views:

145

answers:

2

I'm considering moving my site from a GoDaddy shared hosting account to a Media Temple grid hosting account in anticipation of traffic. However, I first have some concerns with the grid hosting setup.

My site stores a large personal set of data on a per-user basis (possibly 3-4MB per user). At this rate I was worried about blowing over a 1GB MySQL limit in no time. To deal with this I created distributed SQLite databases per user to store large data objects. It's worked wonderfully so far. SQLite is super fast and simple.

I know that reading from and writing to files is different in a Grid Hosting environment. I need to know if this setup is going to cause serious problems. These databases are not (and will not be) highly trafficked. They are personal to the user and will only be touched maybe two locations at the same time (one updating the data hourly at the most, and one or more reading on demand).

I'd like to keep this setup as getting additional space (beyond 4GB) on a MySQL database seems to be a real trouble point.

Will Grid Hosting cause me serious problems? Thanks.

A: 

Just wanted to update on this for everyone else's knowledge...

I contacted Media Temple (through Twitter, actually). They responded within minutes and informed me that SQLite is actually not installed through their Grid Hosting service. It shows up in their phpinfo() if you view it in their Knowledge Base, but it does not actually work.

Looks like I'll be going with a for a Virtual Dedicated for now if I need more hosting power.

jocull
It doesn't work because of network storage. SQLite locking gets VERY picky over NFS, and somewhat picky over AoE/iSCSI. You may have a similar problem with a VPS provider that uses a NAS/SAN.
Tim Post
Wait - did you select your own answer as best answer? How was this not disallowed from day one on SO? I mean, it's commendable that you updated based on an authoritative answer from MT. But you don't get to give yourself best answer credit under any circumstances
coolgeek
I don't think you actually get the points for best answer, but yes, you can give yourself best answer. I've done it before for when I've asked a question and no one came up with the answer. Every question should be able to have a best answer - even if it's yours.
Chris Kaminski
Fair enough....
coolgeek
I don't know, I just didn't want it to hurt my ratio like I'm some kind of jerk who doesn't accept. I didn't do it for the points. Also this thread has had no traffic in like a month lol
jocull
A: 

That's funny, cause I use a sqlite3 db in my php app on Grid. Works fine.

Andrew
Well I thought it seemed weird too, especially since it's in the phpinfo(). The answer I got may be specific to MediaTemple, though.
jocull