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A few days ago, one of the hard drives (or perhaps the hard drive) on my server died. Though it took MediaTemple about 13 hours to notice the dead disk ((I called them as soon as it completely failed. In some respects, it was quite spectacular: I could SSH in, but I couldn't edit files or do much else because the disk reported that it was read-only.)), replace the hard disk, and restore my data, I was impressed that not a single bit of data was lost, including up-to-the-minute databases. I didn't have to do anything except wait.

I'm also led to believe, without any supporting information whatsoever, that perhaps the disk has been having issues for many months. Since being restored, CPU use is way, way down, pages load more quickly, and FTP is far more reliable ((Knock on wood.)). I've not been happy with the service for most of 2008, but perhaps that had more to do with a piece of faulty equipment than anything else. Additionally, perhaps a "bad neighbor" was evicted or put on another machine. Either way, I'm quite pleased with the service I have now.

Still, there will likely come a day when the (dv)Extreme can no longer adequately support my sites, and I'll have to leave MediaTemple. Part of the problem with MT is that they don't offer a plan between the $150/month (dv)Extreme and the $650/month (dpv)Nitro. Someone suggested I go with LiquidWeb - which has two forms of dedicated (instead of "dedicated virtual") servers: the Webmaster series and the Professional series. One of the nice perks with those is that they offer seamless, free upgrades and downgrades, so I could start with a Webmaster and move to a Professional piece of hardware when necessary.

Any such move is at least a few months away, but in the meantime, if you've had experience with LiquidWeb, please post in the comments ((That means you too, Matt.)).

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