--= TECHUNIX RELOADED =--

I have finally had it with Dreamhost. The upside: it is very cheap. The downside: you get what you pay for...

In the past couple of weeks, all my sites have been down at least twice for extended periods of time (>5 hours). It could be more, but I quickly discovered that running Nagios to monitor Dreamhost's server was completely innefective, since it is alarming pretty much all the time for one thing or another. Well, this is not acceptable, and I really don't want to host any websites under these conditions. (Have a look here, and don't forget to browse through the comments section for a better picture. )

As a result, I am in the process of moving all my sites away from Dreamhost, on to Cari.net. Sure it is a lot more expensive, but at least I get my own server, with root access (which is practical when things go wrong on my end). I also enjoy not having my rsync killed by some tweet because it was apparently using too many CPU cycles... yeah, whatever... Finally, the fact that I can run FreeBSD on said server, and configure it exactly like I want is a definite bonus. A similar configuration on my home server has been rock solid for the past two years. (the only thing missing was the bandwidth, which is where Cari figures in). Also, Cari will offer automated data backup, redundant network and power. So everything should be peachy once I put in the initial effort of configuring everything.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when I wrote to Dreamhost support that my main website had gone slow as molasses, through no change on my part. The answer was a staggering "well, php is not a fast language". Funny though, the same site running on Cari.net (or even on my home server for that matter) is lighting fast. Not to mention also the number of customer posting relating to database slowness... that's probably completely unrelated! (yes, that is sarcasm...)

What is funny though, is that during every outage they experience, among all the legitimate complaints, you always have some customer saying things like "don't give the guys a dreamhost a hard time, they do the best they can!". Well, if it were a free service, then sure... but they have a LOT of paying customers, and should definitely have the means to buy the proper equipment. My guess is that they are experiencing a failure in design. For example, for every site hosted, you don't have just one single point of failure, you have at least four (in the server world. I am not even going to touch the networking side of the equation...). First, you rely on your main web-server to be online. In order to work, you also need the SAN to be online, so your files can be accessed, then you need the database server to be online for your dynamic content, and finally, you need the mailserver to be online in order to receive/send messages. Also, it is nice when Dreamhost's own server are working, so that you can manage everything. 

Now go ahead and browse to the link I posted above. Do you get the picture?

I am not even going to go into details on the security aspect of this equation. A fresh reminder? sure, have a look here:  Dreamhost FTP accounts Hacked. I am not even going to hint at the fact that the databases server are shared and accessible through the network to thousand of customer, and the only thing protecting you is a password.

Anyway, let's sum this rant up... I am paying a lot more, but I am getting a lot more for my money with Cari.net. Also, if something goes wrong it wiill most likely be my fault! (save for power and network outage).

Happy trails!