Media Temple hosting recently launched a beta test of a new GridContainer for their (gs) hosting service that supports Python and the Django framework right out of the box. Django is an increasingly popular framework as of late, quite possibly all from web designer Jeff Croft’s Django evangelism.
Technical specifications of the Media Temple GridContainer include no resource sharing (ie, if your neighbor gets dugg you won’t feel the burn) and “lighttpd in front of persistent FastCGI processes”. Lighttpd, which I have experimented with in the past, is known for being a great web server alternative to Apache. Lighttpd, pronounced lighty, has a low memory footprint and proven scaling abilities, which is why big shot sites like Meebo, YouTube, Pownce and Wikipedia use lighttpd on parts of their site.
Django is also much more than just a development framework; many sites are using it as a full-fledged content management system. If I had the time to pick up another language, it would probably be Python so I could tinker with Django. Rails is a close second but I’m not convinced yet – everytime I hear about RoR it’s always about someone having problems scaling it (although Kyle Neath will disagree with me and claim the problem is with the user not the framework). That’s why I stick to PHP, and this article is quite compelling. I digress, if you’re interested in testing the Django GridContainer, visit this page.
Disclosure: Most everyone at Media Temple is a good friend of the Stammy.
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{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been programming in Rails for the past 2/2.5 years and I must say I’m pretty happy with it.
That said, I’ve always been tempted to take a look at Django and most certainly will as soon as I can get a break and dive into it.
In the end, I think it’s not really a matter of Rails vs Django vs PHP, it’s just about what you feel most comfortable with. Isn’t it?
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Wow, Media Temple is pretty sweet. I would like to switch, I just can’t justify the added cost with my wimpy site that doesn’t get many visitors anyway.
Even though I don’t use Django, I find it impressive that MT provides that level of innovation above the average web host. How many other providers give you the choice of Rails, Django, & PHP?
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@ Blake: I agree with you :-)
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I guess I need to play a bit of catch-up as I’m just about finished learning PHP, and before today hadn’t even heard of Django.. ^_^ But I do like PHP, and I’d have a hard time deciding what language to learn next..probably
flash, though.
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Kyle is right about Rails — it scales just fine if you know what you’re doing. But if you just run script/server and pray it’s going to explode. The best Rails setup will probably use Apache 2.2 proxying to several (as many as you can fit in memory) Mongrel instances. If you still need more juice, throw a load balancer in front of Apache and make a tree. That said, I bet you can do at least as well with Django if it’ll run under mod_python. FastCGI though, that gives me the willies.
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MediaTemple’s “grid” is not a grid and will never be. It is only a cluster. This means that your site is indeed isolated from other sites on the machine as they claim, but the downside is that all sites on a machine are very limited in terms of CPU and memory usage.
By saying “Hundred of servers for the price of one” they lead you to believe that your Django app will use the power from multiple servers, which is simply not the case ! You only get your allocated cpu and memory usage on a single server and if your machine crashes there is a failover to another machine.
Kalhmera!
I have worked with Rails for the last 2 years and wrote some small django apps too. Both app frameworks don’t do anything special or new, and both have their strength and weaknesses. For me the main impact of RoR, Django etc, is that they abstracted the pain of webdevelopment away, either by magic, convention or tight integration with very good secondary libraries (e.g. Prototype).
That beeing said, I am sure most Hosting service will sooner or later wake up and provide similar setups, MediaTemple though was kind enough to sponsor a server for the django devs, which I think is a very nice gesture. Thumbs Up MediaTemple!
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Hi Pete! I see you have come over from the Django blog post to make similar false claims as you did over there….Apologies to everyone for the long post but I have to address his inaccuracies…
The Django GridContainers will have a detailed page explaining what it is. Our MySQL GridContainer page is a perfect product example: http://www.mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/mysql-containers.htm
Our Django labs/beta sign-up page states it clearly in the 2nd bullet and in the intro paragraph: http://www.mediatemple.net/labs/grid/gc-django-prebeta.htm
It’s also important to note that even when using a GridContainer for Ruby, Django, or MySQL, your site will still take advantage of the clustered web, mail, and ftp services (which are not “very limited”) on the Grid platform; your application-specific tasks (e.g. Django) process in an isolated environment with dedicated resources, and then is served out by the Grid in the same way as any other site. The only way to provide this sort of flexibility in technologies in a practical manner is by using containers. (mt) Media Temple sees the potential in this technology and has invested time, money, blood, sweat, and tears into making a superior platform to host with.
If that’s not enough and someone feels mislead, we implore you to take advantage of our money back guarantee and find a solution that you’re comfortable with.
As for the Grid name, we, after internal debates, named it for the general public. Grid-Service is easier for customers to understand than “a cluster of clusters”. As an added bonus, the other geographic locations we plan to add will push it closer to what some use to define a grid…although the grid debate continues – http://www.gridtoday.com/02/1209/100840.html
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Django is great. I tried using ruby on rails but I looked at the directory structure and just thought ‘ok now what?’. Although I like media temples django logo, I wouldn’t switch to them, partially because I have a 2 year deal with dreamhost, but because fans of them always spam absolute rubbish on the dreamhost status blog, which has given me a bad image of (mt), even if the people posting those messages weren’t actually from (mt).
Give django a try! I’ve never programmed python before and I’m rubbish at html, but django is really easy to use, especially the admin app!
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@Alex (mt): It must be a full-time job keeping up with idiot disinformation posts like that. I feel for you.
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@ Travis V: Thanks. It’s actually not too bad. But I’d rather talk to customers with constructive criticisms about our offerings. Honest feedback is pure gold.
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