Comment from hosting company RE Magento

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Posted by Dweezel, 01-26-2010, 12:29 PM
Hi all, I've been keeping an eye on the development of the Magento open source e-commerce platform for a while now and It looks increasingly impressive. A blacksmith friend of mine wants an online shop developing so I decided I'd set him up a site on my Hostroute reseller account and give Magento a try. Looking through the system requirements there were about 4 things that were not present on the server that I'd need, so I sent the support team an email. One of the things that Magento needs is InnoDB. This is the email I got back from them: "I would highly recommend you re-think this - InnoDB is not a good storage engine to use on shared hosting as all databases are stored in the same place. This information is NOT backed up so if there was to be a DB issue you would most likely lose all data from your shop." Is this good advice? Surely this would just mean that I'd have to schedule backups myself wouldn't it? Any advice or comments on this would be appreciated. TIA Chris
Posted by CrazyTech, 01-26-2010, 02:20 PM
Well, honestly in this day and age, backups should be made. If the data is backed up then you have no worries. I've never really heard this said about InnoDB, I mean the obvious observation here is that by that definition, anything on the server is at risk - which is the reality of any server and exactly why you make backups...
Posted by martfox, 01-26-2010, 03:21 PM
Yes I agree with you, nowadays e.g. R1Soft backups should be a default feature by all accounts of end-users or resellers.
Posted by Tristan Perry, 01-26-2010, 03:22 PM
It's bad advise. Very bad advise. Yes, what they say about InnoDB *storage* is sort of correct - the files are stored in the same sort of area and *can* cause issues with some file-only backup systems. However to simply say *don't* use InnoDB is naive and something I disagree with 100%. Plus you *can* still backup - i.e. you can take MySQL dump backups fine. The host just mean that their automated backups (which backup the MySQL storage files, and not the SQL itself) might mess up. So yeah, ignore that advise. InnoDB is fine and can be backed up as normal via a MySQL dump (i.e. export it via phpMyAdmin, etc) Heck, SMF - one of the largest forum software providers - recommend that larger forums convert some of the tables to InnoDB (http://www.simplemachines.org/commun...?topic=50217.0). And I also believe that vBulletin sets some tables to InnoDB by default. So in short, ignore this 'advise'. It's really bad advise. Just be sure to make your own backups (which you should do anyway).
Posted by JLHC, 01-26-2010, 03:37 PM
Well I believe one of the main reason your hosting provider is telling you this is due to them not able to handle Magento's resource usage within their system. Another possible reason is InnoDB may take up more resources than MyISAM and this may cause the server's of some hosting provider to slow down or go overloaded.
Posted by Mekhu, 01-26-2010, 03:40 PM
Just how itense is a Magento installation? Or is it dependant on traffic like many things? Last edited by Mekhu; 01-26-2010 at 03:49 PM.
Posted by JLHC, 01-26-2010, 03:44 PM
Well Magento out-of-the-box is generally more resource intensive than most of the PHP scripts/application out there due to it's powerful backend architecture powered by Zend. With some optimizations the resource usage of Magento can be lowered but once you start to receive some traffic, your average hosting provider will not be able to handle it any more and most will give you the boot once you hit 10% of CPU or so, which is quite common for a moderate Magento store.
Posted by XeHSean, 01-26-2010, 04:55 PM
If your hosting company will not automatically backup your account for you, maybe you should consider taking your business elsewhere? Most providers will automatically backup your account for you free of charge
Posted by martfox, 01-26-2010, 05:27 PM
Thats right, the time was moved...

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