Results 1 to 19 of 19
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26

    Looking for good MySQL performance and Digg-proof-ness

    Hi all,
    I run a Wordpress-based website that has on average 300-500 visitors a day, but now and again sees traffic spikes from links (Digg et al) to up to 10,000 visitors per day for 2 or 3 days. The site is mostly text, with a few video files (<20Mb) or mp3s served through flash containers.

    Although I keep the wp-super-cache plugin enabled so that most pages during high traffic are served as gzipped html, the dynamic performance on my current well-known host is dreadful. My queries are relatively light for a Wordpress installation AIUI - each page performs between 12 and 30 DB queries, but when not served from the cache pages can currently take up to 6-7 seconds to load even at times with very low traffic. The current host blames my Mint stats installation or the Bad Behavior plugin, but a mirror of my site loads reliably with page execution times of under <0.3s both on Apache running locally and on a cheap-as-dirt shared hosting account that I keep around.

    So I am looking for a new host, on a budget of around $20 per month. From my research so far, the MediaLayer AppLayer LX package looks as though it could be ideal for me. Any other suggestions, or things I should be looking out for?
    TIA,
    W

  2. #2
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Hiding under your bed
    Posts
    1,275
    For digg-proofness you should keep an eye on clustered hosting as no server can really keep up with a website making it on the frontpage of digg.
    Cheapest Multiple C Class IP Hosting

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    Well, my current host is one of those well-hyped "clustered" solutions, and although it has kept serving with traffic spikes of the size I mentioned, the performance is too bad on a day-to-day basis.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    Quote Originally Posted by cabron View Post
    For digg-proofness you should keep an eye on clustered hosting as no server can really keep up with a website making it on the frontpage of digg.


    In the past I had a news website (Google page ranking 7) which was frequently on the frontpage of Digg, Slashdot, Fark, Reddit, NowPublic, etc. As you know, these sites generate different shapes of load on your site -- from just a few hours to several days. To launch that news site I used a cheap shared hosting account from jodohost as my traffic was zero and I didn't expect a lot of visitors. Interesting, I never had to upgrade because I never had downtimes, slowness, host complains, etc under the "digg/slashdot/fark effect".
    Last edited by dotHostel; 01-25-2008 at 07:16 AM.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  5. #5

    A questions re requirements

    hi there,

    What are your hard disk requirements overall? how much space do you use and are there any (non-Wordpress) requirements - other than, I assume PHP and MySQL?

    Cheers

    Ben

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    Hi Ben,
    Oh yes, good questions. My MySQL DB is <10MB; my total storage requirements <500MB. I have no other anticipated requirements besides php/MySQL (my other sites run on Wordpress also). My bandwidth requirements should not be more than 15-20Gb/month from experience thus far.
    Thanks,
    W

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    UK
    Posts
    554
    Advertising your own services isn't allowed on this forum, BarrowPenguin. Your posts are going to be nuked.

    Wittgenstein08, hosts that I've spoken to about the digg effect are Mosso, Crucial Web Host, Eleven2, iMountain, and Media Temple -- they all say they can handle it, although Eleven2 did notably use the word should, and mentioned that only if MySQL caching is enabled (not sure if they mean at the application or server level here).

    Hosts that can probably handle it are ReliableSite (clustered), Media Layer, and Cartika Hosting (clustered). However, the latter two may not affordably provide you with the bandwidth you need to survive a digg effect.

    Media Layer is apparently introducing something in the future to better fit customers of your type (ie: users who might use up more bandwidth on static content than usual such as video and audio), while their current plans are clearly geared towards the assumption that almost all bandwidth is spent on dynamic content with some supplementary images/etc.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    Hi Ryan,
    Thanks for that useful info. Actually, it seems the greater proportion of my bandwidth is currently taken up by serving the dynamic content of text-heavy pages during traffic spikes rather than by my handful of media files, but that might not necessarily always be the case. I'm prepared to set up backup serving for the media files from another spare account or Amazon S3 or somesuch, if I can get really solid and scalable performance for the dynamic content.

    Of the other companies you mention, I'd be interested in anyone's opinion or experiences of Crucial vs ReliableSite vs MediaLayer in particular for my type of situation.
    Cheers,
    W

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    This post about MediaLayer has me interested:
    Quote Originally Posted by taylorwilsdon
    Medialayer is very, very fast. I received exactly 14914 unique visitors for a total of 277318 hits to my Wordpress (yes, wordpress) blog today (the 7th) and it didn't even whimper. Load times are excellent and I'm across the country from them. I'm on their shared application hosting for $30 a month and its faster then any dedicated server I've used recently.
    Exactly what I'd like to be able to say... If Taylor is around, perhaps he could clarify which ML plan he is on? I see only $20 or $40 options.

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    It sounds a bit exaggerated. It is a very low traffic to make a lot of difference, if any. I think would be nice to list the config of these dedicated servers and their respective data centers unable to sustain traffic handled by a shared hosting plan.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  11. #11
    Wittgenstein08,

    As a MediLayer customer I can say they are truly top notch and should be able to survive your traffic spikes, if you give them a try I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Detroit, MI
    Posts
    1,962
    Quote Originally Posted by Wittgenstein08 View Post
    Well, my current host is one of those well-hyped "clustered" solutions, and although it has kept serving with traffic spikes of the size I mentioned, the performance is too bad on a day-to-day basis.
    Can you share which host?



    Regards,

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    I don't want to make this a thread about the failings of my current host.

    RossH, thanks for the opinion.

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Detroit, MI
    Posts
    1,962
    Quote Originally Posted by Wittgenstein08 View Post
    I don't want to make this a thread about the failings of my current host.

    RossH, thanks for the opinion.

    Understandable, it's just that a lot of these hosts with clusters market how high-performance their clusters are. It would be nice to see a real-world review so we can start quantifying the marketing.



    Kind Regards,

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Posts
    294
    Your website should be fine on hosts such as MediaLayer, MediaTemple, Crucial, etc. You should though split your media onto other solutions such as Amazon S3. Have you realized FAMFAMFAM was on DreamHost all this time? It was on Digg for quite some time too.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Posts
    2,752
    Times ago I did some tests using Amazon S3. I began the tests expecting to replace some of my servers with a fast and reliable service and finished the tests frustrated. Latency was very bad, donwload speeds not that good, and uploads faulty.

    Later I found more people complaining about S3.

    ".. the performance is absolutely terrible outside of the US, which I really noticed since I've been in Taipei. In addition to that, it's simply not reliable. There are extended and unannounced periods of downtime, so you shouldn't be using it in production (except maybe for redundancy or backup purposes)."

    http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/20...-vs-amazon-s3/
    Users rethink Amazon S3 after performance issues
    http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/...246658,00.html
    Amazon S3: Outages, slowdowns, and problems
    http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/01...-and-problems/
    Before you put all your eggs into Amazon's basket I suggest you run performance tests reflecting your visitors geolocation or at least run some simple checks ( http://lg.level3.net http://host-tracker.com etc)

    Maybe at this time the Amazon S3 service was improved.
    Last edited by dotHostel; 01-26-2008 at 05:48 AM.
    You will only find out how good a provider is when the going gets tough

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Paris
    Posts
    26
    Thanks to all for the advice.

    I figured I had nothing to lose by signing up for a month to MediaLayer's cheapest offering and testing there.

    First impressions: holy @!*? this thing is fast. (And I'm in Europe.)

    Interesting info re Amazon S3: if I migrated, it would probably be easier (and cheaper) to serve my media files from my old account until it expires and then sign up for some cheap oversold shared-hosting account exclusively for that purpose. (Although I guess that might be often strictly against TOS...)

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Location
    Massachusetts
    Posts
    484
    I use Medialayer, they should work well for you.

  19. #19
    Join Date
    Aug 2004
    Location
    Houston, TX
    Posts
    1,405
    We have had many sites withstand the Digg effect, we probally get one or so a day. Usually it will work just fine cause we are using litespeed. The only issues we ever have with our customers are when they they have to make like 50 mysql queries per page load. Then is is very very inefficient.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •