I moved this blog over to Media Temple’s Grid Server hosting because this blog was really starting to pop. The hits were up and I wanted to make sure I had a new home that would be able to weather any potential slashdots or diggs. Alas, I have yet to experience Media Temple’s magic because my day-to-day experience has been unbearably frustrating. I think I will move to my dedicated server from Host for Web. I had thought a grid server would be perfect!
MT can’t keep up with simple site searches, MT can’t keep up with simple posts, MT can’t keep up with user comments. Media Temple just can’t keep up. I was expecting “better than dedicated server” experiences and all I get is 500 server errors, server reset, time-outs, and minute-long loading times. MT sucks.
This is unacceptable.
I actually kept this blog off of my dedicated server because I bought the hype presented by a Grid Server but I am afraid my trust and investment was not rewarded and was, in fact, punished. The Media Temple Grid Server sucks, man! What’s up? What’s wrong? This is worse than a simple $5 virtual host.
I asked the gang from Six Apart, the parents of this blog’s software, Movable Type, what was going on and here is what they said:
“Hi, Chris -
It would appear that whatever other factors may be involved in this issue, your server appears to be under a high load. The server’s response in serving mt-search.cgi and mt.cgi pages is very slow and often times out. In testing the URL you provided at the beginning of this ticket, the connection would be sometimes be lost after approximately 20 seconds; other times, the server would display a 500 server error after approximately 40 seconds. Movable Type mt.cgi pages which were displayed would take minutes to complete, and even then, the stylesheet for these pages was not loaded because the browser timed out waiting for the stylesheet page to load.
I performed a search within Movable Type for “chris abraham” (without the quotes); this search was able to be completed (although very slowly) and returned 191 results. If the mt-config.cgi configuration file does not specify a MaxResults[1] directive, it is possible that mt-search.cgi may be encountering a server memory limit in attempting to process and return 191 search results.
You (or your web host) may wish to examine the web server error log and see if there are any error messages related to mt-search.cgi which may provide additional information about why the mt-search.cgi script produces a 500 server error. You may also wish to ask your web host about the timeout settings for both the web server and the MySQL server and see if they are set high enough, given the current performance of your server.
Given the performance of your server, we would also suggest working with your web host to determine what could cause the server to be as slow as it appears to be in responding to requests for web pages.
Regards,
David Phillips
Technical Services
[1] http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/docs/3.3/d_configuration_directives/maxresults.html”
You have got to be kidding me!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have problems with Media Temple’s grid-server also. I have a small blog with a minimal audience and the site runs so slow. On top of that my FTP goes down every other day including right now. I like the pre-grid-server days.
At the end of 2010, the same problems exist and new ones have come along as well–security breaches, DDoS attacks. Run away!