Hi,

I have been on MediaTemple for a few years now and i am very very happy with their service.
I have recently used their one-click install of Drupal 4.7. I am very impressed with Drupal and want to switch over to using it to power my web site.

I will need to create several custom modules and would prefer to do this work on V5.x

Has anyone got 5.x running on the MediaTemple Grid Server?

Cheers

Comments

sweintraub’s picture

DB quereies are a bit slow but otherwise works just fine..

http://www.theparistimes.com

also

http://www.9to5mac.com

Seth Weintraub

madpeacock’s picture

Thanks, Any MT/GS specific issues I should be aware of before upgrading

mfer’s picture

There is nothing special I am aware of when upgrading. Just be sure to follow the upgrading instructions for drupal.

As for speed of the database, I have not noticed it being slow for the level of service you are pay for.

--
Matt
http://www.mattfarina.com

sesame1’s picture

it's always better to have a better host for better db connectivity and speed.

nevets’s picture

While PHP 5 is not an a problem for core there is no guarantee that contributed modules will not have a problem.

mfer’s picture

The grid gives you the options for PHP4 or PHP5. This setting is on a per site level. So, you could have all but one of your sites on PHP5 and that one on PHP4 if you want.

--
Matt
http://www.mattfarina.com

techczech’s picture

I run a bunch of sites (http://www.dominiklukes.net/myweb) on the Grid and have had no problem with PHP5 in any of my contrib modules. I also started with 4.7 and upgrading to 5.x was no problem.

I still find the DB queries to be too slow, though, but after checking out seintraub's sites, I wonder if the problem lies with me. Those two sites feel considerably faster than any of mine.

______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com

mfer’s picture

Could you have a module that has run away as is slowing things down? There are a number of modules that can do that. It's happened to me before. Have you installed the devel module and looked at the queries being run and the memory usage?

--
Matt
http://www.mattfarina.com

geojaz’s picture

Just to follow up on this issue, I do almost all of my hosting on the MediaTemple gridserver and VPS servers.

All of them are speedy and responsive. They really have made lots of progress on the database issues over even just a couple of months ago. I'm very happy with the way they work, especially at $20 a month for a pretty serious hosting package. I haven't had any tricky things that haven't worked out as expected, other than the Devel/Zend issues.

I haven't used their 1-click installs, but 5.1, 5.2, and upgrading from 5.1->5.2 have all worked perfectly

jensimmons’s picture

Why do you say watch out for the Devel mod? I just installed Devel on my new Media Temple hosted site -- and it knocked everything out. 500 Errors on every page. I'm trying to figure out what's wrong. Do you know??

Jen Simmons
http://milkweedmediadesign.com
http://jensimmons.com

Jen Simmons
The Web Ahead
http://jensimmons.com
http://thewebahead.net

techczech’s picture

Well, it turned out I had some problems with a watchdog table logging a stupid error so many times to grew to 3.5GB! I don't think it is any particular module (my one Wordpress site is only a bit faster - proportionately to the size of its database). Most of the sites load in 8-10 sec (which is pretty long in internet time but acceptable - I actually used a stopwatch because Firebug didn't seem right). After the initial load the browsing is much more responsive. I instituted more caching and try my best to reduce HTTP requests. Beyond that, I just need to exercise greater patience.

______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.bohemica.com
http://www.techwillow.com

dewolfe’s picture

Are you running all the sites from one core installation of Drupal..on MT..just curious if its possible.

www.individualtrader.org

techczech’s picture

I run about half of the sites as multisite and others separately (depends on who I maintain them for).

______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com

venusrising’s picture

They really over sell the "grid". I think it is damn slow especially the admin. We tested out there DV and it was faster BUT ALL of the software ie PHP MySql all where still in v 4 and the upgrade we did via their KB article only upgraded PHP to 5.14. They said it was due to their Plesk control panel issues. So, we cancelled an are back to the drawing board.
venusrising

venusrising

roundboy’s picture

I would not recommend mediatemple's Grid hosting.
I have been using them for about 3 years now and it gets worse each year.
(I switched to GS last year)

I'm sick and tired of waiting over a minute for my page to load.

Everytime I contact them, they say sorry, thanks for your patient.

arrrrggggg

I'm moving to another host pretty soon.

rickvug’s picture

Agreed. STAY AWAY FROM THE GRID! This is from a person that really likes Media Temple as a company. Their DV packages are great however. Site5, hostmonster, a small orange, joyent etc. are all much better options for shared hosting.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Rick Vugteveen |rickvug.com @rickvug on Twitter

DannyPfeiffer’s picture

MT GS delivers intermittent performance, mostly related to the DB.
However, if you get a MySQL Grid Container, performance increases significantly.

For my site, showing 'worst case' / slowest page loads i experienced :

Before (smart pool): Longest query on homepage took 500ms
After (Grid Container Lite): Longest query on homepage took 8ms

Before (smart pool): Executed 75 queries in 705.24 milliseconds
After (Grid Container lite): Executed 75 queries in 50.24 milliseconds

Also, you can enable zend optimizer in PHP.ini which helps page execution times pretty significantly.

I fought w/ the MySQL Smart pool setup for a month or so before giving in and getting the SQL container, which lets you tweak my.cnf as well.

all in all, 40 bucks a month for a pretty stellar package in my opinion.

Danny Pfeiffer
http://RehabCreative.com

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

dpfiffe, we invite you to run a similar benchmark from our shared hosting infra.

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

I have mailed you the Account access details [Cpanel + FTP access]
Do let me know, if i can be of assistance :)

Thank you for your expert help in benchmarking our hosting services.

Regards,
Steve

DannyPfeiffer’s picture

OK, here's the latest:

I ran a test on the homepage of my site, logged in as admin. Ran it a few times on each environment to get a rough average for each service.

Legend:
GS = Grid service w/ MySQL Grid container lite
DV = Drupal Value hosting, out of the box

GS: Longest query on homepage took 9.8ms
DV: Longest query on homepage took 2.8ms

GS: Executed 142 queries in 99.0 milliseconds
DV: Executed 142 queries in 38.19 milliseconds

GS: Page execution time was 496.62 ms.
DV: Page execution time was 152.69 ms

Carbon copy of all files / structure and DB, running primarily InnoDB tables. Honestly, i'm pretty impressed.

danny pfeiffer
http://troutshout.com

Danny Pfeiffer
http://RehabCreative.com

techczech’s picture

I've given up on the grid. They've gone through numerous updates and no tangible improvement. AND they overcharge for what they called 'GPU overages' with no way to impose a limit. My bill was almost $100 last month. I'm moving to a VPS solution with another company soon (probably EUKHOST).

______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com

tdellaringa’s picture

I run www.crossandthrone.com on the grid, with a SQL container, and our site is slow. Not like we have a whole lot going on either. I even hired a drupal dev to tune up the DB which helped some, but not nearly enough. I've always loved MT as a company, and for simple sites they are great, but they've blown it with the GS. I don't know what the problem is, but like many say it has been years now that they give you the "thanks for your patience, we're working on it" line, but nothing seems to improve.

The question is who is better?

techczech’s picture

There's plenty more alternatives that offer VPS but it often costs more and you need more nous to administer the server. That;s what attracted me to the grid. But it looks like I'm just going to have to go for a VPS - no way could I stomach a shared hosting now.
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.hermeneuticheretic.net
http://www.czechupdate.com
http://www.techwillow.com

gaobin’s picture

Mediatemple GS is very slow. My website takes more than 8s to load, sometimes it is up 20s. I'm very disappointed even if their support service and hosting features are great. Last week, MT had a maintenance, it took server down more than 3 hours, but the speed is getting worser. I down know why they did upgrade each time but nothing was improved.

I will drop it if i find another web hosting.

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

Here are experiences of a Media Temple Grid Service customer who has moved onto DVH and has had a good hosting experience:
http://topicblender.com/blog/technology/web-hosting-follow

The speed and Performance benchmarks are here:
http://drupal.org/node/157762#comment-673242

Regards,
Steve
http://www.DrupalValueHosting.com

prego3980’s picture

I am looking for hosting for a few sites

http://www.pregoevents.com

techczech’s picture

I finally left the MT grid service. It was too slow and they kept slapping overages on my site every month. So I moved to EUKHost VPS service. It's a bit more money up front but cheaper in the long run. I wanted a services in the UK otherwise I would have gone with Slicehost or Linode.
______________________
Dominik Lukes
http://www.dominiklukes.net
http://www.bohemica.com

timmillwood’s picture

The (gs) does seem a little unstable but cheap so i plan on sticking with it.

But if I start getting overages on my site I will quickly move, but i bet i will end up going to a (dv) although cwcs.co.uk seems quite good.

I have only had my (gs) a week and only had sites on it a few days, I am using about 1 GPU a day with 60 visitors a day.

timmillwood’s picture

i am fairly happy with (gs) so far, yes it has gone down for 20 mins or so but they are one of the biggest hosts and host big names (9to5mac and Flash Earth are on (gs)) so i trust them.

Drupal Value Hosting doesnt look that good, the site seems very unprofessional and that is the only reason i didn't want to give them a try.

parrottvision’s picture

I must say in the last week I have enjoyed a really good speed and service from MT Grid with msSQL lite but for months before it was slooooow. Now I am getting charged GPU overages which has bumped the bill from £37USD a month to £130USD a month. Criminal. I am now trying ehosting.co.uk but it seems they can't quite cope with the Drupal heavy service using Bronze and Silver Linux VPS. Maybe I will try Gold VPS but this is getting expensive! Reason ehosting appealed was they offer a managed VPS service and so far I am really impressed with their service. A tech even gave me a call this morning to chat about the box with me. (no affiliation)

Brilliant.

giorgio79’s picture

Hi,

What caused your bump in GPU usage?

Have you tried using modules like Boost for caching?

There are some optimization tips for your htaccess around the forum, have you tried those?

Cheers,
G

ClipGlobe - World Travel

parrottvision’s picture

Alot of the bump was just traffic increasing. There is no doubt my template code can be improved. I have since also added a CDN from simpleCDN and implemented a few other tweeks like block cache but not sure how big a difference it is making. The main problem is the page not found causing a full page load and wasting traffic. I will look at Boost for sure. thanks