# (OT)A note on the User Limit



## Scatterspell (May 6, 2002)

Hello

There has been talk on the Mortalit.net boards about Enworlds user limits (a certian game publisher has been frequenting our boards because of it)  I put forth the notion that Mortality Host the Enworld boards.  Adlon (whom works in the field) is more than happy to help out, as I know he respects Enworld and what it does for the RPG community.  Please let me know your thoughts on this,  have emailed Morrus to see if he would like to look into this option.  But this is also YOUR place to trade ideas, so just wanna hear your feedback.

Crap middle of the night is not a good time to post new threads!!


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## Mark (May 6, 2002)

Gotta love the Mortality Net! 

Don't forget, Mr Walker, about the Chicago Gameday being held in Mount Prospect late June.  Link is in my sig!


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## Scatterspell (May 6, 2002)

Heh first reply goes RIGHT off topic....gotta love it!   

Tho that sounds like a blast!  I might just grace you all with my presence.


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## RangerWickett (May 6, 2002)

How would Mortality handle the server costs?  Who is funding them?  Because Russ is having a few troubles paying for his own server, and I'm pretty sure that ENWorld gets a lot more traffic than Mortality.  Could Mortality even do it?


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## Scatterspell (May 6, 2002)

Good questions, and pretty much yes to all of them.  If there is one thing Mortality has got, it's server space and bandwith.  Well it's got a lot more than that but you know what I mean.

Adlon will do his best to help Enworld get better bandwith and servers that can handle the traffic, and probably save Morrus some cash.


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## Morrus (May 6, 2002)

Scatterspell said:
			
		

> * If there is one thing Mortality has got, it's server space and bandwith.  *




Unfortunately, server space and bandwidth aren't the problem - I have both of those in spades.  The problem is sheer processing power: the boards need a big, powerful dedicated server that can handle all of the simultaneous databsae requests made.

It's a good idea, but unless Adlon actually has a _spare_ hi-spec server that could be dedicated to the boards, it probably isn't the answer to the problem.


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## reapersaurus (May 6, 2002)

Morrus said:
			
		

> *The problem is sheer processing power: the boards need a big, powerful dedicated server that can handle all of the simultaneous databsae requests made.
> 
> It's a good idea, but unless Adlon actually has a spare hi-spec server that could be dedicated to the boards, it probably isn't the answer to the problem.  *



Morrus.

I feel it's my obligation as a computer instructor to try to get across to you that the specs you have been referring to are VERY cheap, in networking circles.

The kind of server you've been talking about 'upgrading' to is a dog, in the industry.
What was it, a dual-processor, 800 MHz or something, with 512 MB of RAM?

For the money that you are receiving in probably 2 weeks of contributing members, I'll bet you could buy a server with those specs straight out, NOT rent it from that rapist hosting service you're using now.

I STRONGLY recommend to follow up on the graciousness offered by others in the industry.

I have always thought this hosting service we are using now is simply a stop-gap, short-time solution from Eric's hosting service.

You did a good job getting us over here intact, and the boards have thrived.

Now let's move to a place that will let us grow as we should.

This hosting service we are using now has NO prospects for allowing that.


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## RangerWickett (May 6, 2002)

I'll admit, I'm confused.    Can someone, for my sake and for the sake of others, explain what exactly a website and a messageboard need to run properly, and how much those things cost and how they work?  I'd be interested to know.


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## Hatchling Dragon (May 6, 2002)

*Me too...*

I'm with *RangerWickett*, I'd like to know the basics of what's needed to keep this madhouse functioning lag-free (or close), and of course the bottom line on what it'd cost for this dream machine.

I may soon be able to contribute to the boards, as I've wanted to do for a while now, but I'm *very* reluctant to 'help' in situations where I don't know details.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

Hatchling Dragon


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## Dungeon Master (May 7, 2002)

I love EN World but the 200-user limit is getting old real fast. It took me almost a whole hour of refreshing to get in. 
As far as having a beefy machine to host message boards, I don't think this is totally accurate. I frequent other message boards (Fan sites) for computer games with rivaling traffic and they remain stable even with well above 300+ users logged in posting messages. 
I also work in the computer industry and if it’s a matter of cost, I can pick up parts for a dual processor server and have it together with little out of pocket. 

I also frequent the Mortality site, heck I live 5 minutes from Adlon's shop and know he has a couple powerful servers, both running Linux. And what better OS to run for Web and e-mail than Linux eh? 

Well, I hope this can be fixed soon. I like frequenting the boards here during the day but I'm finding it near to impossible to get in anymore.


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## EricNoah (May 7, 2002)

Let's make sure this thread gets into the Meta forum.  Keep posting your opinions though!


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## Leopold (May 7, 2002)

RangerWickett said:
			
		

> *I'll admit, I'm confused.    Can someone, for my sake and for the sake of others, explain what exactly a website and a messageboard need to run properly, and how much those things cost and how they work?  I'd be interested to know. *





as an ex sysadmin for some big companies I would point you in the direction of Anandtech.com and do a search on their recent (1yr ago) server upgrade. From that you will see what it is that a website and a forum board need to operate, and yes they are 2 seperate entities and should be handled as such.


Web servers: These pieces of equipment require flexibilty and speed. The load changes from time to time and the faster cpu you have to do the processing the better. Hard drive pages are constant but usually small (web pages are around 100k or less on avg.) but there are allot of them so the hard drives take a beating. Avg memory for a web server should hover around 500-1gb of Ram. Dual cpu's are recommended but 1 fast one (1.2+) can handle the load. Redundancy in the machines and load balancing help ease the burden off the usage, after all you can service more people with less taxing if you have 2 machines doing the work. Overall you just need something that is not unholy fast but something that is: stable,  constant, and has excellent usage of resources. 

Message board: This is the mother of all servers. The hammering of the hard drives and the furious churning of the cpu's makes having a mutli-cpu (2-4) with lots of memory and fast (SCSI) hard drives a must. HardOCP put in  multiple dual P3 pc's with 1GB of Ram each and several SCSI RAID (Redunant Array of Inexpensive Disks) setups to handle the 10's of thousands of messages per day. The key with these is the multiple CPU's and lots of memory. The more you throw at this the better you are. 1GB min in memory is plenty but your HD's should be in some sort of RAID array to increase reliabilty and performance. I would suggest Dual or Quad CPU's for this.

OS: Your operating system is like the driver in your car, if you have a bad driver, no matter how fast your car is you might not be able to handle it. Regardless of the propogand M$ puts out, there are more UNIX web servers out there with greater uptime than any M$ box out there.  Check out this link to see the difference:

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

Unix may be user unfriendly at first, as M$ GUI makes life easy to setup and configure, but the reliabilty and uptime that it gives you makes it well worth the plunge in running UNIX over Microsoft products.


the lesson to be learned is: More is better, but understanding what you want to do and grow is key. I don't know what price tag the new server is, but you can go on ebay, pick up some Company or Sun machines for realatively 1/5 the cost (DoveBid.com is better) and use them in your own datacenter that you host in your own town. I just recently setup a ISP with several Dell Servers running Win2k and RHat. The redhat's the main web server while the win2k is running mail, and IIS only apps. This is to prevent those pesky IIS virus' that come along and to increase performance and uptime.   Before I would go ahead and buy something from someone, I would get a quote from a competitor and see how that price stacks up against another. I don't know what brand of server morrus' company uses, if it's home built and they charge an arm and a leg I would question why. If it's a prebuilt OEM system from Dell, HPQ, or IBM it would make sense (HPQ=HP+Compaq). But take a word of advice and shop around.


Questions, comments, and conerns feel free to email me. 

PS. If anyone's hiring in Florida and needs a sys admin with years of on the job exp and several certs I am available  will work for D20!


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## Leopold (May 7, 2002)

Dungeon Master said:
			
		

> *I
> 1. I also work in the computer industry and if it’s a matter of cost, I can pick up parts for a dual processor server and have it together with little out of pocket.
> 
> 2. I also frequent the Mortality site, heck I live 5 minutes from Adlon's shop and know he has a couple powerful servers, both running Linux. And what better OS to run for Web and e-mail than Linux eh?
> ...




I took your post and divided it for discussion sake.

1. Sure you can pick up a dual board, some cpus', ram, and a few SCSI HD's for cheap on ebay, but the reliabilty and WARRANTY is key with big web farms. If one web server were to die in my farm I can call compaq and i have a 4 hr response time and they come out and fix it with the equipment. That sure saves me time and effort to fix the problem as well as keep spares on hand for every lil part that can go wrong. Warranty is key with big farms. IF mortality has his stuff together and has name brand servers I wouldn't think twice, but I don't know his systems, can you provide specs?

2.  BSD is still king of the web servers. MS ran BSD up until a few years ago on their hotmail servers and finally had to drastically increase the amount to keep up with sheer bulk of it. Linux is good, but it's not solid yet like BSD. If I were learning UNIX i would learn Linux over BSD as in the next few years it will overtake BSD's foothold in several areas as well as MS hold on the desktop.


This is not a flame but just asking of questions and wondering what would be best for ENWorld in the long run.


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## Vargo (May 7, 2002)

*I'll concur with the BSD comment.*

For secure, stable, and FAST, BSD is the OS of choice.  Back in the heydey, ftp.cdrom.com was run on FreeBSD IIRC, and that server held the record for most amount of data served in a day for quite some time.

I was working at Microsoft between the first attempted switchover of Hotmail to NT4 (which failed) and the second switchover to Windows 2000.  I asked one guy on the team why the NT4 conversion had failed.  He replied, "Well, their software is buggy and just is poorly written."

I responded, "Oh?  Then why was it so stable on their Unix boxes?"

To which he fumed and walked off. 

As far as equipment/reliability goes - I'm of a mixed mind about this.  For a hobby board such as this, most standard commercial equipment will hold up as well as the so-called "server-grade" equipment - but if you get into /. territory, you really do need to go with the "service contract" equipment.


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## Adlon (May 7, 2002)

Ok, Morrus, this is NOT a membership drive.

Lets try something. Everyone slam my board for a day or two, and lets see how my end holds up.

No guarantees, but, I think I might have come power to cope.

I will make an ENWOrld Test board, where we all should post massive amounts of gibberish posts.

I will NOT make this forum, of course, until Morrus tells me he is ok with this.

But, if it appears I can help ENWorld with this, then I surely will.

So, Morrus: email me at adlon@mortality.net, and I will open up an ENWorld Test forum. Once we do this for a day or two, I will delete the forum, unless you feel it should be done longer.

But, bottom line, I'm willing and able to help. No doubt there.


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## Leopold (May 7, 2002)

having a few hundred people post gibberish posts is not going to be enough. You need something along the level of a noon-4 influx of data. If your servers hold up then than you will be good to go. Now we need to find out what that threshold is and how to recreate it.


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## LightPhoenix (May 7, 2002)

Dungeon Master said:
			
		

> *I love EN World but the 200-user limit is getting old real fast. It took me almost a whole hour of refreshing to get in. *




This doesn't help any, it just slows down the server more.  Hammering is bad.

Secondly, a lot of what you guys said just went completely over Morrus's head.  I don't think there's a need to impress Morrus with tech-talk, seeing as how he's not a techie from what I gather.  Simplify


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## Leopold (May 7, 2002)

LightPhoenix said:
			
		

> *
> 
> This doesn't help any, it just slows down the server more.  Hammering is bad.
> 
> Secondly, a lot of what you guys said just went completely over Morrus's head.  I don't think there's a need to impress Morrus with tech-talk, seeing as how he's not a techie from what I gather.  Simplify  *





please let us know what we made 'techie' and what we didn't. I thought i made it as simple as possible. If I have to explain it in another fashion I will, no problem with that.


The point of the matter is thus: compare your needs to the needs that other websites had: ArsTechnica, HardOCP, Anandetech, Google, Slashdot. See how they approarched their server upgrades and learn from them. The power of a webmaster is going to other webmasters and asking their advice and 9/10 they will give it to you. Just ask the questions and those that can answer will..


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## reapersaurus (May 7, 2002)

you guys _did_ use techie language, acronyms, and short-cut references which completely isolates a non-techie from understanding much of what was said.

Trust me.

It is hard to properly explain, since Morrus isn't really in a discussion with us, we're just talking around the problem.

Now, this problem here is more of a spec, reliability, and cost issue.
Most difficult as I see it is Morrus decision to move the boards without an easy test case to help him determine the viability of it working.

So Morrus - one thing that should probably be done is to shut down the boards for a lunch-crunch and redirect everyone to mortality instead of the temp ezboard.

And people must be encouraged to post a LOT, and read etc etc etc.
When we were redirected to the ezboards, i don;t think they were really hammered anywhere near as hard as the ENBoards are during lunchtime.
That would be key for a good test: to make sure mortality was hit somewhat similarly as the ENBOards are.

How to do that without all the content over there I don't see how can be accomplished, unless it's a concerted effort by all the members and lurkers that day.


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## Morrus (May 7, 2002)

I'll drop you an email, Adlon.  I don't think we'll be able to simulate regular traffic, though

Another priority is keeping all the threads and member accounts  - which pretty much means using vB still.


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## Scatterspell (May 7, 2002)

Hey all I know I wanted to help Enworld out.  I may have been on here only a short while ( I really wasn't much of a message board poster for a long time).  But so far the community has been good and helpful.  The response to Played It was strong, even if not in threads on the boards.  I wanted to see if I could do something to help Morrus out.  This was never a membership drive for Mortality.  So please lend some support instead of bashing, I know we all hate the user limits and I know Adlon could help out immensely.  He has the ability and resources.


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## Adlon (May 8, 2002)

Ok, this just in.

First off, I will do whatever it takes to help simulate high load, but the final call is Morrus's.

However, alot DOES have to do with the initial forum software, and how its scripted, as to whether or not it bugs out under duress, and to what degree.

I am currently using openBB on my site, and it appears that the project is suffering from DEV team burnout, as things seem to be a bit unstable there at their site.

BUT, one of the DEV team has migrated to another forum project, and he's a friend IRL.

This new forum system is sweet, and the DEV team is writing IMPORT scripts, to import a great many different forum packages, and the related DB. My openBB is already scripted for conversion to the new system.

Having run about 7 different brands of forum packages, again, alot has to do with HOW its written, and HOW it calls on the DB.

This is in NO way implying that vBulletin has any issues.

For tose of you who would like to see where Mortality is most likely heading, go here:

http://www.invisionboard.com/forums/

They DO have ALL of their eye candy turned on, and are using a theme that is very busy, but, this is easily changed in the admin area.

Morrus, if you have a need, let me know, and I will give you access to MY present admin panel. The new system above has a similar panel, only I'm told much easier to use than my openBB.

I saw one good suggestion: during the lunch time rush, redirect the traffic to Mortality, to a dedicated forum, where people can post any sort of gibberish, I'd make a sticky post where people can then get a link BACK to ENWorld.

Anyways, I'm offering ANY help that I can. IF indeed my server can handle the load, whether due to my pipe, my server itself, or perhaps a stronger base forum package, I have no clue yet, but, I'm willing to try whatever it takes.

If we see that for whatever reason I can handle the load, then me and Morrus willl work on a solution.

I'll need a day notice (I work full time) to create the test forum at Mortality.


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## Scatterspell (May 9, 2002)

I am glad to see that this is probably going to go somewhere.


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