The Need for Speed: eikimartinson.com Moves to mediatemple.net
As of yesterday this site is now hosted at Media Temple on my own "Dedicated Virtual" server. It's not exactly a true dedicated server, but it appears as such to me - I get a root login and the ability to reboot the "machine". I get statistics based on Apache logs (something my old service, csoft.net, did not provide for shared hosting). I'm a good deal more insulated from all the other users than I would be on a shared service, which is good for application performance, reliability, database security, etc. But best of all, regular users of this site will notice load times have shortened by a factor of 5!
Okay, the comparison is a bit apples and oranges - I'm paying 3 times more as well, and have moved onto an entirely different level of web hosting. But I'm responsible for enough sites now that concentrating them into one dedicated (ok, "dedicated-virtual") server was the right move. And honestly, shared service or not, there was no excuse for csoft.net's poor reliability, including hours of unplanned downtime several times a year, flaky mail service, and one episode in which a hard drive crash caused all mysql databases to revert to data months out of date. Thus far I haven't found out that Media Temple is no better, so I made the move and couldn't be happier - the switch has been seamless and trouble-free. If that changes, please feel free to report any problems in the comments, and maybe I'll have to move again. If it doesn't, sit back, do some reading, and enjoy that dedicated-server feeling of limitless speed and power!