Gabriel Radic

There’s something scary about being responsible for the security and privacy of thousands of people’s data. It’s the reasons why I tried to stay away from getting my own web server for so long. My customers usually already have a hosting provider; when they don’t, I advise them to get a fully managed solution. It all worked out well until last week…

Filiera.fr is one my biggest Drupal sites. It was hosted on shared Dreamhost account since 2004. With time, it grew to tens of thousands of members and many times that number of page views. For the past year, the Dreamhost server was crawling under the weight, and the site was offline at least once every day.

I started looking for a fully-managed VPS service. I signed up for an account on a few of them and got a good feeling of how it would work. Unfortunately, a VPS tends to be as complex as a dedicated server, is not always well automated and is often quite expensive. Next I tried the more popular social-network ASP services like Ning or Grou.ps, but those proved insufficient, despite all the feature and comfort they provide.

It Was Time. My first dedicated server.

Moving the Drupal site was easier than expected. I did it all via SSH and CLI, like a big boy, and it went surprisingly smooth. Once the hosting was set up, I had a few issues with the DNS settings for the .FR domain, but those are now almost sorted out.

Then I was in for a reality-check cold shower. Once I’ve opened the doors on the new site, it started falling apart as more than a few dozen users logged in. Mostly a memory issue. I struggled with the situation for a few days, googling for information and learning as much as I could about Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Drupal optimization… with no success. It was time to ask for help.

Enter Lehel Valics from GrafX Software. With his guidance over IM, I managed to tune up the site to the point where the home page loads as fast as Google’s. I was blown away. The difference in performance is beyond anything I thought possible.

IT WAS WORTH IT!