I'm wondering if someone can offer some advice here. I recently moved to a dedicated server and it has been crashing right and left. Two or three times each week it goes down completely for an hour or more, and MySQL has had multiple extended (10+ hour long) outages over a 2-3 week period. This strikes me as being completely outrageous, but my web host appears nonplussed. I'm trying to figure out who's to blame. Did they screw up configuring the server, or did I not purchase a powerful enough server in the first place?

Here are the specs:

Pentium IV 1.6 GHz
256MB DDR ECC RAM
30 GB IDE boot drive
60 GB IDE backup drive
75 GB bandwidth per month
Debian Linux

I get a decent amount of traffic - perhaps 250,000 page views per month. A large majority of that traffic consists of hits to page.cgi in a dynamic LinksSQL installation running under mod_rewrite. (I know I should build static pages, but that just isn't a good option at this time.)

So... Do I need a better server? Or am I getting screwed by the hosting company? Thanks.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

From what you've described I'm afraid it sounds like your host.

256MB RAM isn't a lot, but coupled with a 1.6mhz processor you should be able to cope with 8 or 9000 hits a day, easily.

Traffic has peaks and troughs and so there is absolutely no reason for 10 hour outages.

That's what I thought, too. In all fairness, I think the 10 hour outages are a function of MySQL not being restarted properly. Still, it's been a really disappointing experience, especially since I have had really positive experiences with them (Dreamhost) until now. But it seems a little silly to consider upgrading the server if they haven't even configured the existing one well enough to avoid constant crashes.

Ugh... I guess I may need to look for a new host when my current contract runs out. I've been hearing good things about Rackspace - any experience with them? Also (if only because I'm here) I suppose I should also take a good look at Gossamer Host.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Yeah I've heard good things about rackspace too. They have great security and monitoring services and the servers have superb uptime too.

I contacted them when looking for a dedicated server and almost signed up and even got them to waive the $250 setup fee but I ended up going with Gossamer Host ....they've been my best host so far, no cheap advert intended =)

Up your ram to a gig or even more and store your whole MySQL database in RAM. Yummy. :-)

- wil

I wouldn't even know how to begin attempting that...

Actually Wil, I'm glad you saw this post, since I think it was a post you made a while back that initially led me to consider Dreamhost. I assume you have some experience with them? Does this seem unusual to you? Any advice on how I can get them to resolve this? I'd really hate to have to change hosts again, especially since I just paid for a year's worth of hosting up front.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Are they not even making an effort to solve the issues?

They have access to many logs - I can't believe they don't know the reason.

So far they've been pretty lame and unresponsive. I keep sending empassioned pleas for assistance in the hopes that some kind soul will be responsive, but most of what I've gotten is generic messages from level 1 tech support. These have generally been in the vein of "sorry - we powercycled for you and it's now fixed" variety. (Of course, when they powercycle, it kills MySQL, but no one seems to bother checking for that.) Very, very frustrating experience.

The only thing I can think of is that my LinksSQL installation is the culprit. I'm using DMOZ data in a mod_rewritten dynamic mode, and I get boatloads of traffic (mostly from search engines) to page.cgi. Without page.cgi, my 250,000 page views would be more like 25,000. Also, when Googlebot does its deep crawl, page.cgi might get 35K+ hits in a single day. Still, I've been hesitant to build static pages because I like to update with a new DMOZ import every month or so, and there are 300,000+ pages that would need to be built every time.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Hi

It sounds like a badly installed server plus a bad install of MySQL.

I was with Rackspace last year and they were excellent.

I ran a 1ghz with 256mb ram.

Gossamer did the install for me.

It ran a full copy of DMOZ it was getting over 700,000 page impressions per month.

It never went above 10% cpu usage.

I did not reboot for 4 months

Dregs2

Hi,

That does sound extremly strange, I have nothing but high praise for the Dreamhost guys. Although, the box I've got there is a shared box -- I know nothing of their dedicated boxes but I believe it's the standard Debian Woody install.

Your best bet is to email support directly or try their support forums at http://discussion.dreamhost.com/ - A lot of their techies hang around there when on the graveyard shift and might pick up your post.

- wil

In fairness to Dreamhost, I should now provide an update. After much yelling and screaming (virtually, since they don't have a published telephone number) I finally received a phone call from a senior level tech support guy. He took a more in depth look at my setup and identified a couple of bizarre misconfigurations (both with MySQL and with the file system) that may be the root of the problem. He also agreed with the assessment that I seemed to be experiencing outrageous difficulties given the server power to traffic ratio. He fixed said misconfigurations and provided me with some guidance about things I could do in the future should the problems continue. So, my fingers are crossed. As far as I'm concerned, if they can resolve this once and for all and the server stops crashing, then they will have redeemed themselves and saved me as a customer. I suppose time will tell...

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

I guess there's an argument here to pay an extra fee for managed hosting over unmanaged hosting.

I believe Dreamhost have now got a call-back feature if you live in the US.

- wil

Well, ostensibly I do have "managed" hosting - just a relatively low budget management package. They briefly tested out a callback feature but canned it. Now they're beta testing a live support chat option. Those are nice and all, but nothing beats a phone number where some knowledgeable person actually answers, IMHO.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

I wouldn't like to trust a host who writes things like this:

Yes, well... They're a bit irreverent, I guess. Still, I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they can really get this fixed once and for all then they will be off my shitlist. Honestly I had a very positive experience with them as a shared hosting provider. It's only recently (since moving to the dedicated) that all hell has broken loose.

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Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund

Must be a borked hardware/software configuration then. They're usually great.

And yes, they are a little eccentric, but it brings some fun into it, sometimes. ;-)

- wil

I was with them for about 6 months...and in that time, they seemed pretty helpful

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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