[nmglug] anyone heard of dreamhost?

[Mars DeLapp]

Mark Galassi wrote:
> Amigos, I have heard good things of dreamhost and am thinking of
> taking all my hosting needs to them.
> 
> Does anyone have an opinion on them?  Anecdotes?  Are they as
> way-cool-technical as they seem?
> 

Below are some comments about dreamhost posted on another email list I was on.

Mars

------
Howdy,

Dreamhost has been around for years, so they're not a fly-by-night operation...   But, based on an important client's 
negative experience with them in 2003/2004, and their recent string of unplanned outages, I wouldn't trust them with 
anything important - whether paid or free.   They seem very friendly and it looks like they have fun doing what they do, 
which is great, but I'm not confident in their ability to maintain a quality operation.

On the other hand, a friend uses them for his low-priority side project web site (doesn't even have status monitoring 
set up), and he's been pretty happy.

------

I've had experience with both shared and dedicated Dreamhost accounts
for a number of years (dedicated is your own Dreamhost owned and
managed server).  Had great support on the dedicated server, and
almost as good with the shared accounts.  The 200GB disk space for $7
or $8 a month is a pretty good deal.  They provide quite a few common
software packages, too.

My only complaint on the shared accounts is that load can get out of
hand.  They insist they are working on that issue, although I'm not
so sure how much can be done.  And I have not see it too bad lately.

Grabbed this a month or so ago.  ;)

$ w
06:36:40 up 12 days, 13:48, 12 users, load average: 814.81, 444.90, 190.09

sudo kill would be helpful.

------

My Dreamhost too high load story is unfolding right now

I have been having problems with cpu load spikes on my Dreamhost virtual
Crazy Insane Domain account's virtual server, Brandine.dreamhost.com.

I am logging cpu load at <link no worky> (welcome to gasp when
you see it) -- loads of 200 and 300 that last for 10 to 30 minutes. I
contacted Dreamhost support about this when I noticed my MediaWiki site
not responding two day ago.

They said they deal with these slowdowns as they occur. It did return to
normal after 10 or 20 minutes. But I don't want my site regularly going
offline for 10 or 20 minutes without a better explanation than that. So
I started logging this yesterday; it is happenning again. I hope
Dreamhost support will be able to fix this so it stops happenning. I'd
rather not need to log this stuff myself.

So I agree with Bill that Dreamhost is not suitable for anything
that should not go off line for 10 or 20 minutes at random. I'm going
to keep logging this to see how often it occurs.

Q: Are any cheep virtual hosting services, Godaddy.com or 1and1.com for
example, better than Dreamhost? What's your experience?

/Roger  :-)  Dreamy Dreamhost customer since 2000 wakes up
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