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Anyone used the Media Temple MySQL GridContainer yet?
chadcross - May 11, 2007 - 02:38
Howdy,
Has anyone using Media Temple tried out the MySQL GridContainer yet? If so what version did you use and what were the results? I would be on board to try it out but would love to talk to someone who has tried it. Our site is at times pretty slow even though we don't get a lot of traffic. I have heard that Drupal can be hard on the database. I was wondering if the Gridcontainer would help make the site faster and consistently fast.
Maybe someone from MT can weigh in? I notice they have posted before.
http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/mysql-containers.htm
Thanks.
Media Temple -- slow, and getting slower?
Hi,
I've not yet tried the Mysql GridContainer, but MediaTemple certainly needs to do something to improve the response time of Drupal sites.
During the past week I've created a small Drupal 5.1 test site on MediaTemple's gridserver. My little test site has only about 20 pages, and I am the one and only user of site, yet when I'm logged in (i.e. not an anonymous user with page caching) MediaTemple's page loading times are often over 10 seconds, sometimes as long as 15 to 20 seconds, and browser time-outs are all too common. Sometimes I do get a page within 3 or 4 seconds. Sometimes.
Admittedly Drupal uses a lot of php code and a lot of MySql accesses, but these slow response times are making Drupal unusable on MediaTemple's gridserver....even with only one user (me) accessing my little Drupal test site.
I've been using MediaTemple for about 5 years, and am still getting fairly good response times on my web sites that are purely html/php and which do not use any MySql, but over these past few days since creating my little test site (early May 2007), my Drupal test site performance is truly lethargic.
Perhaps if enough of the heavy MySql users move to the new containers (for an added $20 to $150 per month), then there will be better response times for the rest of us... or maybe not. Time will tell.
I agree with you on the
I agree with you on the current response times. That is why I was interested in the performance of the Container. I have been there for about a year and love everything about Media Temple. I have used a few other hosts and MT is 1000% better. Everything is perfect except for this little speed thing. The (ss) servers were lightning fast, always.
Our site was really slow and down a lot during the first couple of months after they switched to the Grid system but it has been a lot better lately. It still seems slower than it could be though. I see how slow drupal.org is though and I start to think maybe it is Drupal itself. I don't know... I think I am rambling. Bleah
Not a Drupal Thing
I've had the same problems in the past hosting Zopa's Wordpress blog on MT. My site is Drupal and it's fine running on 34sp.com
improving*
i say improving because the performance could have hardly gotten any worse. i've been with the grid-server since they introduced the product last year. 5 months of errors, slow response times and misleading information about the new grid containers later and i think my headaches may finally have been worked out. following is all the steps i have taken to optimize my drupal site and the mediatemple server:
1. increase max_post_size and maximum_execution_time by overriding the php.ini settings via this knowledgebase article: http://kb.mediatemple.net/article.php?id=137. use the values they specify.
2. increase the memory_limit to 24mb via this knowledgebase article: http://kb.mediatemple.net/article.php?id=052.
3. use drupal's site caching. although this will not improve access times while you are logged in and administrating your site, at least anonymous users won't have to wait.
4. do not use flexinode since it uses an unnecessary amount of mysql queries.
5. do not use civicrm even though mediatemple's grid meets the system requirements. removing this from my public site dropped load times in half and better.
6. remove ALL extraneous modules. it's not enough to deactivate them, remove them from your server.
7. minimize the number of mysql queries used by any custom code and/or modules. through a complete reprogramming of a couple of my custom modules i was able to cut the number of queries by a two-thirds. performance increased substantially.
8. call 1-866-578-4000 and complain about the performance. at the heart of it, the folks at mediatemple are good people and they don't like to see their customers unhappy. most of the remedies listed above were suggested by attentive mediatemple tech support.
now to your question: i was able to get a free container since i asked to be a part of the beta testing. after mis-provisioning the container twice (that's a whole different mess that they caused) i am happy to say that my site is running very quickly. should it cost an extra $20 to get this decent performance? absolutely not! had they not upgraded me for free i am sure i would have dumped mediatemple and even had a short list of new hosts to try.
there are a few other interesting things i have found through this long journey. all along i suspected that slow queries were the root of all my troubles. using the query analyzer that came along with my container i have yet to see any. it appears it was the shear number of queries that was bogging down the server.
also, there has been a lot of bad press and misunderstanding surrounding mediatemple's calculation of GPUs. many wordpress users were surprised by hefty bills because they had used more processor time than allotted. with drupal, i haven't found this to be a problem. that said, my site does not allow users to register and the volume is moderate to low. i only mention this because i was sure this was going to be a problem.
best of luck with your drupal site. i'm happy to answer any other question you have.
Thank you.
Very nice response. Thank you for the list of optimizations. That is very helpful. I will make those changes immediately.
I am going to try the gridContainer for a month or two and see how it goes. From what you say, it works. Just not worth the extra cash. I really don't want to switch hosts though.
Does Drupal create more queries than other similar software?
fatal error due to php.ini edit?
I just tried #1 and got this:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 11520 bytes) in /blah/blah/domains/blah.com/html/modules/contemplate/contemplate.module on line 67Is that to be expected from uncommented the 2 lines and renaming the php.ini.sample?
scratch that
I see #2 resolves that error - might be helpful to put it first for other peeps like myself who take things one step at a time.
do #1 and #2 before trying site
since steps #1 and #2 go hand in hand i would recommend doing them together. i split them apart in my list because the instructions are located in two different places and they involve two different files.
if you get an error after you have done them both then you have a problem.
Is there any chance this
Is there any chance this could affect cck's image module? For the first time since I made the optimzations, I've tried creating some content that includes adding an image via CCK's image field. The images are not being uploaded at all (checked file system settings (public) chmodded /files to 777 to see if that helped). It's weird and the optimization is the only thing that has changed - no modules were turned on or off since then. I can upload personal files as a user, so we know that works. Thoughts?
(the content type I'm referring to existed prior to the optimizations and worked fine prior as well.)
upload_max_filesize to small?
by any chance is the file you were trying to upload larger than 2mb? if so you will need to change the upload_max_filesize setting via your php.ini.
if that doesn't correct the problem, i'm afraid i don't have the answer. perhaps someone more adept at php configuration and cck can chime in? i create my own content types via module and have not used cck.
Unfortunately not
The files in question are less than 500k, and I have no problem uploading an image node or uploading a document. It seems specific to cck's imagefield, and I'm still awaiting a response from the maintainer(s) on what to troubleshoot.
Help please with advice
Hi Masande!
First many thanks for such a descriptive reply and seed of doubt planted already about migrating to (mt).
Can you please say, at your opinion, what can I expect having a Drupal 4.7.6 with Views(quite noisy requests to MySQL), Links (also requests-requests), Path (the largest amount of request cos I use Paths everywhere in node and taxonomy). Also I have nearly 3000 nodes(Links) with file attachments, and my DB Cache growth quickly up to 700Mb weekly and I have to flush it manually cos site came down while I'm administrating it. Daily hits are about ~1700. Also huge amount of RSS requests hourly.
(mt) replied that Dedicated server would be enough, but if I only have spare money...:)
Also (mt) replied here http://drupal.org/node/144328
I really, really need your opinion.
Many thanks in advance!
---------------
DesignCollector
some thoughts
arsart, i can't really say what would be best for you or if media temple is a good or bad choice for your site. i can, however, let you know what 6 months of battling the grid-server has taught me. with that, i have finally gotten my drupal site to perform pretty well. i think some of the performance gains are because of tweaks mediatemple has made as well as implementing the advice i shared earlier in this message. will this work for you? i don't know.
to your question, views in particular caused a tremendous slow down on my site because of its numerous mysql requests. in the end i removed it from my site and created modules to handle each of the views on my site. pathalias (which i assume you speak of) was another module i had to remove because of its overhead. with all of these it appears the shear number of queries was causing the slow downs because i never found any slow queries via mediatemple's query analyzer that comes as part of the mysql container.
there was a comment on mediatemple's blog that provides some thoughts about the difference between dedicated virtual and the grid containers that i think may be relevant to your decision: http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/04/05/mysql-gridcontainers-lau...
also, with a site that gets the consistent volume that yours does be wary of the gpu overage charges.
best of luck with you drupal site.
Improvements!
Im on the GridServer and run a small drupal set-up, but I used to run a wordpress MU setup and that was REALLY slow so I have learnt how to get the most out of stuff.
The best two things are:
Editing the PHP.ini file with:
memory_limit = 512M
Of course most of the time you never get 512MB of memory, but you get more than theyre default (8MB)
Activate zend optimiser, theres an option for activating zend optimiser, if you go into the knowledge base there is an article on it.
Hope it help!
P.S: I am thinking of moving to dreamhost though, because (MT) is very expensive once you start adding upgrades