The State of MySQL Address
- Posted by Joshua on November 5th, 2007 filed in News, Releases, Technical, Technology
Good news: we’ve made some improvements to our MySQL platform – and its working.
If you’ve been running a blog like this one, a CMS like Joomla, or one of the other 40+ scripts we offer in our instant-install application that uses MySQL, you’ve probably experienced some degree of slowness at least once this year.
We know it hasn’t been pretty and we apologize for that.
The first step we took in helping to accommodate the growing the demand for CGI-related service began earlier this year when upgraded the entire CGI platform with all new boxes and a new operating system. We were pretty sure this was going to solve most of the slowness complaints, but it didn’t. What it did do; however, was end an era of constant random internal server errors and give us additional flexibility in terms of what CGI-related products we might offer in the future. It was only after the CGI platform was improved upon that the issues regarding MySQL surfaced.
This was a bummer.
The first thing we tried to do was to implement a connection limitation on MySQL users.
This is a good thing because it basically protects you (or your neighbors’) scripts from going hog-wild and tying up every available MySQL connection on the server. Unfortunately, because of a limitation of MySQL 4, there was no way to effectively do that on our platform.
Alas, we set out on the task to update all 15 MySQL boxes with MySQL 5 – a version which DID allow us to put those connection limitations in place.
At the same time, we made available a new version of the MySQL hostname customers use to connect to their database. The implementation of the new load-balanced hostname format was done so that we could easily swap out servers or move around boxes without bringing customers’ sites down.
That went over quite well …
But unfortunately, customers were still complaining about their sites being slow throughout parts of the day.
An end of an era?
I’m pleased to say that I think we’ve finally pinpointed what we believe is the last in a long line of MySQL-related bottlenecks: the hard disks.
To date, we have upgraded the hard disks in 6 of the 15 MySQL boxes to a raided configuration of two 146GB 15K hard drives. And so far, it appears to be resolving the slowness issues we’ve been seeing for such a long time.
(Thanks to 67knots.com for the graph.)
Over the next couple of weeks, we hope to have all customers on servers with the updated configuration. Thanks to everyone for their ongoing patience.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Excellent! My blog running on Wordpress has always seemed slower than it should be (though caching helps), and WP is known to be pretty abusive on databases (especially on shared hosting, such as PowWeb). While it hasn’t been problematic, it was never quite what I’d hoped for in terms of speed. I’m glad to see PowWeb is taking a pro-active approach on dealing with this, which is why I’m always happy to recommend the service.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
My Wordpress blog is also very sluggish even today. (email daily to tech support … which has yielded no replies even remotely resembling what you have acknowledged in this blog. For that I thank you)
I’ll assume since I’m still slow today that my database servers hard has not been updated? Nevertheless, I look forward to the improvements and appreciate at least one person at Powweb willing to explain what has been going on.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:29 am
I manage many websites on PowWeb and other web hosts. I saw very little problems with php/mysql for the websites hosted here. Some databases needed optimizing and were occasionally running slowly. There were a few times where the websites were inaccessible, but this happens elsewhere.
While comparing to other servers, sometimes PowWeb was faster and sometimes it was slower. My clients didn’t want the downtime involved with changing hosts. Most were unaware of problems. They trusted me to monitor and resolve any problems.
The PowWeb forum showed more serious issues. While I even have shopping carts hosted on PowWeb, I didn’t want to host a forum or blog here. Too many people were having problems. Oddly enough, I helped many people get theirs working, so why wasn’t the service consistent?
Well, for those who had the patience to wait (or just didn’t have the time to move), it appears that things have finally improved for most customers. I checked all websites I manage and they are all running fast. (I don’t have any databases on anything beyond MySQL10.)
I hope this means the new year will be much better than this one. Nice job to support for hanging in there. Thanks to staff who shared information during these problems.
I feel like I just got my old car fixed. That could also mean another problem may appear, but that is life. Let’s enjoy winning a battle and hope the war is over.
Thanks!
November 9th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Just because you want it to be true doesn’t make it so… I love your optimism about powweb, but it’s still true that the vast majority of people using mysql have sites that are so slow they are useless.
And it’s NOT how they are configured. I have moved sites to other hosts without one line of code change and they work perfectly… and FAST.
I’d encourage the powweb staff to keep looking into the problem and hold off on the back patting.
November 11th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I see that the official powweb blog used the graph off my script (http://www.67knots.com/67KNOTS/log/dbcheck.php) to make the point about the performance before and after the HDD upgrades.
I’m happy they did so, although just an acknowledgement of the same would have been much appreciated.
But in contributing to the greater good, all’s well that ends well.
November 18th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
I have NOT been happy with the speed of my Wordpress blog hosted on POWWEB, and have in fact recommended that friends look at other hosting solutions because of these slowdown issues. I have several websites on POWWEB and would love to recommend them to others because of the affiliate benefit of doing that– but until these slowdown issues are resolved I don’t feel I can do that. I AM glad to learn the POWWEB staff is continuing to work on these issues, and I sincerely hope the hard drive upgrade will help these issues. I have to say that if these problems persist over the next few months, I am going to seriously look at moving my websites to another server. I’ve been a faithful POWWEB customer for several years and would like to continue in that capacity– it would be a hassle to move my websites and I really don’t want to do that.
I do REALLY appreciate the POWWEB staff’s transparency in blogging about these issues and sharing about steps that are being taken to resolve these issues. THAT is the type of company I want to do business with, so kudos for the open communication.
I hope the next attempted upgrades will succeed in resolving the speed / slowdown issues.
December 7th, 2007 at 12:36 am
ACtually im at the point where i would rather not pay for my service with powweb, until they get things working as they should. I dont see why one of the smallest host companies i deal with,gives me absolutely NO problems and i run some SERIOUS business sites with TONS of scripts, as well as site with basic HTML.
Once, 2 of my accounts where completely deleted by powweb with no explaination. They did a backinstall for me.
Once, my site completly wouldnt work and i lost all income + customers from it.
Once, i was on the phone with “tech support” whom began asking a few odd questions. I asked a second time ” Is this tech support”
the reply was YES.
I replied ” Ma’am, tell me the truth, is this Tech Support or have i been moved to a CALLING CENTER?”
she paused and told me that it was NOT tech Sup and i did infact reach a call center.
The outcome of this ticket and call was bsically
I called tech support, and was getting help from a call center in india. When i showed them i knew the truth, they creatd a ticket. The information for the support went BACK to a tech support office here in the USA who then accomplished the tasks needed and informed a staff in the call center in India. It was again that call center who called me, let me know all is ok. I ended the conversation by asking a couple questions. The person had NO idea what i was talking about. I asked him, Is this a call center and the american office of Tech support didnt bother to call me as instructed but the indian call center did, which also at this point can not answer any of my questions because YOU ARE NOT TECH SUPPORT AND YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY OF THE SKILLS I AM ASKING FOR?
he replied basically “You are correct”
Why am i getting a call center when i need tech support?
why am i always in conversation with people who do not have any of the answers i need, nor can they attain them?
Why does powweb think its cheaper to send calls to a call center for people getting less pay when the call and information has to be forwarded to american offices anyway, and then routed back to india again to make a call to me?
How is 4 times the amount of work cheaper then the original?
Why would you higher someone who has no knowledge of the tasks for any type of pay?
can i come work for you? cause id like to run the company.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
hi, I am unable to updaste my site, this has been the situation since saturday 1.12.07, when i log on to www.powweb.com , the page refuses to load if at all, sometimes i am lucky after around 3 minutes i get to the log in page, but hey presto, another no go, or 5 minute wait to log in ,then nothing, when i go to my site it is so slow i get background (minute pause) titel (minute pause) page uncomplete never shows vistior stats ( doesnt get that far, so all my updating has not been done….i have check the situation from other computers and through friends all say the same,,,,,,
January 13th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Blogs and anything with SQL loads pretty slow now…and I really need to think if it’s worth my time
azrin @ www.azrin.net
and at this moment, I am still getting 500 issues.