Dreamhost: Where I/O is a privilege, not a right!

[giza]

[baachus]$ uptime
08:17:39 up 52 days, 2:05, 1 user, load average: 774.75, 594.92, 325.73
[baachus]$ time ls -ld www/
drwxr-xr-x 16 dmuth pg1367564 4096 2007-11-22 13:55 www/

real 1m4.258s
user 0m0.010s
sys 0m0.000s

That's right boys and girls, over a minute just to list a directory inode.

Now that's some quality webhosting.

Comments

[simbab.livejournal.com]

So are you going to dump them anytime soon? I know I would.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Easier said than done. Most webhosting places seem to have the attitude that MySQL is an afterthought, and not a core part of a good webhosting solution.

I'd certainly like to take a dump ON them, though.

[ex-tjcoyote112.livejournal.com]

I've been using snowmew's PWNHost (http://www.pwnhost.com) and have been pretty satisfied with it. MySQL is part of their standard package, as is a shell. And it's run as an actual business, not a hobby.

[electropaw.livejournal.com]

Just put the server out of its misery!

[giza.livejournal.com]

Whatever their only plan is now. $12.95/mo, I think?

Still not worth it. Half hour outages every few days is completely unacceptable. Either they are oversold, underfunded, or they have horribly incompetent admins.

[giza.livejournal.com]

Sure, but I don't need a VPS. Just a shell, an Apache instance, and a MySQL server that doesn't suck. (Drupal is pretty MySQL heavy)

[sleepingwolf.livejournal.com]

Any idea, off-hand, how to gauge if a given service's MySQL server fails to suck? I know my webhost offers MySQL and has various things to auto-install content management systems that use it, but I can't say I know whether or not it sucks (before I recommend them).

[giza.livejournal.com]

My non-scientific way under Drupal was to turn on their "devel" module and have it dump the queries, and their execution times. Dreamhost's queries have a round trip of 40 ms EACH. That adds up.

Contrast with NearlyFreeSpeech (http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/) (which sadly does not offer SSL) where it was more like 1 ms round trip.

[whitefeet.livejournal.com]

Look, it's another pink post I don't understand in the least XD

[giza.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you need a consultant!

[taral.livejournal.com]

I take it you've opened a ticket for each of these. What's their response? Have you asked to be moved to a less-loaded server?

[giza.livejournal.com]

No, I got tired of jumping through their hoops.

I have however been documenting the issues here and tagging them "dreamhost sucks".

It's my new social experiment to see if they notice this and what will grow on their carcass first: mold, or a clue?

[rustitobuck.livejournal.com]

I'm glad I didn't go with Dreamhost. I've been pretty happy with Site5. Got shell, ssh in a jail on a shared server. MySQL included, and SSH.

[nidonocu.livejournal.com]

How come I never notice any problems with my hosting with them? o_o

[pyesetz]

I switched my employer from DreamHost to WestHost.  Response times much better!  Real virtual Linux hosting!  Unlmited MySQL databases, but you can't access them from off-host, AFAICT.  What's your definition of "MySQL that doesn't suck"?

[giza.livejournal.com]

> What's your definition of "MySQL that doesn't suck"?

Queries with a decent round-trip time. Dreamhost has 40 ms, which is simply awful. NearlyFreeSpeech had 1 ms. Shame that NFSN doesn't do SSL...

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

As thrilled as you are with Dreamhost, you might want to shop around for alternatives. :)

While I have a currently-undead site hosted with Joyent, they're rather expensive (I'm there chiefly because I joined a few years ago and got a lifetime shared hosting contract at a low price). They're a little unusual -- they're one of the only Solaris-based hosting services out there, for instance -- but they do know their stuff.

Another service I've heard very good things about but haven't used yet is A2 Hosting. They host 43Folders, will soon likely host something for my company, and at least on the surface have impressed me by being one of the only web hosting companies that tells you in detail what their PHP configuration is. They do have shell access. They also apparently have Drupal-specific experience (I gather their control panel extension can install it for you on request).

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

I've been using gazzin.com for (looks it up) wow, 3 years now. I don't think I've ever had a major issue with them, and only had to contact them for support once, and eventually that worked out to be something I did. They're exclusively a reseller provider, so you get that kind of account. I'm not a heavy SQL user but it works for me.

[mirage.livejournal.com]

I run a company called PWNHost.com and I probably could help you out. If you like, you can hit me up on AIM, screenname = Jaguars