Dreamhost’s MySQL servers are slow and oversold
I love Dreamhost. I use Dreamhost for just about anything I put on the mighty internet. Dreamhost has the best control panel of any hosting company, allows me to become a little hosting company of my own by giving my clients discrete shell accounts with access to all of their sites, and gives me unlimited storage (which I’ve tested with a facebook app which I hosted on Dreamhost that created tens of gigabytes of images). I can even build my own php, ruby, python, etc. I have one, and just one beef with Dreamhost, and it’s a pretty big one.
Dreamhost’s shared MySQL servers are SLOOWWWWW!!!1^H
This problem is most apparent with Drupal sites. If Drupal is anything, it’s hard on the database. Drupal makes more queries than a baby-boomer changing email clients. I consider it a flaw of Drupal’s, but sest lah vye. If you install Drupal 7 Core on the Dreamhost Happy Hosting service, the first page load takes 5-10 seconds, and navigating the dashboard is unbearable. The point is, other hosting companies don’t have this problem. Other hosting companies, for whatever reason (mysql servers running on the same machine as the web-server, butt-loads of hardware, better caching configuration), can run Drupal quickly on a basic plan.
I am writing this blog post with a tear trickling down my nose because I really do love Dreamhost. But I need to be honest with myself and admit Dreamhost’s failing. I hope Mr Dreamhost notices this post when he vainly searches the Google for himself and changes his ways. I hope Dreamhost upgrades their MySQL servers!
It looks like Mr. Dreamhost was cruising the googles for himself after all. After mentioning this post on the Twitter, Mr. Dreamhost contacted me via the Dreamhost support system and offered me a free (up to 300M) MySQL VPS. I’ve taken him up on the offer, even though it does not solve the underlying problem of poor MySQL performance on the shared servers.
In the process, the Dreamhost tech handling the case discovered that my Happy Hosting mysql server lived in a separate data-centre from my Happy Hosting webserver. Can we say flawed infrastructure?
Either way, I’ve gotten some satisfaction, but it’s in no way a solve.
Update: 2012-01-27
I’ve run some AP benchmarks comparing the Dreamhost Happy Hosting performance (about a $10/mo account) with a basic JustHost account (about $4/mo). The site in question runs Pligg, a fairly database-heavy Digg clone. It’s in no way scientific, but does tell a story. Here are the dumps:
Dreamhost
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 2749 66% 2972 75% 3246 80% 3412 90% 4650 95% 5051 98% 9514 99% 9514 100% 9514 (longest request)
Justhost
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms) 50% 2609 66% 2961 75% 3299 80% 3498 90% 3560 95% 3741 98% 3952 99% 3952 100% 3952 (longest request)
dude…i feel the same way, i have a free project under development and dreamhost is failing on me. i share the same opinion that they are over selling their servers. hopefully we will have some fix to the issue, if not .. its bye bye nighmarehost!!! mwahahaha (btw, i just randomly dropped by from google, there are many complaints but very few resolutions
)
I’m afraid I’ve had it. I’m in the process of moving my most important sites away from Dreamhost (http://forpeatsake.com, http://rngit.com) and this one is soon to follow. I’ll do some comparative benchmarks while I’m at it and update this blog post.
I’ve decided to give http://www.justhost.com a shot. They use CPanel, and CPanel to me is like razorblades in my cornflakes, but they’re well reviewed, cheap, and sofar my sites are running a lot faster.