The Scott Preston Blog » Hosting

VPS Woes

Scott — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:38:39 +0000

So for some time I had a reseller account at HostGator. The problem I had with this was eventually they put so many sites / re-seller accounts on the server that it (my site) was down often enough where I spent more time contacting support, than I did having to manage my domain. So I moved to a VPS.

Now I am on a VPS at PowerVPS. The problem now is that the root node is constantly getting overloaded and my site is once again VERY SLOW. I need to send them tickets about twice a week to have them fix the issue, so my VPS will come back to life and be responsive.

What to do? What are my options:

Go back to reseller – No, still too slow and over subscription
Another VPS – Perhaps, but there still might be server and over-subscription issues.
Dedicated Server – Perhaps, but there will be more time setting up, I will need to get something with RAID and and it will be much more expensive.
Hybrid – Interesting, The ideas is to keep a basic site for cpanel and management, then update the DNS for the WWW record to point to another server where I can ensure performance, ie a dedicated machine or a cloud server from Rackspace.

I think I am going to try Hybrid for now, see how it goes.

Hosting Update – PowerVPS

Scott — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 03:06:51 +0000

A few months back I moved everything from HostGator to PowerVPS. So far I am very happy with the results. It features great performance compared with other shared hosting solutions.

More Hosting News…

Scott — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 17:03:50 +0000

I have now moved everything to HostGator. Though they upgraded everything a few days after I joined up, so I had to move accounts again! Now I get 12GB of hosting space, a jailed SSH, PHP5, etc.

Hosting Saga… Don't Use SuperbServers!

Scott — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:19:57 +0000

My first dedicated hosting experience was not cool. Here's some tips:

Buy the cheapest option first to play around with it. I purchased what I thought I would need, raid1, 1gb ram, 160gb hard disk, 30gb FTP, Plesk (which I don't like), etc. Remember you can always upgrade if you find you are happy with them…
Be Careful of Pre-Payment, when going in I thought I would be happy with the options, but low and behold I had to cancel, and to top it they slammed me with a 30day until cancel notice. So this means I had to shell out another 30 days of hosting I would never, ever use… Bogus!!!
Stick with what you know… I should have stayed with WHM/Cpanel over PLESK.
Don't recompile any software (configure/make/make install). The reason for me is PLESK, since it did not fully support PHP 5.1.6, when i did the recompile and install via Apache, PLESK started to blow chunks at some point in the future… Also, depending on who you go with they might install patches or updates that might not work with what you have modified…
Be prepared to spend some time learning things… Pick up a cheap PC someplace then install the SAME distro you will be leasing and use this as your development / test box.

Hosting Saga Continues…

Scott — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:35:24 +0000

I have canceled my dedicated server and am right now back with ResellerZoom because they offer PHP5 under reseller accounts, and have fail over hosting (RAID1). So for now I will stay with them but I am still having a funky email bug with their servers… Who knows I might be changing everything back in a month or two…

Update (12pm) on my SAMBA issues, nothing… Update on my Plesk Firewall issues, nothing… My next server might just have to be Windows2003… Sigh…

Update (3pm) My reseller, continues to bounce my server, mail goes down, apache goes down… I can't access… So, I will most likely be changing again in a month. Man, why isn't there a good web host out there, they all seem to suck equally bad…

If anyone has a good host, please send me a note!

Why can't I find a good host?

Scott — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 12:18:18 +0000

I have been trying to find a dedicated server now for about 2 weeks. They either have the right server or poor service. They have good service or the wrong server, or you need to pay out your butt for both, then you are still not confident in them and need to try it out for a bit.

I actually have thought about getting a T1 line to the house and purchasing my own server, in the end it would be more work on my part, but at least I could count on the server, but would most likely have problems with the networking…

Moving Host – Hello Host Gator!

Scott — Thu, 17 Feb 2005 14:09:43 +0000

Well, I finally had enough of the site bouncing. Moving from ReadySetConnect to HostGator.Com.
So far the performance ROCKS and the support is FAST! The best part is the unlimited domains for just $9.95/month.

I will be telling readySetConnect they get the boot as soon as my other domains transfer.

Moving Again… To PHP

Scott — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 11:06:54 +0000

After all of the hosting experiences I have settled on ReadySetConnect.Com. Though I am not 100% satisfied its the best thing going.

I am moving my site from Java/JSP to PHP. This is fun, exciting, and I am re-learning PERL which I have not done regularly since 1995. I also just put up Emms site. EmmP3.Com she will start doing things with it soon.

Hosting, Hosting, Hosting

Scott — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 21:18:58 +0000

Well, I am giving up on JSP/Java Hosting. Too much instability. I am also moving to a site where my ping times are better. <40ms vs ~100ms range. The site I found is ReadySetConnect.Com.

Plus I am month-month with 50 domains for 11.99 a month. I must thank Sarah Lane from TechTV's The Screen Savers for this advice.

Bad Java Hosting Experience!!!

Scott — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 21:18:39 +0000

I was all excited this week about moving my page to LunarPages.Com. I thought WOW JSP hosting for $9.95, well I am getting what I paid for.

I went through all the trouble yesterday of moving my database to MySQL (which was a nice adventure) and when I went to deploy my .WAR. Nothing happened. Now I go there and try to get just index.jsp to work, and NOTHING. It says that the file is not even there.

So I am pointing back to my old site. via some PHP. This really sucks. I spent so much time getting some cool JSP components built and there is no one around to host them.

Anyway, my support question has been posted for about 24 hours now. I will see if anything happens.

More problems this morning. I am now looking at aplus.net