arghyle

This blog is over a year old, and for the entirety of that time it has been hosted on Media Temple’s Grid. The Grid (from the best I can tell, opened two days before, on Oct 17 2006, so I have been on it since about Day 3. As for me- I am not a professional server admin but have experience with more than a few different hosting services and I have use a number of dedicated servers as well.

I originally started the blog not only to get some thoughts out there, but also to use as a sandbox for web-based ideas and technologies. The Grid seemed perfect for this- cheap, scalable, stable, and easy to use. It is effectively a form of shared hosting so there are some sacrifices that have to be made, but overall the trade-off seemed worth it. For $20 a month with promised stability and the ability to withstand large spikes in traffic it seemed too good not to try. I am guessing a number of people chose it for the same reasons, though I know a number of developers who have used it as a starter hosting account for clients.

The Grid is a complex ecosystem which Media Temple has put together in order for people to share the resources of a cloud of servers while keeping prices down to a minimum. It’s a interesting idea and one that is theoretically much better than relying on a single server to do the job. The problem is that the scale of the Grid and getting each of the parts to work together has caused a number of problems along the way. Along the way the Grid has had serious problems with databases and email, as well as more than a little downtime and some latency issues. Things have gotten better along the way, but it’s been a bumpy ride for a lot of people. [edit- some of these problems occurred on the Grid's Cluster.1 today]

Personally I have not experienced any considerable downtime (that I have noticed) since Oct/Nov/Dec 06, but I have talked to people who have. Part of the confusion with talking with other people about the Grid accounts is due to the complexity of the system and the intricacies of the infrastructure, only some of which is ever seen by the user. (For example, each account has it’s own subdomain [http://sXXXX.gridserver.com/] and there are different Grid Clusters [for example Cluster.2]). From what I have heard, Cluster.2 has had more problems than the first cluster and customers cannot have their account switched from one to the other. As a side point, I don’t use Media Temple’s email, so I can’t comment on that.

I have found the Grid to excel in two areas- stability and ease of use. The cloud design of the Grid means that even under extreme loads (Slashdot, Digg, etc) the site will remain stable and responsive, with no drop in performance. What Media Temple does to account for this is charge you by the GPU (a unit of processor time) and if your account sustains a high load you will be charged for overages. That noted- it is well worth it because what is important to most people is uptime and the more traffic the better, so long as it does not take down the site. As far as ease of use is concerned, the Grid is extremely simple to operate. The backend is slow and somewhat tedious, but does the job without problems or confusion. MT did a great job here, and anyone who is not a server admin should be able to appreciate the simplicity and power of tools available with just a click or two.

One problem I have to this day with the Grid is latency. Regardless of what MT’s support team says, which is not a periodic problem, the average latency times on the Grid are high and they have been since the very start. The image above, courtesy of Pingdom, demonstrates what I am talking about and it has been very disappointing. I am not sure exactly the cause for this, but my guess it that it is a result of two things- the complexity of the Grid’s construction and capacity. The Grid has been a wildly popular service and I am sure that capacity and scaling is an issue.

Another major problem with the Grid is backing up. The backup tool that is built into the admin panel is slow and cumbersome, both of which I am fine with- but lately it has been disabled. For some time there was no automated backup solution and after that there was one, but it did not work reliably. Today (and for some time now) the backup tool doesn’t work. Their recommendation? Try FTP.

Along the way though, the Grid has seen some considerable improvements- enough that even detractors have not given up hope. The SQL containers are a great add-on (even if they do more than double the price of hosting) as are minor, but crucial tweaks, like allowing multiple DB users, an iPhone compatible admin panel, MySQL SmartPool improvements, and better webmail. MT has also been very open about problems and their blog is a great source of information for news and system incidents.

So based on my own experience, I would rate Media Temple’s Grid highly and I would have no problem recommending it to a colleague, so long as they were choosing it for the right reasons. It does have some incredible strengths, and it can scale to handle high traffic loads (if you don’t mind the GPU fees) but it is not a replacement for a dedicated server or multiple dedicated servers. If you have a project that you would not put on a shared server or trust to a $20-a-month hosting solution, you probably should not put it on the Grid. That noted, some very high profile and high traffic sites have been on the Grid (include ReadWrite/Web up until July).

Based on what I have heard- mainly the complaints of people I have worked with- I do have some doubts about the Grid. The problems seem to skew more towards Cluster.2 and use under professional circumstances, but these people had problems that should not have happened, especially some downtimes issues. Lots of problems have been documents in angry blog posts.

As for my own issues, I’m looking forward to the backup tool to be fixed and I have pretty much given up on the hope of decreased latency. As long as my uptime stays at or very close to 100% I can’t really complain too much, especially because the service allow me to very easily host and control a number of sites for just $20 a month. Response times from MT’s tech team have been slow (sometimes over 12hrs) but I have not had any mission-critical problems (at least ones that were not happening system-wide) so I can’t say for sure how much of a problem this is. The knowledge base is excellent so most of the time problems can be worked around with a little research anyway.

Overall, Media Temple’s Grid is still the best low cost hosting solution I have ever used. It has problems, but my account does not get pulled when there is a big traffic burst, it’s very easy to use, and it’s getting better. From the complaints I have read and heard, it seems like my experience may not be representative of everyones, or even a majority of people, but it’s hard to say because the most vocal people are generally those who are the most angry and/or disappointed.

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