

Quarter of Media Temple users suffering 18+ hrs downtime - mootymoots
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/category/system-incidents/2009-02-28-cluster-2-unavailable/

======
mdasen
The problem that I have with mt is that they sell themselves as the "don't
worry, put your site with us and nothing can go wrong" company. And that can
never be true. No one can make promises like that, but those promises mean
that they don't tell you things like backup strategies, replication, data
centers, etc. And so you're just left with a promise that they've taken care
of everything.

While I don't expect a company to tell me everything, I much prefer Amazon's
take on the issue. For example, they specifically quote an annual failure rate
that they expect and offer S3 snapshots (which are replicated across multiple
boxes in multiple locations) as a backup. No hype or promises; just the
knowledge I need to make sure I don't loose data.

With companies like Slicehost, Linode, or Amazon I know what I'm getting: a
Xen instance with a certain amount of RAM. I can then replicate data, take
backups, etc. to make sure that my site stays up and running. With Media
Temple, I just get the promise of "hundreds of servers working in tandem to
power [my] websites". Clearly it isn't 500 servers just working on my site or
anything like that. So, what is it? It's a mystery and I find that when
companies try to be mysterious, it's not because they're giving you more; it's
because they're giving you less.

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vito
Glad I switched from them. Such an overhyped company. I've been on Slicehost
since February 23rd of last year and have absolutely no complains. On (mt) I
got shoddy support and a lazy staff (how the hell can you promise svn without
ssh support for that long), for an incredibly overpriced hosting service.

~~~
dawson
Me too, +1 slicehost

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adatta02
(mt)'s gs offering has been absolutely terrible for us. Since the summer
uptime and support have both been equally awful. The only redeeming quality of
the gs service is the insanely large storage (100gb).

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leftnode
We have about 30 sites hosted with them and I have been none too pleased. The
service is shoddy and disapointing. Currently, they are running Subversion
1.4.2 on the gridservers packages, which is nearly 3 years old. I've asked if
they can upgrade to 1.5.x with no avail.

Our customers constantly complain that their sites are down, even if only for
minutes at a time. I know we're only paying $20 a month for about 10 separate
accounts, but I get better service from Dreamhost.

I think they're overpriced. I've dealt with tons of shared hosts for much less
with better service. It seems like people get suckered in with their pretty
website and the fact that a lot of big sites us them without doing much
research.

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chris24
Ouch, that's terrible. I'm glad I switched a couple of months ago -- if I
didn't this would've affected me. :/

Anyone else notice how all of the sites on (mt)'s (gs) client page happen to
be online every time there's a major outage?

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mootymoots
It gets worse for those affected:
[http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2009/03/01/cluster-2-im...](http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2009/03/01/cluster-2-important-
update/)

Sounds like there's gonna be some financial compensation according to some
messages from MT on Twitter to customers voicing their disapproval at the now
24+ hours downtime.

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brm
People pay only $20 per month and then complain like they're paying for
hosting at rackspace. The service is a great value for what it provides. If
what you're doing is that vital, you shouldnt be hosting it on a grid server
at media temple

~~~
dawson
Alternatively just pay $20 to Slicehost or Linode and get better service, oh,
and skip the 18 hours downtime; but sure you're right, when you pay $20 you
shouldn't complain when you receive a crap service--whatever.

------
mootymoots
20 hrs now. It's not looking good... So glad I'm on cluster 4. Twitter is full
of unhappy campers.

This has been compounded by the outage earlier this week too on the same
cluster!

~~~
chiffonade
> So glad I'm on cluster 4.

So glad I lease real servers.

~~~
eli
I'll second that. Rackspace ain't no $20/month, but as with most things, you
get what you pay for.

The only recent downtime was an instance a few months back where I fat-
fingered an iptables config. A tech was on the pulling up the console and
cleaning up my mess while I was still typing out a support ticket.

~~~
chiffonade
Rackspace is on the very high end of the cost spectrum, and the service really
isn't that great. But at least their servers are fast and real, if you/your
organization doesn't care about the budget, they're probably as good a choice
as any as far as quality of infrastructure goes.

Just make sure the person signing the hosting contract actually reads it,
also. You might be surprised to find what they try to bury in there.

It's worth noting that they bought out their lower-priced competition at
ServerBeach.

~~~
callmeed
>> _"and the service really isn't that great."_

Not sure what/who you consider "great" then. Rackspace has been stellar for
us–always available on the phone; answering tickets fast; alerting me when
there are problems.

I've never had a bad cs experience with Rackspace. (I've got 6 servers with
them)

~~~
chiffonade
Their technicians once left 2 active network interfaces down for 45 minutes on
one of our servers when upgrading something and didn't fix it until we called
them.

They're just overworked like most NOC guys.

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tortilla
My non-essential sites are down (I didn't notice until I read it on HN). Good
thing I'm hosting my emails on Gmail or I'd be getting calls from friends I
host for free.

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dw0rm
I just cross my fingers hoping this ain't gonna happen to our customer's site
(Cluster #: 1 Storage #: 4). Maybe they will become a better hosting after
all.

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tptacek
I'd never heard of Bluearc before. Anyone else played with Bluearc storage
gear?

~~~
staunch
I have. If you need a really high performance NAS it's a reasonable choice.
Better price:performance than NetApp, but still not priced as low as it should
be IMHO.

FPGA powered: <http://www.spec.org/sfs97r1/results/sfs97r1.html>

------
chiffonade
We just transitioned a customer off of MT onto some cheap dedicated servers
with Amazon S3 storage and not only did their hosting costs go down, the
performance went up dramatically.

In the business parlance of today, my stakeholder expectations were not
aligned with their soup to nuts value proposition.

~~~
mikeyur
The 'grid' has TERRIBLE database performance and always has.

~~~
chiffonade
They better think of an interim solution, because databases with schemas are
not going away for quite a while, even if they are eventually going to be
replaced by giant single key hash tables like everyone is clamoring about
these days.

