lammert - 10:57 am on Jul 27, 2006 (gmt 0)

Problems with applications like MySQL are often not part of the management contract with the hosting company. You most of the time get what you pay for, but this also translates to "you don't get what you didn't pay for". Many problems with MySQL databases turn out to be configuration and usage problems by the end-user, and not MySQL installation problems. I find it therefore fair that many hosting companies don't offer MySQL support by default.

I specifically choose to have a hardware/basic OS contract only for my dedicated servers. It is the responsibility of the hosting company to replace faulty hardware and keep the network in the air, it is my responsibility to keep the application running. In my definition, application means web server program, database server program and all scripts and other programs needed to keep the web server and database server running, including backups and MySQL database tuning.