had outages in the past 48-72 hours. Just search Twitter. Not sure google gears can help with that.

[yerg]

Google Gears - not a matter of MT not needing it or anyone else for that matter it just works and makes things faster whatever the server environment

Ahh MT outage .. I got notification of planned maintenance and possible outages via email.
Before that happened.

(mt) Media Temple would like to notify you and the Contacts on your account of an upcoming emergency hardware maintenance that will affect one of your hosting related services.

[deleted user]

I didn't get an email for this one; I just noticed the talk on twitter and then saw their "service issues" (unplanned failures) page. At least they are fairly open about it.

They have mySQL5 in beta now, and the (gs) is so good when it is running right I am hopeful for the (cs).

[xdrone]

Setting up a new website via Plesk without the DNS being hosted on the box, requires that you view the site via the site preview dialog. I do not entirely understand why the failure occurs but the url generated is "https://www.***.com:8443/sitepreview/http/***.com/" for preview, which causes the Joomla Installation to fail. It is my analysis the sessions spooled for this view is stored differently and as a result the session.save_path fails. I have tested this with the primary domain on the (dv) active, and the failure occurred, however with the primary domain off the ip could be directly attached the client domain as a result the session.save_path functioned naturally.

This could be an issue for clients who don't have dedicated ips would like to set up their account before transferring their DNS.

[deleted user]

Setting up a new website via Plesk without the DNS being hosted on the box, requires that you view the site via the site preview dialog. I do not entirely understand why the failure occurs but the url generated is "https://www.***.com:8443/sitepreview/http/***.com/" for preview, which causes the Joomla Installation to fail.

What do you mean it causes the installation to fail? The Joomla installer fails? If you don't have the option of an auto-installer through Plesk, you're going to need a domain you can point to your host's nameservers to do anything with Joomla.

I have tried the sitepreview without a domain and it will not allow you to browse to any folder below the webroot.

This could be an issue for clients who don't have dedicated ips would like to set up their account before transferring their DNS.

Yes, it's a big pain in that situation. You need to use a temporary domain for those clients.

[Adam Eterno]

When you say "you need to use a temporary domain" can you clarify how you actually do this. This plesk issue is causing me serious headaches

[deleted user]

Buy a domain named whatever you want, and use it for a (gs) DNS zone.

[deleted user]

The love-hate with Media Temple continues. I'd like to compare notes and give out a buyer-beware from my experiences.

The oldest (gs) account I have is slowly being brought up to their newer hardware and will one day have mySQL 5--at last. There hasn't been a month or more frequent period when I haven't had major connectivity issues with this one. New (gs) accounts are probably way better. I haven't noticed problems on the one I started this year, but I don't use it as much.

Lately the (mt) support guys have been pushing extra purchase of dedicated mySQL resources (the mySQL "container" $20/mo additional), which I see from twitter is not unusual "support" behavior. Online and from friends I hear the container has little value, and I have yet to see anyone praising it. I strongly suspect bhubbard who posted earlier in this thread is one of these (mt) support guys. The sell is getting a little softer today, with the container being pushed as "free"--for a month, as a "trial." Then your card will be billed the additional per month cost.

This (mt)(gs) account I have all the trouble with uses a third of the allocated processor resources (grid processing units/GPUs) and gets on average 25,000 hits a day. There are two instances of Joomla 1.5, and one is the major source of traffic. Both use google gears, have compression and caching on, but not (until today) the system cache which seems a possible problem-source from time to time. One instance of Elgg 1.2 on the same account is possibly a source of heavy queries (possibly 300+ on the dashboard), but it's so little used right now I really doubt that's the case. The higher traffic Joomla site is abit heavy on the home page at 184 queries, but most pages should be 20-30. Media Temple support sometimes speak like they think Joomla is a huge SQL hog.

Without any reasonable indication that you are responsible for excessive SQL queries (some metrics on this would be nice), I consider it a bait and switch fraud to respond to database connection failures with a recommendation of their containers. Sometimes they admit it's the pool you're in and still promote the container as a solution. This like saying, "we have too many people or too many people with excessive server queries, and we're going to deal with that by pushing you to pay to move to a quieter neighborhood." Or a better analogy is a bar that goes over capacity and then tells patrons (who paid at the door already) that the music will stop and the fire marshal will eject them if they don't pay a new charge to go in the other rooms.

This is exactly the problem with shared hosting that the (gs) was supposed to circumvent. Using several decent but inexpensive shared hosts, I never had near the problems I've had with Media Temple, nor has the support anywhere else been as slow, unhelpful, and aimed at extracting more money from customers. Problems are temporary but frequent enough to be a real pain and to ruin my trust in (mt). Especially when they tell you you're wrong for months about email delivery issues and some blacklisting of their mailserver means nothing--and then they later reveal they had some big spammers and are making changes to fix that.

(mt) support has also recommended to me a specific commercial (IIRC non-GPL) "performance optimization" extension for Joomla. Blaming Joomla is pretty common from them in my experience--and I saw a recent twitter mention of that tactic from someone else.

Optimistically, I think these problems will go away as (mt) finishes updating all its old technology and if customers push back on the "pay more to make it work" nonsense.

[deleted user]

I recently had my old (gs) account moved to a newer cluster/second gen tech for the grid and mySQL 5. (From cluster 3 to 5, storage 4 to 3.) Marginal improvement. On a much lower-use, newer (gs) account on cluster 4, storage 2 I haven't seen as much slowness, but that may be from less looking. Wordpress, Joomla, and Elgg can really bog down. Drupal/Acquia seems to run pretty fast, but I've had less time observing it. Media Temple seems to have a bad rap with Drupal, if you check their forum: http://groups.drupal.org/node/2492

The problem is database latency, seemingly with the shared database servers being overtaxed and/or a bottleneck between the file and db servers. A good shared server system is going to cost less and perform better than the (gs).

Bottom line: In 2009 the (gs) became the worst performing hosting account I have ever used, absolutely. Support is adequate. Control interface is superb. Multi-site/domain system is great. Knowledgebase is the best. But the main thing is performance...

The (cs) is still slated for a 2009 debut. If it doesn't change the game, I'll be doing some mass migration.

Can anyone speak from experience about eleven2? http://www.eleven2.com/

[kavaXtreme]

My (gs) experiences mirror dpk's bottom line in the previous post. On a new site with virtually no traffic and with caching enabled, the average time it takes just to generate the html is 8x slower than on http://www.surpasshosting.com. This on pages using only core components with minimal mysql queries. At the same time, the cost is double my Surpass plan. (Surpass, I'm sorry I ever flirted with anyone else. Please, please take me back!) Oh, and my site has been down during the day on two occasions in two weeks, and that's just the times I noticed.

Reading their forums, moving to a different cluster (I'm on 02) has little to no impact on the issues.

Haven't tried the (dv) alternative, though (mt) support tells me it will probably function better as there won't be the same latency overhead issues as with the grid array. For some reason I feel a strange, dark urge to try it despite the above (with a retailmenot.com coupon code), but then I ask myself why on earth I wouldn't stay true to a faithful and proven solution.

[deleted user]

(mt) was faithful and proven until they rolled out the (gs). If you're on their 2nd generation (gs) technology, it's better. The (gs) has been improving since January with some major mishaps between then and now, but I guess it's going to be replaced by the (cs) which they still say will see a 2009 release.

How is Surpass cheaper than (mt)? The main value in the (gs) is allowing up to 100 separate websites. Surpass packages seem more expensive and only the reseller or high end packages would allow for multiple sites. They don't say, but I take it the reseller plan is shared hosting.

A friend of mine says the (dv) at (mt) is a big improvement and worth buying if you have multiple sites on the (gs) and are unhappy with performance.

[kavaXtreme]

I've had an (mt) account for probably about a year, but it's only in the last couple of months that I've tried to use it for anything other than static pages, which is when the problems started. So my issues are pretty recent (can't imagine what it must have been like before this), and from their forums even those who have asked to be moved to newer clusters are still experiencing the same speed and outage issues.

As for Surpass, I got in on a reseller special they were running a few years back, which is cheating in a way I guess. But if you look at their shared hosting options, most of the plans come with essentially unlimited space, unlimited domains, and unmetered bandwidth, and are cheaper than (mt). Realistically, not many sites need those kind of resources, so what I've appreciated much more is that I've always had good page response times, a single outage in 4 years (when the Fire Department forced a power shutdown to rescue a man on a telephone pole), support has been good when I've used it, and cPanel has some nice features like easy email authentication (SPF and domainkeys) and stats that are measured per domain, not per account.

Thanks for sharing about the (dv) experience. That kind of feedback from real-world experience is always helpful. My current project needs more than budget hosting, but after deliberating on it for a while I've decided not to take on the extra server management issues right now. Instead I'm going to give Rochen a shot. I've just started monitoring a few sites at site24x7.com, so I'll post back in a week or two with a comparison of these three.

[deleted user]

The basic Rochen package is shared hosting, right?

With (mt) it seems a lot of us long-time customers feel somewhat locked in and like we may have battered wife syndrome. You don't want to make excuses, but you want to believe it will get better--rather than leave. Lacking someone making a pitch for a switch that involves them handling migration, I don't have the time to deal with escaping from (mt) now. Fortunately the sites I have on it are personal and not really critical, sales-oriented operations.

The ongoing core problem is database latency and occasionally complete connectivity failure. Sometimes the (gs) is fast, often it's slow, and bits of downtime are not frequent but occur too often. The latency is really apparent on the Joomla backend sometimes, and it seems to be particular to Joomla. I've never seen the freezes I get on the (gs) on any other host, nor have I experienced them with Drupal, Wordpress, or anything else I've run on the (gs). Just Joomla.

Media Temples Gen 2 update for the (gs) seems frozen at 99% since August:
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/20 ... anti-spam/

One way or another, the (gs) has been highly problematic for THREE YEARS, and there has not been any high-profile, authoritative assessment and critique by a third-party. There is plenty of general blogging insight to find about the problems, but nobody in a position to do it has posed the question, "what is wrong now in 2009, and is this company going to get it right?"

This August Gartner put (mt) in their "magic quadrant." Media Temple is selling, despite it's problems--how and why? What does that mean for customers? I wonder if there is enough fire under their feet.

I suppose the limited and conflict-of-interest laden tech media industry doesn't want to piss on a darling of TechCrunch--and its host. (mt) has always had a lot of elite customers who get deals and freebies--and probably special service of the (dv) or "nitro."

Here's a discussion of the guts of the (gs) at its inception, in 2006. Note the role of BlueArc, and look at the comments over time:
http://www.cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=764

Here's the famous March 2009 post-mortem self-assessment of the grid's failure (and BlueArc's) after a 38hr outage:
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/20 ... -the-grid/
http://www.duanestorey.com/blog/2009/th ... ood-still/
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/arch ... ur-outage/

Do you know of a good alternative to the (gs) or (dv) at comparable prices? Needs to be fast and be able to handle multiple sites and domains with the same "managed" qualities--Plesk or good control interface and not just a box entirely turned over to you.

I am leaning toward not recommending the (gs) for anyone running any kind of database under moderate traffic. If you're already a customer, that is a unique problem. (mt) has a really low-maintenance, reliable control interface, and once you're hooked in, it's not easy to go. Plus what are the comparable price/feature alternatives? (mt) is not hiding their problems or their work toward solutions, so there is a strong incentive to stick with the (gs) on the expectation they will solve their problems, and/or buy into the (dv). From what I hear and can see, the (dv) is right zippy.

[deleted user]

Update on the (gs) -- it is all upgraded to their gen2 architecture but downtime still comes out as an hour a month according to pingdom, 2-4 minutes at a time, and frequent slow page loads occur due to database latency.

Add on an SQL container, get out of the "SmartPool," or use the (dv) and all problems disappear immediately. You're flying. You also get tight control over your databases, more db users, and some very helpful analytic instruments for identifying slow queries, and more.

So, the (gs) by itself is a failure, plain and simple. It did not work as expected, it did not deliver us from the bad neighbor effect as promised.

IIRC the (gs) was launched in 2006. It is slated to be replaced by the cluster service (cs) in 2010 and other new packages are supposed to be forthcoming.

Should you reject the (gs)? I would say yes, unless you also buy an SQL container. Why should you do that and pay $35-40/mo.? Maybe you shouldn't, but here are some reasons why you might:

1) It is managed hosting that still gives you a lot of control, a great knowledgebase, and good albeit slow 24-hr online support, plus phone support. And more than with any other host I've used, you won't need much support.

2) You can add any number of domains, databases, and host as many sites as you want, scaling resources as necessary. In the future a direct path to a (dv) will be possible, and I suspect a lot more scaling options are in the works.

Rackspace cloud makes this comparison:

Rackspace Cloud Server ($10/mo. base + pay for what you use) is comparable to Media Temple's (dv) ($50/mo base). Both are minimally managed; you're mostly on your own and need some decent server admin skills. If Plesk and SSH make you say "what?" or "ugh!" it's not for you. (Media Temple pitches the dv as partly managed, which is true, but the general user experience is "you're on your own.")

Rackspace Cloud Sites ($100/mo. base) is comparable to Media Temple's (gs) ($20/mo fixed). Both are highly managed and made to be relatively easy to operate by people who want to have many sites on their account.

[capnhairdo]

nflgrid...your solution with the file paths is exactly the right one, and fixed all sorts of problems with my installation of Joomla on MT:

var $log_path = '/home/*******/domains/*********.com/html/logs';
var $tmp_path = '/home/*****/domains/********.com/html/tmp';

One thing...if you're using VirtueMart, don't forget to change the filepath for it as well. It will try to autodetect, but you need to manually specify similar to above.

Components > VirtueMart > Configuration > Downloads > DOWNLOADROOT.

[nflgrid]

Yes I am glad it worked for you and hopefully many others.

It is funny I refound this thread as I search for a better host provider. I am on GS and am getting killed by slow db and downtime.

I am trying a container now and have a test environment in DV and I also am doing same on rackspace. One of these plans has got to work since I can't stand the slowness

[deleted user]

nflgrid, please report back on your experience with the (dv) and rackspace. (cloud sites?) I have applied for the (ve) beta at Media Temple and will post if I get admitted.

Some of the (gs) clusters have been having major latency issues again stating this month. I am seeing some pretty high spikes in response times from some monitoring services. Usually response has been about 1000-1500ms but lately it's been double that with spikes up to 10,000-14,000ms. On webwait.com I have seen a 1 second increase to the average load time.

I have been evaluating a bunch of server and SQL performance optimization methods and caching add-ons for Joomla. For some reason, the (gs) seems to respond better to optimization than cheapo shared hosting, which often gives really good response times (except when it doesn't or is totally down) and seems far more tolerant of bloated, inefficient pages from Joomla, Wordpress, etc.