Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Pair slow? Databases especially?

[avocado]

I'd been really happy with Pair's service until recently, and have a few clients' sites hosted there, but recently (the past 3-4 months), some of them have seemed extremely slow -- particularly those that rely on databases. They've even switched some of our DBs to different servers, but the problem persists. Has anyone else been seeing this? Or am I just unlucky?

[ImageLeet]

have your contacted them regarding the issue, did they offer you some solution or given an reasoning.

[Jedito]

Do you know if it's a problem with their database servers being slow? the connection?
Do you have any Queries/page generation speed result?

[avocado]

ImageLeet: When we report the slowness, they'll usually go in and tweak something that restores responsiveness -- for a little while. Trouble is, I can't monitor the site 24/7 and alert them every time the bleeping database slows down. Every now and then they'll offer to shuffle us to a new DB server, but so far that hasn't helped much.

Jedito: it's definitely a DB server issue, not a pipe issue or even a web server issue, as non-DB-reliant pages on the same server load acceptably quickly (5 sec or so) at the same time that the DB-driven ones are taking 30-60 seconds to load. As for DB server vs. DB server connection.... no clue.

I have two apps on separate DB servers. One performs 1-3 extremely simple queries (one 3-table select or 3 1-table inserts) per page load. This one was literally timing out half the time until they moved it to a third server. Now it's just slowish (15-30 sec page load) sometimes and OK the rest of the time.

The other I don't have numbers on (osCommerce catalogue / cart). It's much more complex, but even that shouldn't be taking over 60 seconds to load a page displaying four products and a cart status. They've offered to move that one (and we're planning on taking them up on the offer later today), but just in the past 24 hours, we've a) seen it crawl to a halt; b) experienced DB connection errors; c) had it restored to very snappy loading; d) crawl to a halt again.

Since we're now seeing this sort of problem on three separate servers, I was just wondering whether they're experiencing some sort of system-wide trouble with their database servers. If I'm just getting bad luck with where I land, I'll stick around and hope they can clear it up. If this is a broader problem, I may need to start looking at other options.

[ldcdc]

Since we're now seeing this sort of problem on three separate servers, I was just wondering whether they're experiencing some sort of system-wide trouble with their database servers.

It would seem easy to conclude that they're overloading the database servers... However, given that you had the databases placed on 3 servers so far (probably among the lighter loaded ones, it wouldn't make sense for them to move you to any others), it could also be something wrong with the scripts that you're using. It all depends on how you look at it. I'm curious, did you confront Pair with the way things look from your side of the fence? What was their reply?

[avocado]

Well, I've got an update.

We moved our other DB, and after a while, once again it began to crawl (intermittently). We contacted support again, explaining that we'd just moved the DB, and a rep said he'd look into the problem. He was able to reproduce the slowness, but there was nothing wrong with our site's load on the DB, and other customers on the same DB server were not having response time issues.

He decided to investigate the web server we're on (as opposed to the DB server). It surprised me that he thought the problem might be there, as non-DB dynamic pages were mostly loading reasonably well, and load has generally been very low, but I'm no sysadmin.

It turned out to be an almost completely unrelated I/O issue on the web server, caused by another customer's use of specific features. They said they'll address it with the other customer. So far things are better, although I'll continue to monitor it.

I'm actually very pleased -- I thought they handled the ticket very professionally and promptly. It took a while to resolve, but because the real problem was not obvious, rather than because they were unresponsive or unconcerned. They've also restored my confidence in their ability to host dynamic sites.

[ldcdc]

Thank you for the update avocado. Indeed, some things can have quite obscure causes. It's good to see that Pair has knowledgeable staff that took the time to investigate the matter.

I hope this is the end of issues for you.