This entry is mostly to make sure everything is working properly.

MediaTemple just introduced a new hosting plan, called Grid-Server. I don’t really understand all the technospecs, but from what I understand what makes it special is that the site is broken up over multiple machines, like a RAID. If one piece of hardware goes down, which is the most vulnerable part (just ask Dreamhost) the system automatically moves data around so there’s no downtime. This is supposed to handle sudden spikes in traffic better than the old way of putting all the eggs in one hard drive basket. Digg me now baby, I’m ready for it.

For $20/month, there’s also Ruby on Rails (server environment that allows for all that Web 2.0-lovely drag-n-drop stuff) but I have no use for that so I opted for the straight & free upgrade from my old shared-server hosting plan. It takes 12 hours for the change to go into effect once migration is authorized. Afterwards, there are slight changes that have to be made to database settings, email and paths. No biggie.

Everything seems to have gone smoothly. My website feels like it’s a little faster, but maybe I’m imagining that.

They do have a very pretty and easy to use web control panel now, some updated software (including one-click installs)…and good-bye SquirrelMail for webmail. Yippeee! The new webmail client is actually usable.

TechCrunch has a story on it.