Web Hosting, Virtual Dedicated Servers, and Clusters - My experiences

Hi Rammahi,
This brings me to notion that i need to do some more reviews of hosting companies as I have been through a few of them since i am a very heavy hosting user. I am always looking for the best value.

So depending on your needs and your budget these are my recommendations:

Under $7 contenders:
Godaddy.com : Their servers are reliable and never had a problem with ther linux system until I tried to load over 500 domains in my account. I was then told that I had network violation because I was redlining the server; this is understandable. But I must warn you that their console broke down before I got to the network violation; I had domains stuck in their system in limbo for weeks upon weeks, without any action in their system with several tickets. Godaddy is fairly good about customer service, but don't expect top notch ticket support for 7 dollars a month (I can also understand this; you are hardly paying for an hour worth of a persons time and their system is meant to be self-service in order to give you those cost-savings).

A eDealDomains.com - They have $3.99 Windows and Linux Hosting; but this limits you to one domain. For $7 you can get a shared hosting plan with 'unlimited' domains.

eDealDomains provide some better domain rates for .coms so is why I have an account with them. They have all the luxuries that Godaddy does from what i can tell; but they have same limitations that Godaddy does. You can find their hosting deals here: AllRightHosting.com


You can get all the benefits of the $1.99 domain with any non-domain purchase as well as free email, and free hosting with your domain purchase, etc. I ended up using a virtual dedicated server for my purposes and it seems to be working out since I get 500 gbytes of transfer per month.

ReliableSite.net - They deserve an honorable mention as I have an account with them and I have some of my major sites with them since I had to move off WebHost4Life.com. What they offer: Windows load/balanced clustered hosting solution compatible with PHP/MySQL projects. Since its Windows, you get ASP, ASP.NET. Cons: its not the cheapest, it seems to be a small operation, it can't handle everything I can throw at it. I did some research and a Windows 'Clustered' Solution seems to be limited to 4 (or was it 8?) Servers as compared to what I was looking for - something more akin to a Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud power for a shared hosting environment.

Alas, my friend pointed me out to mediatemple.net. I do not have an account with them, but I am very curious as their copy and graphics make me want to try it out. I think that I would have to end up going with the dedicated virtual solution, but at $50 it seems a bit expensive as compared to the $30 virtual dedicated server I have with edealdomains.com; with almost the same specifications. Mind you there do some to be a series of perks to media temple that make it a better product: it runs on a linux cluster service (I don't think that is the case for edealdomains.com, but I could be wrong). Media temple provides you with reseller tools for the service you are purchasing. Chances are you will only use a small portion of the resources allocated to you and they have provided you with whm/cpanel solution for reselling. They have a shared solution starting at $16.67 called the Grid, but its limited to 100 domains; so it doesn't work for me. But they do seem to have instant activation.

Webhost4life.com Hosting Review

Webhost4life? More like webhost 4 one month.
If you are thinking of using their linux cluster for a large web project, DON'T.
Read on...


Call ID 416205
Status OPEN
Logged 3/3/2008 2:18:31 AM
Priority 1
Categroy Service Interruptions (Urgent)
Subcategory Websites

Elaspsed Time 2 Day(s)

website down
Description:
----------------------------------
please go to the website, it gets connection timed.
it might be back when you get to this, but I am putting in the ticket as it is currently down.


Error Message:
----------------------------------
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage

Most likely causes:
You are not connected to the Internet. (yes i am)
The website is encountering problems. (looks like it)
There might be a typing error in the address.

What you can try:
Diagnose Connection Problems

More information




URL to see the error:
----------------------------------
http://www.SAVEonAtoZ.com


It was working before.:
----------------------------------
Yes





Raymond (Staff)
3/3/2008 8:43:19 AM Dear client, your site is fine now. There maybe temporary routing issue before, would you give it a try now?

Please feel free to let us know if your problem persist.

Thank you.


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Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 3:13:25 PM yes it resolved itself, but i am now getting this issue. pleaes help...

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/2.0.59 (CentOS) Server at saveonatoz.com Port 80
Erwin Yu (Manager)
3/3/2008 3:47:28 PM We've just suspended your account. Your account was the one that caused 100% cpu usage and bring down the server. You'll need a dedicated server for it because all of your sites added together are way too busy for the system to handle.


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Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 3:54:10 PM can you please give me some warning! your advertisement says:

Our Clustering technology will also give you high scalability. If your website begins to scale up, we can simply add another server to the cluster to offset the load.

This is exactly the reason why I went with this solution!

I can move some of the domains off the server... but i have traffic that I am paying for etc!
Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 4:12:23 PM I have routed about 500 domains to another server that I have as a backup (ip address 208.68.171.70). This will significanly relieve your servers.

I would also remove some functionality which might be causing issues with spiders asking for too much information: but it seems you have disabled my ftp access as well.

I suspect it might be causing the issue, because its new functionality that we added and the site was running fine for few weeks previously.

will you reinstate my account now? Please allow me to try and address the issue before you discontinue allowing me to use your service..
Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 4:18:20 PM can you please give me ftp access to my files so that I may retrieve the files and images which I may still need

thank you
Erwin Yu (Manager)
3/3/2008 4:35:46 PM We didn't have time to give the warning, we were checking on it and when I am about to send the suspension notice, you open a ticket already.

Yes we do have cluster, but your usage is just too high and there's no way we can provide service to your kind of website.

I would suggest you getting a dedicated server for this kind of usage. I've re-enabled your account, please do not point the domain back, or else we'll have no choice but to terminate your account.

Thanks.


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Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 5:22:47 PM i did not move the domains back to the server, yet my account is disabled - so i am assuming that it is still too much for your servers to handle...

where does this leave me?

if you will not host my site, can you give me ftp access to retrieve my files ; there are still some that I need to get off the server. Please let me know how a refund is to be handled.
Erwin Yu (Manager)
3/3/2008 5:31:34 PM The server just got killed again, we've disabled your account. I can zip the files for you to download, which folder do you want me to zip?


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Mauricio Zuniga
3/3/2008 5:39:05 PM i need the following folders:

/images

/includes

/articles

and any files in the the root folder
Yue (staff)
3/3/2008 10:58:05 PM Your message is urgently passed to our linux server technicians. Would you please check it back later? Thanks


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Mauricio Zuniga
3/4/2008 3:20:16 PM [ Escalate request ]
I have moved almost everything off the server in terms of traffic: I can agree to limit the number of domains on your server to about 200 versus the 1000 I had. I think that should take care of maxing your server as it is only 20% of what I was sending in terms of spiders, traffic, etc...

If you would like, you can delete all of the domain aliases except for SAVEonAtoZ.com and then I will start from scratch...

Please reinstate my account or make arrangements to issue a refund.
thank you,
mauricio
Jack (staff)
3/4/2008 5:15:27 PM Sorry, we won't be able to host you. Please FTP to get your .tar files now.

Thanks.


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After all this transpired, I finally got my files off the server. But the problem remains that they have not credited my account: it looks like they will, but they made me jump throug more hoops to 'confirm' my identity and that I indeed wanted to cancel the account. Mind you, this is in the same exact ticket... so the entire history of what had transpired (and that they would not provide me with the services I paid for)

It left me infuriated; You terminate my account even though it seemed to me that it was false advertising AND then you make me jump through more hoops to confirm my identity and that I wanted to cancel the account. I mean, come on - your company already said it would not provide me with the services and I already paid for them - just credit my account already so I can move on.