TextDrive complaints

Rails
1

Hi all,

I have deployed my Ruby On Rails application on TextDrive.

At first everything seamed to be fine. However, lately, response time of
my
application is incredible slow.
Worse, lately there is also a lot of downtime.

I have contacted their support desk, however, they do not respond (at
all,
or very, very late).

Has anyone else these experiences with TextDrive?
And if so, what did you do about it? Did you transfer your application
to a
different host? And if so, which one to choose?

Regards,

Harm de Laat
Kabisa ICT

2

Questions

  1. Which shared server are you on?

  2. What server (apache, lighty, mongrel) are you deploying you
    application.

Reccomendations

  1. Get a VPS, rails and shared hosting tend not to play very well
    together. If you do this, go to RImuhosting.com (they are cheap and
    good). I am a customer there, and they are really nice, and helpful,
    and getting a rails application running there is easy.
3

Harm de Laat wrote:

And if so, which one to choose?

Site5.com is very reliable shared hosting for rails applications.

Settler

4

On Jul 1, 2006, at 7:53 AM, Harm de Laat wrote:

Has anyone else these experiences with TextDrive?
And if so, what did you do about it? Did you transfer your
application to a different host? And if so, which one to choose?

Regards,

Harm de Laat
Kabisa ICT

If you want to stay on shared hosting then I heavily recommend

PlanetArgon.com. Shared hosting for rails is very hard to do right
but planet argon is one of the best for shared rails hosting. I had
issues at textdrive myself when I was on the infamous Gilford server.
If you can afford it a VPS is a great way to go for rails apps but if
you still want shared host costs then Planet Argon is the way to go.

Cheers-
-Ezra

5

On 7/1/06, Ezra Z. [email protected] wrote:

    If you want to stay on shared hosting then I heavily recommend

PlanetArgon.com.

After being burned by another hosting service, I had some questions
about shared plans and PlanetArgon didn’t respond to my second email.
Textdrive responded quickly and that is why they won my account.

Peter

6

On 7/1/06, Harm de Laat [email protected] wrote:

Hi all,

I have deployed my Ruby On Rails application on TextDrive.

I have contacted their support desk, however, they do not respond (at all,
or very, very late).

I switched to TextDrive a month and a half ago and I have always had
very fast and helpful responses from them.

Peter

7

You must realize that you’re not on “TextDrive” but on
SOMETHING.textdrive.com and without knowing the particular machine,
no one can help you. I’ve had great experience on my textdrive host.
Are you aware of the Ongoing Issues (http://help.textdrive.com/
index.php?pg=forums.topics&id=2) and Current Issues (http://
help.textdrive.com/index.php?pg=forums.topics&id=1) to check things
out first?

Take a look there. The help desk is very supportive and the
TextDrive/Joyent persons that I’ve met have all been quite nice.

-Rob

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]

8

On Sat Jul 01, 2006 at 03:36:26PM -0400, Rob B. wrote:

You must realize that you’re not on “TextDrive” but on SOMETHING.textdrive.com and without knowing the particular machine, no one can help you.
I’ve had great experience on my textdrive host. Are you aware of the Ongoing Issues
(http://help.textdrive.com/index.php?pg=forums.topics&id=2) and Current Issues (http://help.textdrive.com/index.php?pg=forums.topics&id=1) to
check things out first?

Take a look there. The help desk is very supportive and the TextDrive/Joyent persons that I’ve met have all been quite nice.

when i was researching hosting for clients, the sheer volume of negative
comments on textdrive ( eclipsed only by dreamhost, which costs a
fraction ) was enough to scare me away. that and the fact that they have
some ‘RailsBase’ service which has been ‘coming-soon’ for a year, which
leads me to believe they don’t know what theyre doing. im sure they’re
well intentioned, but i do think theres economies of scale wrt peering
agreements, colo pricing, and the like, that youre not going to get with
someone who specializes in just rails… which is why i chose site5 and
havent had any issues.

if that railsbase thing ever comes out, i’ll probably try it anyway
(though in the meantime, RailsMachine popped up, apparently delivering
on textdrive’s promise by proxy)

9

I’m watching this thread as well. The one TextDrive server I’m on
(and the only one a care about) has been down all the time.

10

TextDrive’s process watchdog will kill your ruby thread and its parent
process if a certain threshold is met. The ruby parent thread of course
is
your web server if you are using lightty/fcgi. I got a nasty gram from
one
of the admins when I was setting up Capistrano to keep the fcgi threads
managed externally.

11

Get a VPS from rimuhosting.com … fast, reliable, wonderful customer
service.

12

On 7/10/06, subimage interactive [email protected] wrote:

Get a VPS from rimuhosting.com … fast, reliable, wonderful customer
service.

I’ve seen a lot of positive recommendations for RimuHosting, so if I end
up
leaving Textdrive, that’s where I’ll likely end up (Planet Argon is
probably
good, but if I’m going to the trouble of moving, it will not be to
another
shared host).

Any recommendations on OS when running on a VPS plan? I would lean
towards
Debian or Ubuntu, but I wasn’t sure which to choose.

13

Harm de Laat wrote:

Has anyone else these experiences with TextDrive?

Textdrive was hyped beyond hope when they hit the rails scene with
shared hosting. I recall the postings about how great they were (even
in this forum). So I opened an account with them and deployed my rails
stuff. Of course ANYTIME I wanted to demo my software thir server was
down. I literally tried to demo four times and each time (different
days) the server was offline. Well, that was it for me. I moved onto
Linode.com and haven’t looked back.

Textdrive was recently bought out by some other company but from what I
heard the quality of server actually went down hill even more (if that
is even possible).

Cheers,

Jason T.

14

I also had lots of problems with TextDrive downtime. When I
complained about it
they said it was my own fault for using rails!

I now use my own hosted rack.
Andy

15

On 7/1/06, Harm de Laat [email protected] wrote:

I have deployed my Ruby On Rails application on TextDrive.

At first everything seamed to be fine. However, lately, response time of my
application is incredible slow.

There are a ton of possible reasons for that. Without knowing anything
about your setup, it’s mighty hard to diagnose what the problem might
be.

If I were you, I’d pop over to the forums and ask specific questions.
You’ll get specific, helpful answers.

http://forum.textdrive.com/

The community at TextDrive is unbeatable.

Worse, lately there is also a lot of downtime.

What server are you on?

I have contacted their support desk, however, they do not respond (at all,
or very, very late).

Again, I’d recommend going to the forums as a first step, before
anything else. The admins are all on there, all the time, and either
they or experienced customers will likely do their damnedest to help.

Has anyone else these experiences with TextDrive?

I’ve experienced all these things.

The slow response time to my Rails app – I’ve been hosting Rails apps
with TextDrive for over a year and a half now – turned out to be my
fault, due to poor setup.

There was a bunch of downtime on my server – One – a while back,
during a period when TextDrive was expanding perhaps a little too
rapidly for its own good; but things have been stable for a while now.

I’ve had mixed experiences with their support. I’ve found that, in
general, the best approach is to start in the forums. I’ve also found
that they take the priority rating system of the tickets seriously,
and so low priority tickets can take a while to be dealt with. Though
I’ve always had them dealt with in the end.

In general, TextDrive is a fine host. They have their problems, but
they also have their strengths. The community is one of their greatest
strengths, and if you take advantage of it, you’ll be rewarded.

–
Chris B., Hypsometry
http://hypsometry.com/
Web Application Design & Development

16

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006, Andy Pols wrote:

I also had lots of problems with TextDrive downtime. When I complained
about it they said it was my own fault for using rails!

I’ve never heard this. Honestly.

They’re more supportive of rails than nearly everyone – one of their
developers is part of the rails core. No other hosting company has that.

This doesn’t mean they don’t dislike badly-coded rails apps, or ones
that
consume huge chunks o’ ram or processor – and there have been more than
a
couple that have done so. (Not saying yours is one of them, just that
maybe you hit someone right after an incident, y’know?)

I’ve been with TextDrive for more than a year, and couldn’t be happier
with them. Never had significant uptime issues, just one episode with a
zombie process that was difficult to debug (but now that I know what to
look for, it’s never happened again, either).

17

I’ll throw in my 2 cents and say that OCS Solutions has been an
incredible host for me. http://www.ocssolutions.com/

I literally have a BB thread with one of the admins, and every day or
two I’ll post with some random question and he’ll respond in less
than an hour.

They’re fast, reliable, and the best service I could ever imagine.

-Ben L.

18

Debian all the way!

19

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Debian
ROOT access
Lighttpd

How could you go wrong?

20

I have 3 rails apps/lighttpd proxying to apache with subversion/1 php
wordpress blog running

RImuhosting
$30/mo (128mb)

Granted these are not large scale apps, nor are they heavily hit, but
i still have 30mb free as of now

~Jamie