Considering Switching to KnownHost

OK, they just finished another request in the time it took to read and post. These guys are scary fast.
 
OK ... So ...I've completed testing the first account and I am thrilled with the service. I have been through several hosting moves (for both our company and our client's sites and software).

We are an SaaS company, so the move is very non-standard. The problems we had were the types of problems I anticipated (after all, I've been through this before) what I did NOT anticipate was:
1. The rapid response times. Even at their slowest they were substantially faster than our previous provider, and at their fastest ... well honestly I would not have believed it and if I were told the truth I would have considered it hype.

2. The dedication to the fix. I've been through this enough to know when someone wants it to work and when they are going through the motions. These guys wanted it to work. That was the one thing I really appreciated about the previous provider, and I was afraid I was going to loose it. This team truly wants to help.

3. Their knowledge and trouble shooting skills. They diagnosed a problem, suggested a fix and implemented it faster than I'd seen a lot of teams start the diagnosis. I am primarily a software developer with just enough Linux knowledge to really screw things up. I learn system admin because I have to. This is my software. I know the quirks. They worked with me, they didn't argue. They didn't assume they knew best, nor did they abdicate.

KH --- you've established some high expectations with this first account move.

P.S. My business partners say I'm enjoying this too much ... and that's true ... I usually HATE transferring to new servers. They were ready for me to be all Mr. grumpy.
 
We don't allow our customers to be grumpy, just not in our nature. I'm glad everyone is properly taking care of you and wanted to welcome you again to the KH family! :)
 
Howdy Daniel,

Since I've latched onto this thread pretty tightly, here's my little followup.

The server was set up really quickly. I had requested that my sites be moved over in the original request, but I guess that was the wrong place to make the request. I opened a ticket to get it done, #382096.

In general, I am very pleased with the response times of responding to a request or question. I think the resolution was a little rocky, though. I would appreciate it if you or one of your senior guys would review the ticket and just let me know how I could have communicated my issues better. Also, please let me know if all of my requests were in line with the type of support your team normally provides.

Status right now: 1 WHM and 20 client cPanel accounts were moved over very quickly. I was able to make a few configuration changes since the PHP version was changed in the move, and all of those sites now seem to be working correctly. I just have to start my full testing phase now.

Not quite apple-to-apples comparison, but the initial impression is that the SSD VPS was a good selection. I may need to upgrade to the next level sooner than I thought, but that is still less expensive that HG was.

Overall? While I didn't think the response was quite scary fast, it was very impressive to me. Regardless of the minor issues, I agree with 3BCTO about the dedication to the fix: Your guys definitely weren't just putting me off or paying lip service. It was obvious they wanted to get this going quickly.

So far, I am still solidly in the "I'd recommended KH..." camp.

Thanks,
Andrew
 
OK only ONE response was scary fast ... I asked if they could install a custom piece of software and came to the forum. Before I was done catching up it was installed.

And I anticipated the version change issues, so I moved only one account that I knew intimately first, before having anything else moved.

But here's the thing that just proves I made the right choice:
Wednesday: Previous Host has Major Outage: I open support ticket.
Thursday: Meeting of Partners to Review my Findings of KH, Final Review: Go Decision
Friday: Port of Software from Previous to KnownHost
Saturday: Complete Testing, DNS Change, Live Test ... Done
AFTER the test is complete, Previous Host responds to my support ticket on Thursday's Outage.

So, we:
1. Ordered the Service
2. Had it installed
3. Migrated the Primary Domain (which had our software on it)
4. Resolved about 6 or 8 issues ... (some small, some frustrating)
5. Completed Testing.
6. Went Live with New Server.
7. Tested Live (Successfully)

All in the time it took our previous host to respond to my original support ticket.
 
andrewinhouston said:
In general, I am very pleased with the response times of responding to a request or question. I think the resolution was a little rocky, though. I would appreciate it if you or one of your senior guys would review the ticket and just let me know how I could have communicated my issues better. Also, please let me know if all of my requests were in line with the type of support your team normally provides.
Click to expand...


Andrew,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to this forum post. I've looked over this ticket and I do see where there was some confusion over that final SSL certificate as well as some incorrect information placed in the ticket. I've asked our Direct of Managed Services to review that ticket and we will add in any necessary training as well as oversight review to ensure that everything gets sorted out properly.

We do strive to perform the best as possible for all of our customers but things do happen sometimes and we do appreciate you informing us about this as it's hard to catch everything even with our ticket review process. I appreciate your understanding in this matter and we will do our best to correct this.
 
We tested Cloudflare after moving to KnownHost and the test site actually slowed down considerably, even from remote locations. The test site was already lightning quick, so we were just getting greedy I guess.
 
There's a WHM plugin called Munin Server Monitor. It graphs the various resources over time. I had it on our old server and just had them install it on my new one here (took 8 minutes from entering my first support ticket to resolution).

The first day or two it's still gathering data, so you don't see much, but it lets you see trends, like if your RAM is creeping up, or if you have, for some reason, an ungodly number of MySQL threads from 2AM to 3AM ... which I did ... because that was when my back up to the Amazon cloud was scheduled.
 
OK ... I've been on KH for a while now and am well underway. Because our software is custom, we require certain things from the server. I've opened 25 tickets. Most of them are responded to by a human inside of five minutes (often less). Most of the time, from open to close is less then 30 minutes.

I've been asking for things like recompile of PHP with certain custom options, installation of additional open source packages, Firewall adjustments. Help understanding how to use WHM.

Guys, KH is spoiling me. Keep up the good work. I truly would not have believed it.
 
WebEndev said:
Kiwi,

I run WordPress sites. I moved over to KnowHost over a year ago, and love it.

This is what I would do....
  1. Change PHP handler to DSO
  2. Add mod_ruid2 (for security reasons with DSO)
  3. Install APC opcode cache. Set cache size (apc.shm_size) to 512M for starters (if you are on SSD-VPS3)
    1. Monitor APC cache fragmentation and usage and adjust cache size as needed (monitor it over several days for an accurate assessment)
  4. Install the nginxCP cPanel plugin - this runs nginx as a front end reverse proxy (MUCH better performance on HTTP requests than Apache)
  5. Upgrade to PHP 5.4 (latest release), as it shows better performance for WordPress sites than 5.3 version (about 9% better performance, on average)
  6. Upgrade to mySQL version 5.5 (slightly better performance than
  7. Install W3 Total Cache plugin
    1. Set Page Cache = Disk Enhanced; Database Cache = APC; Object Cache = APC;
    2. Sign up for MaxCDN as a origin pull CDN
      1. Configure MaxCDN and activate it in W3 Total Cache
  8. Monitor your servers CPU and memory usage over time. Look for the cause of spikes in usage at various times.
  9. Install and run the P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) plugin (it points you in the right direction) and analyze your plugin resource usage. Some plugins are just flat resource hogs, and are very inefficient. Make changes where appropriate.
  10. Install and run the Query Monitor plugin. Take a look at database queries (too many is obviously a bad thing), and any PHP errors or warnings that may exist. Make changes where appropriate.
  11. Treat the KnownHost people with respect, as they really do have your best interests in mind
The above server configuration works VERY well for my WordPress sites . KnownHost Support was VERY helpful and patient while working with me on getting my VPS configured. Honestly, they are the best hosting support group that I've come across (I've tried 4 different hosts prior to KH).

If you have not made attempts to optimize your WordPress install, and taken some or all of the steps above to optimize your server configuration, then increasing your server resources will not help you. You need to get to the root cause, and solve it.

I hope this helps you.
Click to expand...

Hi WebEndev,

Thanks for your step-by-step optimizing VPS, just one question:

How are you managing WP cache plugin with DSO? Because WP cache requires writable directories, and you can't do that with DSO. Are you doing chmod to 775?
 
mdavcevski said:
Hi WebEndev,

Thanks for your step-by-step optimizing VPS, just one question:

How are you managing WP cache plugin with DSO? Because WP cache requires writable directories, and you can't do that with DSO. Are you doing chmod to 775?
Click to expand...
Are you still happy with KH. I am thinking about hosting my wordpress woocommerce site. Do you have a wordpress website hosted with KH that I can browse and see how fast it is?
 
Your company site webendev is a blazing fast word press site, but how can I verify that you are using KH to host it? seems to be running on N1.webendev.com. Did you do anything to it to make it run faster after your base install of word press?
 
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