Is my server enough?

[Karri]

I have the Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz Packages, 1 GB RAM - (2) 80GB Hard Drives, 1400 GB Monthly Transfer server from ev1. I currently have a few different forums all with different posting board software. Right now my vbulletin site has 3 people on it on a busy day. I have another site with 200 or so people on average and it is using SMF. My server is ready to give up the ghost because the load gets so high during the peak times on this site. Would the load better if I switched my license to the super busy site and had it use vbulletin instead of SMF? Is my server even enough to run a site like that? I already don't allow the posting of pictures or attachments so that should help. I don't want to make the switch if it really won't help so any input would be appreciated.

[eva2000]

hi Karri :)

I'd need info asked at http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70117 to better advise you :)

can you post the link url to the ev1 package you have ? as so folks are confusing P4 2.4GHZ 533fsb or 800fsb 512k cache cpu with a Celeron 2.4ghz cpu which is crap for web serving heh

[Karri]

I'm sorry, i didn't think you would need that yet. That will teach me to think :p


Here it is...


1. Is this on dedicated or shared virual server. If shared, how many sites share this server (ask web host if needed) dedicated server with 24 sites on it.
2. your server specs. For example:


Apparently I was imagining things when I looked up my server specs. I have the Celeron 2.0 - Redhat Enterprise - Ensim Pro - 2x80GBHD - 1000 MB RAM package on http://www.ev1servers.net/english/celeron_series.asp which I gather from your post is probably a crap server for what I need now. :(
apache/IIS version: apache 1.3.29
redhat RHEL3 -
apache 2.0.46
php - 4.3.2-19
mysql - 4.0.22


3. if you use mysql 4.x instead of mysql 3.23.x, do you have any innodb type databases/tables on your server ? no
4. if possible how mysql was compiled/installed? installed from rpms downloaded from mysql site
5. your top stats: attached
6. your mysql configuration variables located at /etc/my.cnf or c:\my.cnf so post the contents inside of my.cnf (minus any passwords of course). If on Windows server if you don't have that file you need to log into telnet and as root user type



[admin@ensim admin]$ more /etc/my.cnf
[mysqld]
socket=/home/virtual/FILESYSTEMTEMPLATE/.mysqlsock/mysql.sock
datadir=/var/lib/mysql

skip-locking
skip-innodb
query_cache_limit=1M
query_cache_size=32M
query_cache_type=1
max_connections=500
interactive_timeout=100
wait_timeout=100
connect_timeout=10
thread_cache_size=128
key_buffer=16M
join_buffer=1M
max_allowed_packet=8M
table_cache=1024
record_buffer=1M
sort_buffer_size=2M
read_buffer_size=2M
max_connect_errors=10
thread_concurrency=2
myisam_sort_buffer_size=64M
log-bin
server-id=1

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

[safe_mysqld]
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid


open_files_limit=8192

[client]
socket=/home/virtual/FILESYSTEMTEMPLATE/.mysqlsock/mysql.sock

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet=32M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
#safe-updates

[isamchk]
key_buffer=64M
sort_buffer=64M
read_buffer=16M
write_buffer=16M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer=64M
sort_buffer=64M
read_buffer=16M
write_buffer=16M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout





7. http://www.baileychase.com/mysqlinfo.php



8. is your vB the only thing on the server? or other scripts & sites which utilise php and mysql? other sites with differnet forum software, one with SMF and one with Invision.

9. how many average and max concurrent users on your vB forum ? and what your cookie timeout is ? not relivant for my question since I am asking about converting a SMF forum to VB

10. create a file named phpinfo.php and place this code in it and post the url/link to it from your web site

http://www.baileychase.com/phpinfo.php

11. if you run Apache and you have your own dedicated server or access to your httpd.conf (apache configuration file) can you post the values you have set for the following :

KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 20
StartServers 8
MaxClients 150

12. what version of vB are you running ? The version I have on the site I would be switching my license from is 3.0.5

[Karri]

any thoughts?

[eva2000]

k you your celeron cpu isn't the ideal server for web serving usage but i'd try these steps to see if it helps

1. change /etc/my.cnf to below and restart mysql

[client]
socket=/home/virtual/FILESYSTEMTEMPLATE/.mysqlsock/mysql.sock

[mysqld]
socket=/home/virtual/FILESYSTEMTEMPLATE/.mysqlsock/mysql.sock
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
skip-locking
skip-innodb
max_connections = 500
key_buffer = 16M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
join_buffer_size = 1M
read_buffer_size = 1M
sort_buffer_size = 2M
table_cache = 1024
thread_cache_size = 64
wait_timeout = 10800
connect_timeout = 10
tmp_table_size = 32M
max_allowed_packet = 16M
max_connect_errors = 10
query_cache_limit = 2M
query_cache_size = 32M
query_cache_type = 1

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/var/lib

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet=16M

[mysql]
no-auto-rehash
#safe-updates

[mysqld_safe]
err-log=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
open_files_limit = 8192

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 64M
sort_buffer = 64M
read_buffer = 16M
write_buffer = 16M

[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

2. go to ev1servers support forum and ask other ensim users how to safely upgrade MySQL to 4.0.23 and to upgrade PHP to 4.3.10 and compile it as SAPI module rather than as CGI which is what you have no with out dated PHP 4.3.2. Or ask if ev1server support can upgrade it for you even at a fee.

Reason why i suggest this is if you upgrade php/mysql yourself you can possibly break ensim control panel, but alot of ev1server forum users have experimented with this and know how to do it safely

I never used ensim so can't help there

[Karri]

ok we made the changes you suggested and got SMF running well. It would start to slow down at 300 users and the server would get very bogged down at 600 users. So this weekend I tried converting the forum to vbulletin. The import of the data went perfectly but once the forum went active is when the problems started.


Of course no one could log in with their passwords which we were aware of before we did it. But when they requested their passwords and they got the link that says you must click this with in 24 hours, and they clicked the link, it told them the link had expired. That happened to about 95% of the users that tried to get the passwords. But the real problem and why this is still in the server config section is once we hit maybe 30 total users on line, the server load would hit 30. Under 100 users and the load actually hit 140 before the board finally died. We would restart the server and open the board back up and with in 10 minutes the server was going down again from being badly over loaded. Now I know my server is not ideal for a large board but I would think that I could have under 100 users and not bring the entire server down. So any suggestions on how to get this board up and running would be greatly appreciated. for now we have gone back to SMF just to keep the site running but I would really like to get the vbulletin version working as soon as possible.

Thanks in advance.

[eva2000]

as i said if the mysqlinfo.php link above is still valid etc, looks like celeron cpu is not enough to power your vB I suggest at least Pentium 4 3.2GHZ 800fsb with 1-2GB of ram and SATA disks or SCSI not IDE PATA drives.