completed Have to move off Arvixe NOW -- Linode? Digital Ocean? Other?

@ Team JR -

The new TheChocolateLife.com is up and running and there are people using it -- which means that the database server performance is truly awful. In fact, the first message I woke up to this morning was, "Whoa, dude, the new site is waaaay slow!"

At this point I know I need to move to an upgraded server and I don't know that they offer any better db performance with Arvixe's upgraded server packages.

I see you moved on to Linode and Digital Ocean. I have never managed a cloud server so looking for a little input/advice here (and maybe a little help making the move as quickly as possible as an FTP down and back up is going to be painful) as I made the Arvixe choice based on your recommendation).

Otherwise, people seem to be happy with the new site and the only design issue I have to resolve is a menu colors issue on mobile devices.
updated by @claygordon: 02/25/15 04:38:35AM

Yep i need to get off SLOOOOOW Arvixe as well before I go live. But I would need a managed server.
Someone recommended BlueHost and DreamHost to me recently, that they liked them. I have no clues but I heard they might actually do the moving for me if I ask. ? I', hoping JR will make some new managed server recommendations (other than Arvixe).

Clay- that's a bummer! I'll be watching how you resolve this.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

I contacted Arvixe by chat and here's what we're doing right now.

I have upgraded to a business class server to see if this addresses the db performance issues. They are pro-rating my annual personal class payment and giving me one free month to assess if the performance is better. The transfer window at Arvixe is set for tonight. They are doing the server-to-server move and then sending me the IP address. I update DNS at my registrar and we should be back in action pretty quickly.

As I have no experience managing a server I did not want to go with Arvixe's least expensive VPS dedicated server option.

I have been a Bluehost customer for a long time but have never run anything "big" on my account. A bunch of small Wordpress accounts. I had hoped run what I hope will become a large Wordpress site on Arvixe, but I don't know, now. I would have to upgrade from my dinky basic account if I were to.

Customer support has been reasonable and I have only had them get mad at me once when a couple of Wordpress installs were not managing their logs properly and I was hogging disk space. I deleted the bloated logs and changed some setting so they don't accumulate any more and I have not heard a peep out of them.


updated by @claygordon: 01/20/15 09:57:32AM

Clay do you mind if I ask how much costs the Arvixe business class managed server plan is that they are moving you to?


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

$30/month with discounts for contracts. I will let everyone know by Friday if the swap made any meaningful difference.

Hmm, not bad. Yes please keep us updated!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

im using reliableservers.com and its real fast


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soaringeagle
head dreadhead at dreadlocks site
glider pilot student and member/volunteer coordinator with freedoms wings international soaring for people with disabilities

Thanks @SE for the recco. I don't feel qualified to jump into a bare metal environment where I am expected to manage the server - and they want an extra $40-100/mo for cPanel and, and, and ...

Maybe if I felt I was competent to manage the server, or thought it was important to me to learn how to manage a server I would feel differently. But I want to focus on my community and on chocolate, not worrying about Apache config files and working from a command prompt.

I too am in the same boat currently and have multiple servers testing them out this month, Linode is defiantly the fastest at MySQL so far, and a big kudos to Brian as none of this would have been possible without him.

I am beginning to see why some people don't like whm/cpanel, they really do take up a lot of resources on the server. The trade of then is having to learn the command line which is daunting for me. But having run servers for years what you find is you need support a bunch at the start and maybe not again until you make a major change. That's what I liked about my old host, they offer on demand support, $25 per month, that you can only purchase on the months you need it. But their MySQL performance was my bottleneck too.

i am paying alot cause im using alotta space
i got managed forthe 1st month free double the ram free
so getting it all set up is on them once its set up there shouldnt nbe much need to change anything but i am using cpanel

b4 that i was on hostforweb.com wich was great service ..the best but they didnt offer large ssd drives and the performance wasnt as good as i wanted

im paying the extra just so i know my sites going to always be fast and scalable
though im kinda pushging the limits of my 1tb drive already so
paul
i know u can run the delete tool tocleanup files wich helps..by like 3%
once im done thefinal import tho can ning archives and ning media folders be deleted
or are they still needed


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soaringeagle
head dreadhead at dreadlocks site
glider pilot student and member/volunteer coordinator with freedoms wings international soaring for people with disabilities

Well, this could have been a real problem - but was patient and I worked it all out.

I initiated the transfer request and got an email back from Arvixe saying that I was using too much disk space (on an UNLIMITED account) and I was storing backups on the server against their Acceptable Use Policy.

It turns out that the directory with the Jamroom install had about 34GB in it and the Softaculous backup folder was about 37GB. I deleted the Softaculous backup and ran the the Delete Media tool (my browser crashed towards the end of that process but everything appears to be okay - I think the process was still running on the server, anyway, by the time I got the browser reloaded and I re-ran the tool everything was clean) and then manually deleted all of the /cache folders and got it down to a tad over 28GB. Crazy. There was only 12GB in my Ning archive.

So, the Arvixe tech support guy on the phone (which is cool - it is almost 02h00 here) got the person who's going to do the transfer on the phone to make sure I wouldn't get another email saying I was still using too much disk space on my UNLIMITED account. I just hope it happens quickly (gigabit ethernet between boxes too much to hope for?) so I can update the DNS soon.

Setting an alarm for an hour from now to see if the email has come that the Xfer is done with the IP address I need. And then it's crossed fingers to hope that performance improves enough to make the whole process worth the effort.

34 gigs? im using roughly 780 gigs

theres not a single section of my site thats under 34 gigs


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soaringeagle
head dreadhead at dreadlocks site
glider pilot student and member/volunteer coordinator with freedoms wings international soaring for people with disabilities

@Paul -

Sent you the information you requested via email.

Clay, I was getting those warning s from arvixe as well- twice already. Why? because I had to upload a fresher Ning archive to import it onto my site before deleting the older ning archive. Duh. "Unlimited" apparently means anything but that.
Anyway, yes it helped a lot when the Delete duplicate files Tool was run, and I also was able to then delete my older ning archive once the new import was finished (I imported using delete/replace option)
I find it so ridiculous that Arvixe themselves is upgrading you to a more expensive server of theirs, and while doing this they are sending you usage warnings. wtf? The dog doesn't know its tail is wagging?


Soaring- if you are using the import tool from the past month or so (not the original version), then you should NOT delete the Ning Archive. The best you can do is run the duplicate file delete tool, which will help a lot. But the Ningarchive folder will reamin holding files that are referenced and needed- like jpgs that are embedded in your forum posts for example. If you delete the ningarchive, you will get thousands of broken links to non-existant files. We are 'stuck' with keeping the Ning archive folder on our sites, as long as we want to keep older content from our ning networks functioning on our site. But after all, if you want a resident thing to show on your site, you've got to have it on your server somewhere. Happily, the delete duplicate Tool removes the duplicates between the ning archive and the JR Media folders. (except maybe that profile avatar image issue brought up in another thread here- but that's a whole different case)

Soaring, wow yer BIG MASSIVE GIGS are so scary. (insert eye roll smiley) Hey I know you don't believe in clearing out old content on your site, like ever, but between that and the gazillion piggybacked site features and resultant problems you are juggling and futzing with...well no offense but you are sure taking a whole mess of space at the buffet table. Just sayin, buddy!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Okay. So I am moved over to a more expensive server (going from like $5/mo to $30/mo but then I was paying Ning $30/mo so that's a wash except for Mailgun usage).

I am still waiting for DNS to propagate, but using it at a temporary URL until then, even with developer mode on, and the speed increase is dramatic. It's definitely usable now. I think there is still room for improvement, but I am going to let the community settle in for a while and get used to the new layout and the way the content is presented before switching to a new server.

My focus between now and then is fixing usability issues and ironing out small bugs and then introducing new features. Tops on my list are enabling domain mapping (I have some ideas about how to do this with URLs that I own but am not otherwise using - giving them a home and personalities within this community), then enabling selling digital and physical items. These are subscription membership features that should drive incremental passive revenue.

So ... DNS is starting to propagate. I can see the site up at http://www.thechocolatelife.com/ here in NYC within two hours (traceroute as well as in my browser). Turned developer mode off and it feels acceptably responsive in Safari. Of course, I am probably the only person on it at the moment so the load is atypically light. But I feel much better already.

No entirely happy with the Arvixe xfer process because of the disk space warning and the delay it caused. But now that I am transferred there's a free SSL cert attached to the account and I will be using that in part to help SEO ranking. I will update the XML sitemap tomorrow and submit to Google and then send out the email to members (via Mailgun, Paul) to get them to claim their accounts.

What I am happy about is something small that did not really hit me until I started doing some original writing of new forum discussions and that is I did not realize how the Ning editing environment really got in my way. I got to hate writing in it and I started writing shorter pieces. Most of it was that the screen layout was cramped. My writing felt cramped before I even started typing.

Now, TinyMCE is not perfect by any means. But it's simpler and more straightforward and if I have any issues with formatting now (thanks to the great job the JRTeam did in coding around Ning's insane formatting inconsistency in the JSON export files) it's in the CSS of ordered and unordered lists and I will get around to fixing those presently. More importantly, the space within which to write feels positively expansive compared with Ning and I just feel energized to start writing longer and writing more often.

Which is very cool because it was completely unexpected.

So glad to hear this went relatively well Clay. So Arvixe did the whole move for you I assume.
I may do this exact same thing in the next couple of weeks- my cheapo arvixe server is impossibly slow. My site is not live yet, so the change won't disrupt any members.
At least it would get things basically workable for a while, at a reasonable price for now.
What I want to know is- do you get more file storage space with it? At what level do they tell you to stay under now, as opposed to before the switchover? Thanks for the update- it helps me.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

I get the sense that there are no hard and fast limits - after all, it's "unlimited" - but I get the sense that they are looser on the business accounts than they are with the personal accounts. Unless you run up against some ridiculous limit - or ask them to do something for you which gives them reason to run their utils against your account to spot TOS violations - you're probably okay with everything but storing lots of large backups.

Where you may run into problems is transferring the data. In cPanel there is a Disk Usage command that will tell you how much space is occupied by your public_html directory and the softaculous backup directory.

In order for me to get to the point where they would do the xfer I had to run the media delete tool to get rid of duplicate photos as well as to delete my softaculous backup. This got me down to just on 28GB from over 72GB. My guess is that there was no magic number they wanted to see, they were mostly annoyed at the thought of archving a .tar.gz archive and copying it over. The archive was 37GB on its own so I probably would have been okay with just deleting that and all of the JR cache folders claiming that everything else within the data directory was needed by the site.

I also did the work while on the phone with Arvixe tech support, not sales/billing (press 2). As long as I was actually making some progress and asking questions (as opposed to waiting for the media delete tool to count down from 10,000 twice) they were happy to engage with me. I made six calls over the course of as many hours to schedule the transfer and deal with the minutiae.

The other thing to note is that while you can ask to schedule the transfer, you really do need to call them to put it into the queue. So, early on the day you want to do the xfer, reduce to the irreducible minimum the amount of data you need to xfer. I got on the online chat with them and was able to have them upgrade my account and take all of the billing. If you complain (as I did) about sucky db performance they may give you a free month to "test" the performance of the new server. I made sure to include asking for a Guarantee of better db performance in the upgrade. I also copied the chat transcript and saved it in a file in case of issues later.

SO ... after you put the upgrade request in and slim down the amount of data, get on the phone and call them to initiate the xfer. You will need to update the name servers or the A host record if Arvixe is not the registrar. I went from one server (jxxxx) to another (cxxxx) and I needed to update the nameservers from ns1.jxxxx.arvixe.com to ns1.cxxxx.arvixe.com. The cPanel and FTP passwords should copy over, but if they do not (and they did not for me), get them on the phone and they will reset to a temp password while you wait and you can login and reset them yourself, again while on the phone to make sure everything works.

So, apart from the fact that it took longer because the initial request was denied because they didn't want to transfer the backup - the overall experience was quite pleasant even though I had to wake up three times between midnight and 6am to get on my computer and monitor the situation as I wanted to be back, live, by 6am. Which didn't happen.

Sounds positively awful. But sooooo valuable for when i do it soon- thank you so much for typing out all the gory details for me! (hug)


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

@Strumelia -

One thing I will say is that my site is now faster than Arvixe's support site, which is pretty ironic.

And thanks to the suggestion from Brian I am noticing that the site is much more responsive seeming in Firefox than either Chrome or Safari. I will keep them around for testing, but I will be using Firefox for my day-to-day moderational duties.

Performance check went from about 310 to about 450. Still not great (as baseline is 1000) but the perception of responsiveness is pretty high; my Ning site appeared to run more slowly at times. I may run the check a couple of more times at different times of the day to see if there is some other site on this server that is slowing things down.

I am kinda jealous of SE's report of getting an 1800 on his dedicated server. But, at the moment, the community is not generating enough direct revenue to justify a 5x or greater increase in cost for a managed solution.

Derrick -

This is all very helpful info. I am getting about 450 on my Arvixe "business" class server for $30 w/cPanel.

As a part of setting up the server they will do *one* site transfer for you, with limitations on the amount of data transferred. They did a cPanel backup of my site (about 30 gigs), moved it to another server, and unpacked everything and it worked once I got the config files right. It took them about 6 hours to make the transfer and another couple of hours for me to check that the site was okay and then do the DNS stuff I needed to do.

What I think we're doing here by sharing this stuff is getting some baseline for what hosting services will do at different price levels. More importantly, finding competent freelancers who can do the work is also important - and I may get back to you on that front when I decide to upgrade.

I too finished moving today to Linode, couldn't have done it on my own. All I can say if Jamroom start offering their own hosting services at any time, feel assured that they can do a fantastic job.

Well, just got off of support chat with Arvixe. They re-connected my access to my arvixe cPanel in the server. But...cannot get into my Jamroom site- every page gives me an error like:
CRI: Error connecting to MySQL Server: User '(mydomain)_jamr321' has exceeded the 'max_connections_per_hour' resource (current value: 5) (#1226) - the site owner should contact their hosting provider for assistance.

So the chat tech created a ticket for an admin tech support to investigate it. I put up a bit of a stink and he said the ticket was escalated to highest priority and that I should hear back by email 'today'. I just now got an email from their "Technical Operations Officer" saying they were looking into my error messages problem on my domain site.
Again, I notice my server CPU is bobbing up and down erratically, 80%-0%.
Hopefully they will figure out what's wrong. Ugh.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

P.S. If Jamroom offered their own hosting service (and assuming I could afford it) I'd be all over it. Like, NOW.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Well I can access my server cPanel but when clicking on pages in my JR site I keep getting that error message. Arvixe is 'investigating' but at first they didn't see a problem from their end.
Tomorrow night some 'epic' blizzard with over 2 feet of snow and high winds...so we may well lose electricity- maybe even for a couple days.
- IF you guys don't hear from me for a while.... I'll be back ...eventually.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1rpyCcWSRRk/VMVx1fVfyyI/AAAAAAAAEB4/iKNyn5a4lIg/s640/Snowshoe.jpg


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Arvixe support has (at least for now) fixed my problem so I can use my site and not get those errors now.

The technician wrote:
"I just increased the max connection rate for the user that specified.
It seems it was set to 5 due to the increase in resourse usage.
As it is increased now, the resourse usage will also increase accordingly.
It is better to optimize the site to fix the issue."

Rather vague. =8-\ Doesn't give me much to go on. I did mention twice about possibly upgrading to a different level, buit they never mentioned it or responded to my hints. Go figure!
At least I can work on my JR site again.

--my error messages were all saying: CRI: Error connecting to MySQL Server: User '(mydomain)_jamr321' has exceeded the 'max_connections_per_hour' resource (current value: 5) (#1226) - the site owner should contact their hosting provider for assistance. And I couldn't get on my JR site.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015