Friday, November 2nd, 2007...10:11 am
Media Temple Grid-Server
One month ago on Oct 6th, 2007 we moved a lot of our web hosting to Media Temple (MT) Grid-Server (gs). So far, so good. Actually no… so far, so great. Let me give you a little background and why we made the change.
For the longest, we had hosted ourself via dedicated servers at Softlayer in Dallas. We LOVE Softlayer, and continue to use them on many projects. For example, we have 11 servers with Softlayer being used for YouVersion, Open, Video Streaming, Second Life Quicktime streaming, LifeChurch.tv, and some SMS projects.
Again, I love Softlayer, but I do not want to become LifeChurch.tv Hosting. Well, what I mean by that is we were really getting deeper, and deeper into an area where there are tons of professionals. So we decided that we were not going to become a professional hosting company, and we are going to use professionals. So we looked all around, and choose Media Temple (gs).
Currently we have 2 Media Temple (gs) accounts with an addition Lite MySQL GridContainer. 1 (gs) account for production, and 1 (gs) account for development. What is a GridContainer you ask? “MySQL GridContainer is perfect for customers who require large amounts of database memory and guaranteed performance with absolute reliability for their database-driven websites.”
Sites currently on 1 MT (gs) account- MySecret.tv, 30DaystoLive.tv, Blog.YouVersion.com, SatanHatesLife.com, Spread.LifeChurch.tv and Swerve.LifeChurch.tv.
When I first looked at MediaTemple (gs) I saw that it was $20 per month, and said something like… “There is NO way I am going to use something that is $20 per month to run our sites.” A month in we could not be happier. Here are a few things that I really like about the service.
Outstanding Control Panel
GPU Usage Reports
GridContainers
Reports (Urchin)
So far, there has been one challenge that does not have a solution. SSH. Each $20 account only has one SSH admin log in. So for us, with many different developers and external contractors we are unable to give SSH access to remote contractors. So, we have had to make some procedual changes, but it has not really caused to many issues.
If you are looking for a great place to host your websites, take a look at MediaTemple…it’s hard to beat $20 /month!
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14 Comments
November 2nd, 2007 at 10:40 am
that does look really nice, Terry. I think I might give them a spin on a project here…
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:23 am
You are so much smarter than I.
Los
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Jeremy, I think you will really enjoy MT.
Los, don’t kid yourself. I am an idiot with really smart people around me!
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:06 pm
That is pretty cool. Our church has been searching for a good hosting company as our current really has low cutoffs for everything from database space to storage space to …. The price is okay, but we’re just not getting great value for the money.
Of course, we also have a desire not to put money towards companies that host adult-oriented sites. That means we do pay a premium for our hosting. Not sure if this would fit that category or not. Anyway, they do offer some pretty cool stuff. Only thing I noticed missing was MySQL 5.x support, but I’m sure that will come sooner rather than later.
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Terry –
Yes MT is amazing. They host all my sites also. Can’t beat $20 a month!
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:48 pm
What is Spread.LifeChurch.tv used for ?
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:43 pm
64MB Ruby/Mogrel Container is pretty sexy.
20 bucks a month. What is the catch?
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Looking again.
I could move my blog over there and then do a bunch of projects that I have been wanting to do.
Tempting… so tempting…
November 2nd, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Looks great, what happens when you exceed the 1TB of bandwidth?
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:08 am
Peter,
If you go over its $2.56/GB, so if you plan on passing that 1TB mark you should probably look at other their other plans like the dedicated-virtual (dv) which comes in at $50/mo.
For $20/mo I haven’t been with any “shared” hosting that provides this level of service… like Terry said our only complaint so far is being able to setup individual SSH accounts that can do anything more than access their own home folders, but on the flip side they do provide FTP accounts and you can specify where each user has access rights.
If you need absolute complete control of the box, which we do in some of our projects (Internet Campus, YouVersion, etc), then MT probably won’t be for you, but for a lot of the stuff we do they are great for kicking up a new site quickly and not having to mess with the server administration side of things.
Josh
November 4th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
about that ssh access to individual access,you can add ssh users and allow them to use up their domain-only directorues by opening a ticket in support .I have 4 sites and have four ssh users
November 4th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
A buddy of mine has been using Media Temple for awhile now and loves it. He’s letting me use some storage space and anytime I’ve had to call customer service, the guys were extremely cool and helpful. There’s nothing like good customer service.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
About the ssh accounts… when I opened a ticket about ssh users having access, MT told me they couldn’t do it. Here’s what the MT support tech told me… “The SSH access you give your users is only for their home directory and they are not able to access files in the web directory. Your serveradmin@ SSH account is the only SSH account you have that can access all the files on your grid account.”
Terry, I don’t know if this will meet your needs, but you could have the contractors setup SSH public keys and then add those keys to the authorized_keys file for the main serveradmin user on your MT account. This is a bit clunky, but would allow you to authorize/deauthorize individual public keys as needed, without actually having to give the contractors the password to the serveradmin account. I know this method is a long way from ideal, but it could help.
November 4th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Bill, that is one way for sure to pull it off. Great idea. Hey, seeing your comment here reminded me that I did not contact you this weekend. Crap! Sorry dude.
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