Looks good on paper. A new-fangled web hosting technology is merely a waste of time. Although, they did refund my $20 as per their 30 day money-back guarantee.
Almost every-other web hosting company uses what is known as Shared hosting. They have one Web Server with anywhere from 1 to who knows? number of clients. Each client can host a range of websites from 1 to unlimited. With this traditional web hosting model, the server could become overloaded very quickly and its resources [ CPU + RAM ] will be in short supply. Hard drive space in these situations is usually unlimited because of the use of an NAS.
Enter the Gridserver technology. To alleviate the problem with running out of CPU + RAM, the Gridserver is designed in the method of a Computer Cluster. Basically, instead of 1 computer the Gridserver can support unlimited machines. It is unknown how many machines are actually being used. So in theory, this is a great solution to the limited resources by oversupplying the CPU + RAM demands. However I noticed the Gridserver’s implementation of a cluster to be buggy at best. For Example, 1 out of 10 page loads results in a 403 Forbidden error. These errors occur when the web server does not have access to the file you are asking it to provide. So how did it access the file during the other 9 times?
Mediatemple’s answer to this issue:
“It looks as though the redirect isn’t working and it’s trying to call up an error document that isn’t accessable. A thing to remember is your domain on the grid is name based rather than IP based. How are you pointing to “mydomain.com”? Since you aren’t using our name servers we are unable to troubleshoot DNS issues.”
It’s true, I was using outside DNS.
So DNS is working 9 out of 10 times? And that 1 time DNS doesn’t happen to function properly, in short it tells the web server, “hey you don’t have access rights that file!” Wow, that is the some powerful DNS! Its my understanding DNS is used for the SOLE purpose of translating mydomain.com into an IP [ xx.yy.zz.aaa ] and back again. Since when does DNS actually control who has access to files, I thought that was root’s job? Perhaps in the Gridserver world, everyone is root?
Anyway it cost me 2 days time to learn Mediatemple is another host to avoid.
5 Comments on “Mediatemple Gridserver technology”
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mason says:
way to document these greivences. we need to hold these people accountable one way or another.
Posted on 30/05/2007 at 12:10.
DrJonez says:
I wish I would have read this before I went with (mt) – I signed up about 2 months ago – I am not a happy camper. Apparently “Cluster 1″ is having a ton of issues. Get me off of this ship!
Anyway, what did you end up with?
Any word on slicehost?
Posted on 17/04/2008 at 05:45.
ideas says:
Never heard of slicehost. I would “assume” that any grid-type technology is still far too new to be consider stable. I recently rented a VPS from knownhost.com. I am extremely happy with all aspects of their service. Its a bit of a premium price though. I found knownhost via reviews on http://webhostingtalk.com, which has many reviews on all types of hosting: dedicated, VPS, resellers, shared, etc.
Posted on 17/04/2008 at 06:05.
Tronathan says:
Slicehost isn’t a grid/cluster architecture – Its a Xen-based virtualization architecture that has Rails automation interface on top. Xen can guarantee resources to its virtual instances, like RAM, CPU, and Disk. If more RAM/CPU is available, the client instance can consume it, but you’re (theoretically) guaranteed a certain level of service. You also get straight-up root with no control panel (you have to apt-get install that shiz yourself). Slicehost is a baby EC2+Rightscale.
Posted on 05/06/2008 at 16:51.
web hosting says:
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Posted on 24/06/2009 at 09:40.