# Nice test, but...



## Khan the Warlord (May 10, 2002)

I dearly hope that EN World doesn't switch over -- the extreme slowness and the CONSTANT error messages drove me nuts. (I stopped testing the forums when I couldn't even create a post because of the errors.)


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## Khan the Warlord (May 10, 2002)

OK, that was really strange... the above post was meant as a reply in another thread, but instead came up as an entirely new thread.

?


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## Crothian (May 10, 2002)

I thought the slowness and the errors were caused by the unusually high amount of traffic?  I think that it was higher today then any peak period we have,  at least that's what it sounded like the intention was.  

As for the new thread, yopu might have accidently hit the wrong button.  It happens as they are right next to each other.


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## Heretic Apostate (May 10, 2002)

Keep in mind, Adlon's server were built up for his normal level of activity.  We just subjected it to a "denial of service" type of situation.

He's going to be upgrading, and I think Morrus said that he doesn't need some fancy solution (given the revealed stats on Adlon's server).


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## Adlon (May 10, 2002)

HA, you are correct.

This wasnt just a look at a forum package, or a new server, but, a look at an overall different environmet for the forums here.


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## Psychotic Dreamer (May 10, 2002)

I started to get errors on Mortality.net yesterday, but 9 times out of 10 a reload cleared up the error.  Everything was very slow, but that was mostly likely due to the insanly high amount of people doing things.  Which was the point.  

Now my next thought does this prove that ENWorld should be hosted on the same server as Mortality.net or hosted on another machine at Mortality.net?  Personally I go for the second option.  That way no matter how bad the actual traffic on ENWorld gets it shouldn't directly affect Mortality.net other than the bandwith.

Just a random thought from a random someone...


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## Henry (May 10, 2002)

I hope Adlon doesn't mind this, but do you all realize the system his Mortality forums are running on?

In a nutshell: Celeron Processor, 128MB Memory, Fujitsu slow-as-crud IDE hard drive, a Linux OS, and a 10MBit Network card. Morrus' system that runs these forums is a MUCH bulkier.

With that in mind, it is phenomenal that we had over 300 users hitting that one forum, and IT DIDN'T GO DOWN. It had glitches, and slowness, but it didn't crash (someone correct me here, but I believe this is correct.)

Yesterday's performance put the ENWorld server (and possibly Vbulletin Board software) to shame. No offense, Morrus.


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## A2Z (May 10, 2002)

Okay, here's a question. Keep in mind I know next to nothing about servers. How is it at all possible that Morrus's faster more powerful server is outperformed by mortality.net's server? It doesn't make much sense to me that the EN world server outclasses the Mortality server in almost every way and still has all these problems. Can some explain it to me? Slowly?


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## drothgery (May 10, 2002)

The Windows versions of PHP and MySQL suck. vBulletin is a PHP/MySQL based system. Also, I don't think Mortality.Net's server is running any other high-demand applications.


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## omokage (May 10, 2002)

drothgery sums it up pretty well. PHP & MySQL running on Windows 2000 (which I believe is the OS the ENBoards are on) is much much less efficient than to run it on a UNIX/Linux/BSD machine.

It seems that Windows doesn't handle the resources as well, mainly because one has to run so many other things along side the webserver and database.

Linux is much more scalable.


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## The It's Man (May 11, 2002)

I haven't helped testing (sorry, you can spank me )

Could it also be because this server has a much bigger load in threads and users. Looking up info in a database where 4500+ accounts takes more time than 1200+ users.

Same thing goes for number of threads/posts.


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## Morrus (May 11, 2002)

The It's Man said:
			
		

> *Could it also be because this server has a much bigger load in threads and users. Looking up info in a database where 4500+ accounts takes more time than 1200+ users.
> 
> Same thing goes for number of threads/posts. *




That's probably a very good point, actually.  I remember when Eric used Gamespy's servers that the General forum there had to be pruned regulalry lest the number of threads caused the boards to crash.

Anyone else got any opinions on this?


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## Grazzt (May 11, 2002)

Ah..nevermind.....


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## Henry (May 11, 2002)

I say look at two facts: for one whole day, on an inferior hardware box, with an inferior internet connect, Mortality took on ALL of our traffic, including 750 registrations (very system-intensive), with 450 users at peak times, and DID not crash.

Second fact: the Operating system used was long been touted in the past as a strong server OS. Apache is in the same class as IIS - each has its champions; Microsoft uses SQL Server with windows 2000 enterprise servers, and no doubt multiple very strong load-balanced servers. We may have to face it - The problem may even be in MySQL.

I trust Adlon has the proper tech knowledge and experience to help morrus in this situation, and that Morrus has for the past year always steered this community in the right path. I for one will stop armchair quarterbacking until Morrus asks for more opinions. ENWorld is in very good hands.


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## reapersaurus (May 11, 2002)

Henry said:
			
		

> *Microsoft uses SQL Server with windows 2000 enterprise servers, and no doubt multiple very strong load-balanced servers. *



Yes, Microsoft has never been anything but consistent in their insistence that at the minimum, you should probably have OVER 256 MB RAM at the minimum for a Win 2K server with any kind of load.

We have MUCH more load than what they are talking about with those minimum recommendations.

edit: I would also not automatically trust the hosting service that Morrus is using that they are not using the server for other things as well.


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## Adlon (May 11, 2002)

A slight correction on ONE post here: My server is running other intensive apps. An IRC server, 35+ hosted websites, 2 or 3 of which are full blown E-Commerce sites, with another 10 being high traffic sites (realestate sites, here in florida, 1000+ hits a day each), all of which were in operation while we hammered Mortality.


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## Adlon (May 11, 2002)

> Originally posted by The It's Man
> Could it also be because this server has a much bigger load in threads and users. Looking up info in a database where 4500+ accounts takes more time than 1200+ users.
> 
> Same thing goes for number of threads/posts.




The first part of that does indeed have some bearing, the second part has NO bearing. When a user goes into a forum, the DB is querried only for the posts in that thread. So, threads/posts only has relevance when a search is done to see X posts by a certain author, or a keyword search.

Also, again, the MASS registration added greatly to the slowdown.
Registrations write to the DB in many areas, where posts add to one area, and link to one other in the DB.

I'm still looking at the possibilities of the first part.


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## Psionicist (May 11, 2002)

According to some mortality.net headers, the server is running
Apache 2.0.36 and PHP 4.2.0


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## The It's Man (May 12, 2002)

Adlon, when I click on a link of a topic in a forum, it does make a search into a bigger database on ENWorld than it did on your forums (BTW, I think it's great that you voluntererd to put this on a test on your server, glad that it didn't start smoking .

Morrus, I guess pruning these boards (well, the GF - or maybe only the "old" OT posts) won't be bad for performance. IIRC sometimes Eric did a "reindexing" of the database once in a while. I guess it won't be hurt for performance - bad news is that the boards should be offline for a while when you do that.


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## hong (May 12, 2002)

The It's Man said:
			
		

> *Morrus, I guess pruning these boards (well, the GF - or maybe only the "old" OT posts) won't be bad for performance.*




I must also mention that "Pruning the GF" sounds like a terribly hazardous practice, albeit an excellent name for a rock band.


Hong "for certain expansions of GF, anyway" Ooi


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