Slow Servers - DB unreachable

Is it just me or are the servers running like a bag of dogs with no legs lately? this is begining to get stupid... page timeouts as it takes so long to load and every day or so the Technical errors saying unable to connect to SQL DB.

e.g...

mysql_connect(): Lost connection to MySQL server during query
/home/.arf/USER/www.DOMAIN.co.uk/includes/class_core.php on line 279

usually it's the server unavailable message.. it's not on jusy one domain either it's been most of them at some point.

oh yes... this is usually a sub-domain issue, maybe that has something to do with it?

My server was down over an hour last night. I've been thinking, "hey, that dreamhost status blog is great...now they're finally communicating to us." Except....they aren't.

If a server is down and unavailable over an hour, that should be posted, and it wasn't. I run a web dev company from my house. Between midnight and 1am is a prime time for me to work(after the rugrats are in bed). But I find that often the servers are down or really slow during those times (which at 9pm on the West Coast is really quite early). I don't know if that's when they are running backups or what.

I've been offered a dedicated server. I love Dreamhost....but I gotta tell ya, I'm seriously considering moving my stuff. I've got about 40 domains now, I can't afford to have all this flaky server stuff happening.

I was willing to wait for Dreamhost to get their legs under them after all this expansion....but how long is long enough? What is the reward for waiting around? *sigh*

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Angela Gann
CrimsonDryad Web Design Services
Web Design, Custom Software Development
http://www.crimsondryad.com