We have moved from Network Solutions to a VDS on godaddy. Yes, we know about mindraven, we just wanted a bit more control than mindraven would have allowed us.
Now we seemed to have stepped in it. It isn't too bad, but it is annoying for us. Our issue has reached their top guy who works in the President's office. We are due to talk to him this coming Tuesday or so and I would like to solicit comment from the talented group here before we engage.
At odd hours of the day or night - and especially in the wee hours of the morning, we see the following by any given member:
Member writes a post - clicks send. The post is written to the database immediately. The return page can take OVER 60 seconds to get back to the poster. At other times, the return is super fast. We never saw this on a a cheap web deal with NS. We do see that we are using up to 800Mb of our 1Gb of RAM.
We have gone over our configuration with a fine tooth comb.
I don't understand why you would do business with that prick. Do a search for Bob Parson's hunting to find out what an outstanding human being he is.
We run on Dreamhost. They are very knowledgable and have always been responsive. We ran on a shared account up until a couple years ago, went to a VPS, and now on a dedicated. You can unmanage your VPS and have full control of it. If you change to them let me know so I can get my bonus (I think it's $97). I'll donate it to a charity of your choice from their list, and Dreamhost will not only match it but quadruple match it.
I've rewritten this paragraph about 20 times with trying to not have to say "Godaddy sucks". When I've used them for Hosting or SSL I've always got the shaft; IMO they spread themselves too thin, but my major gripe is their crap customer service... I'm sure you'll be able to find a fanboy or people who just outright hate them for a Google search, but my opinion will always be, that the issue is them lol... Especially if you're on one of their oversold servers (which is what resource usage boils down to).
Now, if I had the cash, the most professional web host we ever used when dealing with 30 dedicated servers was Hurricane Electric and Voxel, their staff tends to get on the ball and their bread and butter is VPS' and Dedicated Servers..
I have never used GoDaddy. But I would bet if you had elected Mindraven. The issue would have been resolved already.
I know you are looking for some pointers to challenge them with but...
So by chance even though you are not a Mindraven customer. I would think that if you contacted Rick he might be willing to point you in the right direction. Hoping to get a future customer.
Blue Man Group There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers
Thanks guys. Yes, oversold is our conclusion. That said, when we were going through the list of hosts possible when we decided to get rid of Network Solutions - a pick that was made before anyone with any technical ability was part of our site's demographic, godaddy gave us the most professional responses of anyone we talked to.
Uh, that should have been a red alert, but it wasn't.
*sigh*
We might well have picked mindraven, except Rick runs a managed service and our future plans include integrating WordPress - in the works right now - and other stuff that just did not fit a managed service deal. We now have some pretty good techs associated with our deal - which does not include me. My deal is to pin ears back when needed, and right now godaddy is playing CYA because of that.
I will take a look at Dreamhost, although we are really not much on moving again if we can help it.
For whatever reason, our Goddess of all things technical wants control all the way down to the root. She saw mindraven was "managed" and that was a "No thank you."
Me, I don't care, I just want software that works and a hosting contract where we get what we pay for. In my mind, that means some relationship between the amount of RAM we have and how much processor power we can reliably count on.
Right now I am playing roast tech with the godaddy bunch. The first line techs at godaddy really try to help, it is the second level that wants to pee on my leg and call it sweat. It's as if they work for two different companies.
They started talking to me about "Design" factors and how they have a department to manage their servers and I shot back, "Oh, then your people would understand Erlang and Poison probability tables and how to use them."
:snicker: you don't have to hire your host to do managing for you; there are quite a few techs in the area that can do updates to the server for you
Yeah I know Gizmo. We have talked about it. Once we see the next generation of UBB, we are gonna see what we need to do that we just can't live without.
Processor load is processor load, right? So in terms of your basic average web site, how much load does UBB put on the server and RAM?
I have no idea how to quantify that question, just that it is one; question, I mean.
One of the issues at godaddy is that their email processing sucks. And just from watching UBB do a post, it looks as if part of the process is to check to see if an email(s) need to be sent out before the page is reconstructed and sent back.
Is that right?
I am not sure that the problem with godaddy is actually overselling their hardware. Part of their problem may in fact be their optimization software package and port priorities - what is that called, SHAPE process?
Their additional services such as FTP, Plesk, SSH and putty all show significant delays - at times.
For sure, we are gonna bump up to cPanel. That much is certain from the research we have been doing to find out how we managed to get in this pickle barrel. We ran out of room on NS so quickly, that we really didn't have enough time to due diligence like we should have.
Maybe this thread will warn someone down the road.
Well, if you guys want a dedicated to full root get a dedicated server or an unmanaged vps...
And I'm running 512mb ram on a vps just fine with a handful of sites. I doubt you'd need a full dedicated server for just one site, so a vps should likely be fine
Well I run threads, an IRC server and two other website off my personal server here. I have a couple of tweaks to keep the network traffic balanced etc. but all in all seems to run really smooth even on a standard business connection from my ISP. My site isn't as big as some of these others here, so that may also play into it. (I had over 100 budai spiders last night, and about 15 people scrolling and never saw a hiccup) and I know several others here with huge sites that don't have issues with bandwidth and they run it from their houses as well.
Although I tried a VPS (with Go Daddy) I certainly don't need one but for me, this is not the issue. Performance IS. I too was originally using Networks Solutions and my site was very slow on most days not to mention the frequent down time. Then I switched to Go Daddy which was only a slight improvement. I found them difficult to deal with as my knowledege is limited. Now I am just using a standard business plan with Lunar Pages and I have had no problems in about three years... and my sites are all pretty speedy and reliable went down once in three years. Happy camper here! Don't know how thier dedicated servers are but I have zero complaints.
(Just adding my experience in case it matters)
Ford diesel master technician by day... Webmaster by night! FordDoctorsDTS.comrunning UBB Threads 7.5.4.2p2
One of the issues we think is going on is that godaddy has problems with its email servers. As I may have mentioned, a post generates a process in UBB to send out emails prior to a return of the page for the poster.
The delay in the return of the page that can exceed 60 seconds, may be associated with email - if our observation and guess as to the way UBB works is correct.
Of course someone who knows UBB Threads code better than we do can obviously set us straight.
Now I am just using a standard business plan with Lunar Pages and I have had no problems in about three years... and my sites are all pretty speedy and reliable went down once in three years. Happy camper here! Don't know how thier dedicated servers are but I have zero complaints.
(Just adding my experience in case it matters)
i've had a dedicated with Lunarpages for over 3 years now. full control with WHM/cpanel.
Love them
also, their advertised rates are only a starting point. i just deal with their sales guy and negotiate the price.
of course, you can't negotiate the monthly price, but if you opt to pay for quarter / half / full year, the price comes down
I also used Lunarpages for a few years and really had no issues on a regular shared hosting plan. But I did have some questions. The only real issue was you were better off calling than submitting a support ticket. There response time is a few hours and then of course they ask a question so then the circle begins. I switched to mindraven not for the price which was like only a dollar less per month. But I figured that his services would be optimized for UBB and of course if there was a issue with UBB it would be one call for both the ubb and the hosting service. But anyway I have had good service from both.
Blue Man Group There is no such thing as stupid questions. Just stupid answers
We have quite a few servers in an Atlanta Datacenter, we accommodate whatever is needed, send me a PM and we can set you up with something...
thanks!
Are my eyes deceiving me or are all of the redundant power supplies on the top few servers all plugged into the right hand PDU? And all of the bottom servers into the left PDU?
[edit, there is no left side PDU, my mistake]
+1 for all the kvm. That's spendy, but nice to have.
Now I am just using a standard business plan with Lunar Pages and I have had no problems in about three years... and my sites are all pretty speedy and reliable went down once in three years. Happy camper here! Don't know how thier dedicated servers are but I have zero complaints.
(Just adding my experience in case it matters)
i've had a dedicated with Lunarpages for over 3 years now. full control with WHM/cpanel.
Love them
also, their advertised rates are only a starting point. i just deal with their sales guy and negotiate the price.
of course, you can't negotiate the monthly price, but if you opt to pay for quarter / half / full year, the price comes down
We have been known to pay two years out for the best deal - or even more if the deal is good enough.
I was with Hostway (dedicated server) for a long time. Their service, especially support, was deteriorating. Rapidly. When Rick came up with Mindraven's dedicated servers, I ended up switching. The price is roughly the same, but I am more comfortable with Rick at the helm.
Steve
UBB.classic from 2000-2003 UBB.threads from 2003-present!