MediaTemple does the right thing

November 30, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’ve posted a few critical stories regarding MediaTemple’s new grid server product lately.

But I’m happy to be able to post good news: now MT is doing the right thing. I just got this email:

Dear John,

Our records indicate that you recently opened up a support request related to an open incident, wide-spread problem, or known issue relating to (mt) Media Temple’s new (gs) Grid-Server system. We want to apologize for the inconveniences this may have caused you.

We are compensating you 3 months of service as a concession for the troubles we may have caused you and your site. No action is required on your part. In the next 24 hours this will appear in your account in the form of a credit.

We will be announcing GRID MASTER RELEASE (v.1.1), and version upgrade which fixed hundreds of bugs and will dramatically improve your overall experience with this system.

(mt) Media Temple wishes to thank you sincerely for your patience during the course of these incidents. We believe the (gs) Grid-Server is an amazing system with new technology that has only begun to reach its real potential. Please look forward to announcements in the next few days relating to our new master release.

Thank you again.

Best Regards,

(mt) Media Temple
Hosting Operations

Good move, Mediatemple. Stuff happens, errors occur: that’s reality. I’m looking forward to good continued service from MT.

[tags] MT, mediatemple, customer, service, john koetsier [/tags]
               

9 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Thanks for the info, Ross.

    Makes me wonder if they’ve only credited accounts of people who have

    a) noticed the problems
    b) complained about the problems

  • You know what I said to mt “I no need this compensation” for me getting $30 when I got lost thousands does not change any opinion about media temple. They service sucks like never before. A teenagers running hosting service in the basement would offer you better stable service than they do. Like I said “mediatemple is a worst hosting provider of the month”.

  • I disagree that “teenagers running hosting service” (aka Dremhost, Bluehost, etc) would do better. I know because I’ve tried. I think MT is the real deal, for a number of reasons. one is true 24-7 phone support that is not outsourced. Another is that they (unlike MySpace and Dreamhost) moved OUT of the Garland building n LA after this summer’s data center melt-down. They also offer ROCK SOLID dedicated virtual servers and boast a huge Plesk array.

    Having said that, I have multiple clients on the Grid, as well as my own site. Now from what I’ve gathered, and from a long conversation with a manager at MT, they are having some very serious short commings with the Grid. For one, MySQL is just not scalable in the way they are trying to scale it on thier clusters. Fine, I get that. But… we’ve been having this problem for over two months now. They have tried different hardware and some tweaks… in my opinion, they need to rethink their whole clustered MySQL approach. If they can’t figure this out, I am transferring about 12 active sites away from the Grid and back to a dedicated virtual server. That thing NEVER EVER went down and was lightning fast with just as many features at about 4x to 5x the cost.

    In closing, I think MT just hasn’t had to deal with the influx of support calls and requests until the Grid. And while they are trying to work this out, they are trying to scale and fix a very new type of clustered hosting environment… the Grid. If you think this type of clustering is easy, ask the guys at Mosso.com They have crashed and burned on their offering. All sense of panic has been lost and they are eternally in beta testing for everything. And they charge $80/m and come from Rackspace. Maybe Grid 1.1 is the answer- maybe it’s just a way for MT to buy some time. I think it’s worth waiting a few more weeks to see.

  • hmmm – I am starting to wonder if there is just not too much hype going on. MT AND Mosso both claim to be better than the dog’s bollox and each other. Mosso like you say seems to be in eternal beta mode. I was surprised, you can chat with their staff. very nice. But everything seems so strange. no root, no php.ini, you can change in .htaccess, how much PHP memory?: 8, 16 or 32. So I can define that in the .htaccess? No answer. Not even clear what version of PHP they run, or of SQL. ‘Anything will run’ that is any ‘standard application’. Given the idiosyncracies of some GPL programs I feel uncomfortable.
    I did the ‘virtual tour’ of their control panel. very strong on pretending you can resell yourself, but very weak on actual management of the website. Webmail, FTP, https access to webmail, IMAP, TLS? No mention.
    Mediatemple is much more forthright, and they provide you with PHP.ini access and they have full PHP 4 5 init listings. So what is wrong? How can they do that at a fifth of the price? Why so much anger around when all seems so great? Is something on fire? 😉
    Looks like I will stick to crap shared hosting as this is what gives me what I need. Except that they also suck, but for different reasons.
    350$ /month INETU Vserver anyone?

  • For all of the complaints, (mt) has a great DV server starting at $50/month. Their support is top-notch and friendly, and my experience with the dv platform has been nothing short of amazing.

  • Dear Grid Server admins and developers,

    Here is your report card, as requested:

    http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p-Ab3UaY590VDhZCTaDinHg&gid=2

    Your subscribers talk, they blog, and we all want to know: Is there any sense of urgency anymore, regarding the poor Grid performance? True, we don’t have the huge periods of downtime anymore. The control panel is wonderful. MySQL availability seems to have been fixed, even without the containers. But we’d like to know if this overall lack of Grid performance will get better or if you feel that the lack of speed/response time is acceptable at this level.

    Sincerely,

    ~ Your Grid subscribers ~