mediatemple’s GPU Overhaul – It’s Great!
Posted by Jon Lee in Site stuff, tags: GPUs, mediatemple
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my web host, mediatemple or (mt) for short. For the most part, they have been very good and their grid server has been able to handle all diggs, stumbles, slashdots and other traffic spikes with no problem whatsoever.
These spikes eat up bandwidth but luckily, many shared web hosting companies out there will offer ridiculous amounts of storage and bandwidth knowing that you will probably use a very small percentage of it. One resource that they do limit you on is CPU usage. If you read the terms of service of pretty much any web hosts, I’m sure you’ll find limits imposed that will greatly limit your service potential.
mediatemple is no exception to this rule except that they are very upfront and open about it. They have a system in place to keep track of how much CPU resource you are taking up. I explain it in more detail in this post but basically, (mt) allocates 1,000 GPU units per month, which averages out to using 10% of CPU for the entire month.
What the GPU Usage Report Used to Look Like
In the past, their GPU Usage Reports was nothing more than a table of numbers. It lets you know how many GPUs you have used but not exactly which scripts or what pages were most resource hungry. The answer was always: “look at your stats to see which page gets requested the most”, which is not at all reflective of how CPU intensive a particular page is.
What they Look Like Now
Almost all of last month, the GPU Usage Reports were down because they were being upgraded with more features. I believe all GPUs during this time were not counted.
After checking yesterday, it seems the system has finally been upgraded and I must say, the new GPU Usage Reports looks nice! Much like the Google Analytics overhaul, it now uses Flash to animate and display a graph showing GPU stats. You can change the timeframe yourself and view by month (billing cycle), by day or even by hour!
But the most important new feature is the Top Scripts and Files table which shows you exactly how many GPUs are being contributed by each page or file on your site(s).
So no more guessing which page is most CPU intensive, now you know the exact GPU usage down to 2 decimal places! They also let you know which pages are potentially problematic as well as tips on how to fix them. Their biggest tip is to fix missing files (404 errors) because apparently WordPress and other content management systems can take up unnecessary CPU trying to find these files.
Speed Bumps
Since their Grid System Upgrade, I actually noticed a decrease in performance but beginning last week, everything improved drastically; transfers were faster, pages loaded quicker and everything was more responsive than ever. So after a few weeks of worry, I am now a happy camper assuming things stay the same as they are.
All in all, I’m loving mediatemple right now! Although they are kind of pricey compared to other web hosts, this GPU overhaul makes it just a little bit more worth it!
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