MODx Revolution Issues on Rackspace Cloud Sites

Has anyone else had any Revo experience on Rackspace Cloud Sites? One of our sites is a moderately trafficked news site and has occasional cache issues, 500 errors and general slowness. In addition the compute cycles on the site are quite high.

Rackspace does use XCache with Opcode cache enabled and there is no way to turn it off. Less frequently accessed sites run about normal so I think there is some kind of caching issues occurring.

We had a major issue with the phpthumbof 1.3.1 version where it was creating thumbnails recursively and caused a major outage. That turned out to be an issue with the snippet but most didn't experience such an outage. Today the manager cache corrupted when I attempted to close out of a resource without saving.

Another issue is when upgrading a large site the upgrade installation appears to time out but it the site appears to be upgraded afterward. I upped the script timeouts but that didn't have any effect.

I only post this here to help others and maybe learn what others have experienced. If anyone has any input it would be greatly appreciated. Rackspace's technical support doesn't have any experience with MODx.

I'm having the same problems with multiple sites showing blank screens (500 error) due to cache corruptions. Since I upgraded the Cloud Site to PHP 5.3 I haven't noticed any more. Slowness (time-to-first-byte) is a problem (worse on some sites). Had long conversations with the Cloud Sites team running different tests (moving to different clusters etc) but no success. I'm waiting for MODx Cloud and move all sites there once it launches to resolve.

Regarding the Cache, a Rackspace tech recommended adding "php_flag xcache.cacher 0" to an .htaccess file - done that but no improvement.

For those thinking Flock is the issue with Rackspace Cloud Sites, we upgraded several of our Revo sites to 2.2.5, set 'use_flock'=>false in the config, and deleted the contents of core/cache through FTP. All of the sites we did this to got cache corruption within a day or two. We had to turn use of flock back on and re-delete the cache. The sites have been operating fine since but there are several random issues we're experiencing still. Bottom line, if you are committed to MODX Revolution, steer clear of Rackspace Cloud Sites for the time being.

I have been a Rackspace user for 10+ years and have paid them as much as $30k a month in server hosting. Their cloud, I thought, was great. I have been using the service since they first bought Mosso. More and more I am finding problems. First, the upload/download for installing MODX is ridiculous. I had to write a custom PHP routine to WGET the files, unzip, move folders, etc. It was a 45 minute ordeal. There are other issues, but the cache issue is crazy, and causing problems.

Right now I currently have 2 sites with the issues. Both are high-traffic. I have turned the cache off, both in MODX and ini .htaccess. No improvement. I have to constantly delete the cache and/or clear the cache on the site. I have on site where the manager is completely unreachable, for no apparent reason. Sometimes the resource tree disappears and stays gone until you logout, manually delete the cache folder and log back in.

I continue to look for solutions, but am currently trying to migrate one of the larger sites to the MODX cloud for testing. (Which is causing problems, as there is a 30-45 second timeout on PHP operations on RSCloud, so Vapor dies...)

Anyway, not much help, but confirmation of other people having the cache issue. Oh, yes, and very slow with MODX. Basically during development, I have to constantly reassure clients the sites will not be this slow. Primarily in the manager, less so on the public site.

So - check out this thread.... https://forums.modx.com/thread/80423/modx-having-a-hard-time-on-rackspace-cloud-sites?page=3#dis-post-446953 There is some rackspace progress - its not solved yet - but OpenGeek and an engineer for Rackspace are talking.

Eric,

Have you tried running the web context as session-less, or do your sites require authentication? MODX has fantastic enterprise-level ACLs, they can get really hard on a database for a high traffic site.

SkyToaster are experts in MODX hosting and we love creating custom solutions that perfectly fit your needs. Let me know if you'd like to arrange a trial of our hosting services—we also offer free migration assistance.

Best regards,

Matt Fuller

I know this is an old ticket - has anyone tried recently?

They advertise drupal now - but I know drupal had the same file locking issue that modx had.

I left Rackspace Cloud Sites long ago because of their issues with MODX.

Pyro - we did too... I was just wondering if anyone ever chanced it again.