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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
 Posted - 23 June 2005 : 17:55:40
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Yes that's what I meant for the Snitz forums. Amazing speed ! You're right I had moved everything to that P4/2.4, so you do think that wouldn't work even with some clean code ? Do you think a Dual Xeon at 2.4 would do the trick for both ? This is what I was planning to try next. Or maybe I could get a second P4/2.4 instead, price wouldn't be that different.
You've also hinted that the abnormal number of connections could be due to timeouts on existing ones following the slow response of the server ? But yes I will start with a clean version of 3.4.05, then move to 3.4.05 multi-language and then add the integration MOD, hopefully that will help. Stress testing maxed out the CPU, but I really need to look at this number of connections closely over the week-end. |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 18:50:36
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quote:
Originally posted by gpspassion
Yes that's what I meant for the Snitz forums. Amazing speed ! You're right I had moved everything to that P4/2.4, so you do think that wouldn't work even with some clean code ? Do you think a Dual Xeon at 2.4 would do the trick for both ? This is what I was planning to try next.
No not really, with the kind of traffic you describe you need IIS and SQL to be on different machines, and the SQL machine will need quite a bit of ram, the more you can give it the better it will perform, it would probably be a good idea to make sure that logging is turned off in IIS, that will give you a pretty good performance boost if it is currently doing logging.
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You've also hinted that the abnormal number of connections could be due to timeouts on existing ones following the slow response of the server ?
yes, this is because it can only re-use a connection if it has finished with it, if the connection is sat there waiting for a resultset, asp will have to open another.
If you want someone else to take a look at your sql setup, just drop me an email.
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 21:44:15
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I would think that a single 2.4 GHz machine like gpspassion described should work just fine. A snowmobile forum I frequent has 400 to 500 users online at a time in the winter...running Linux and invision board and it can handle the load just fine...I don't even think the machine is 2 GHz. gpspassion, if you are considering investing a bit of money into a dedicated machine...I'd suggest (if you don't know how to) getting someone to perform some optimization's to your snitz forum. I've done quite a few to my own and without them I think that things would be slower for me during the busy season as well. If a single invision board or vbulletin can handle 1500 to 2000 users online at a time with a single server...there is no reason that same server should puke when running snitz. Now granted, asp is a bit slower and snitz isn't necessarily the most optimized code for "everyone" per say. It really was made to work on multiple platforms, with multiple back end databases, and be very compatible. Like I mentioned...it will just take a bit of custom coding, removing things you don't use, optimizing queries, and setting up proper database maintenance plans to get it to perform better.
I've worked a lot on my site to make it perform relativily smooth. I'd be confident to say the server it's currently on (2.6 GHz) which is running MSSQL 2000 as well, would be able to handle 800 to 1000 users online at a time. The times it was at it's highest user count (about 400), there was no significant reduction in speed that I could tell. |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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Edited by - sr_erick on 23 June 2005 21:47:49 |
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 25 June 2005 : 06:16:50
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Let's see :
1. Thanks for the pointers guys, it seems we have two theories here ;-) I will try some "stress testing" on my existing P4/2.4 dedicated server running a "clean" 3.4.05 to see what happens. Thanks for the offer to take a look at the setup, I'll certainly take you up on it once I've run these tests. If I end up separating IIS and SQL, would it be better to go with a Dual Xeon 2.4 or two P4's ? You mention having a lot of RAM for SQL, would 1Gb be enough?
2. you'd mentioned cleaning up the member base for existing accounts, is there a good way to do that, the MOD I've found has some limitation, I've tried via queries in SQL Enterprise Manager on my test database and it works well, any reason not to "hack it out" like this, might it create some potential problems elsewhere ? In the allowed member list for instance ?
3. Been spending some more time looking at the number of connexions and it really fluctuates a lot, with the number sometimes zooming up to 100+ when the server is under load but can be at 10/15 too at times, which probably means the code is ok. I tried this with clean installs of 3.4.03 and 3.4.05 so it's really a horsepower issue at this point it seems, unless my database is causing that but that's unlikely. Two functions that max out the server I've found are the "search" and the "member list", I might try to remove the links temporarily to see if it helps.
Oh and in the process of testing I upgraded my database from 3.4.03 to 3.4.05 any potential problem running it with a 3.4.03 based code ? |
Edited by - gpspassion on 26 June 2005 09:01:57 |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 26 June 2005 : 13:17:05
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1) yes 1Gb should be enough, but SQL will use as much as you can give it, the more it gets the better it will work.
2) what are the limitations of the mod ? just removing members may cause problems but may be ok 
3) The search I can understand, and would advise enabling full text searching on your sql server and install the mod for it, this will fix your search problem for sure, as for the meberlist, I can't see any reason why this would max out your server, admittedly there are a lot of records, but that should not affect the amount of cpu it uses, just the length of time it takes to return a result. Check what indexes if any you have on the forum members table. The fact that it jumps to 100+ would indicate that connections are not being closed when they should be. |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 26 June 2005 : 23:10:35
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With the spec machine your describe I don't personally see any issue having SQL Server on the same box. There are some tweaks you can do to make it run considerably faster when on the same box. IIS Logging I think I saw mentioned by HuwR could be turned off if not required. Restricting SQL Server's memory whilst not normally a good idea, can help when running on the same box as IIS actually see performance increases in my experience. I've had pretty much the same setup as you describe for a few years for a handfull of customers and I've never seen or had complaints about slowdowns, they're on a 2.4G box with 1G RAM.
In SQL Server disable any Network Protocols your not using these all consume extra resource.
Limit your SQL Server logging as well, if your using Full then turn change that to simple.
Make sure your SQL Server isn't open to external connections, SQL Slammer is still running around in the wild, if you must have TCP/IP enabled then change the port to something non-standard.
Defrag .. With a large database your indexes could be in need of a defrag. Some additional indexes may help as well, on large Snitz forums I often use the SQL Profiler tool to see if more efficient indexing schema's can be implemented, often the profiler does come up with useful suggestions.
As HuwR recommends above as well, search can be a big problem on larger forums, the Full text indexing + MOD will help there *a lot*
Just my $0.2c, I would't give up on the single server just yet if I was you.
Theres actually one final option you might want to consider and thats moving to MySQL. It's memory/resource footprint is considerably smaller than MS SQL, it provides virtually all of the functionality you'll ever need and with properly tuned query caching it performs IMHO faster than MS SQL does.
Not sure if anyones mentioned email subscriptions either, they can be a cause of slowdowns, if you've got them enabled might want to try without them for a while.
Also great site you've got, I've been browsing it on and off for a few months and have found some useful info there :) |
Kiwihosting.Net - The Forum Hosting Specialists
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Edited by - Gremlin on 26 June 2005 23:12:40 |
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 27 June 2005 : 09:48:40
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An idea is to update the email notifications to only send out an email once and then stop sending to that person until they read the thread again. I've done that on my site and it really cuts down on the unnecessary emailing. I'd definitely add indexes to large tables on the columns that are commonly sorted by. An example of this would be the last post date column on forum topics, any basically any date columns. I've seen huge performance increases on my site by doing this. Set up the proper primary keys and foreign key relationships. Although this may not help performance wise that much or not at all, it cleans up the database and makes your db structure more sound.
I'm going to use a few of the tips that Gremlin gave out and see how well they work. As for the MySQL...i've never been a huge fan of it..but hey, if it works for you, use it. It doesn't do the trick for the place I work at so we don't use it here and that's why I've become accustomed to MSSQL. |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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-gary
Development Team Member
406 Posts |
Posted - 27 June 2005 : 11:48:13
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| In all the testing I've done with Snitz, MySQL is slower, and not by a small margin but a factor of 10 in some instances. It's only real advantages are being free, smaller memory footprint, being free, simple cluster capabilities and being free. If performance is what you're after, MySQL is not the way to go. That doesn't even begin to touch on the reliability, support and ACID compliance that SQL Server excels at. |
KawiForums.com
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 27 June 2005 : 20:23:52
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Regarding mySQL, note that I mentioned tuning Query Caching etc. Out of the box mySQL probably doesn't have exactly what you'd call stellar performance (though newer versions are much better out of the box imo) you need to do some tweaking .. just like you do for MS SQL to get your best performance. Once tweaked I certainly don't notice any real differences between them, if anything I'd give mySQL the edge.
As far as reliabilty goes I can't find any fault with mySQL's even under heavy load .. the OS usually gives out before mySQL does :)
Everyones Millage May Vary I guess :) |
Kiwihosting.Net - The Forum Hosting Specialists
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Edited by - Gremlin on 27 June 2005 20:25:48 |
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 08 July 2005 : 03:28:02
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Looks like my forums are "ticking" again. What I did was limit the search to subjects only as the full default serach uses to max out the server completely and SQL connections would just zoom up. Thanks for the pointers here ;-)
Now another issue if I may ? I'm concerned someone is trying to hack some of my members accounts me with the "password reset" hack. I tried it and it works...diabolical really, good job my hacked was just after some protected files as he could have changed my password too...I replaced password.asp with the one from 3.4.05 and the "trick" no longer works, would you guys agree ? |
Edited by - gpspassion on 08 July 2005 04:59:16 |
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