Busiest VB?

[bigbigsavings]

Our current stats:

Currently Active Users:
There are currently 161 member(s) and 656 guest(s) on the boards.

Is this pretty much as big as they get?

Alex

[eva2000]

probably, but forums.gameplay.com removed the active user status so not sure if they are the biggest ?

i know paintballcity, fanforum when they were on vB moved back to UBB, are pretty big.

[Freddie Bingham]

I think in addition to moving to 1.1.4 you should also remove the active users and the code that updates the session table as it doesn't have much use if 200 names are on the list.

[bigbigsavings]

freddie,

Our index.php3 page is what takes the longest to load on the site. How can i remove the code that updates the session table? I'd like the forums to show HOW many people are online, but not necessarily the actual list of people.

[Freddie Bingham]

Well it is an option in the control panel. Turning it off will drop the list of users along with the numbers online though. Showing the list is no big deal, it is just having the loggedins on causes the session table to be updated for every user on every page they visit. That was what I was suggesting you disable which also means you lose the count of users online.

[VirtueTech]

Freddie,

Does showing the list of logged in users take alot of system resources...or not really.

Also...if I use the variable $loggedinusers how do I switch it to show the list of users to a summary of the logged in users?

Thanks.

P.S. At top peak hours we get around 340 concurrent users and the server handles well. Our server is:

Slackware Linux
Dual PIII 900's
5 36.4 IBM Ultra 2 SCSI Drives
RAID 5
1.5 GB of 100 mhz SDRAM

[Zecherieh]

All I know is that I checked out the bigbigsavings forum - five hours later now I have more junk on its a way to me than I could possibly know what to do with.

Dang I hate going to sites where I can find free stuff - I cant turn down anything free.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Zecherieh
All I know is that I checked out the bigbigsavings forum - five hours later now I have more junk on its a way to me than I could possibly know what to do with.

Dang I hate going to sites where I can find free stuff - I cant turn down anything free. now that's word of mouth advertising that no one can resist :D

*** heads on off to bigsavings site :) ***

[JimF]

Originally posted by VirtueTech
At top peak hours we get around 340 concurrent users and the server handles well. Our server is:

Slackware Linux
Dual PIII 900's
5 36.4 IBM Ultra 2 SCSI Drives
RAID 5
1.5 GB of 100 mhz SDRAM


Yeah, I think NASA is using a similar setup on the space station ;).

-JIM

[bigbigsavings]

I have ordered yet another server upgrade, so we can handle the 800+ online users. After the upgrade we wil be running on

Web Servers:
2 Load balanced Dual p3-700's with 512 megs of ram each.

Database server:

Quad 450Mhz Sun E420R with 2 gigs of ram, 2 18GIG SCSI HD's RAID1

I think that should be enough, lol.

Alex

[eva2000]

Originally posted by bigbigsavings
I have ordered yet another server upgrade, so we can handle the 800+ online users. After the upgrade we wil be running on

Web Servers:
2 Load balanced Dual p3-700's with 512 megs of ram each.

Database server:

Quad 450Mhz Sun E420R with 2 gigs of ram, 2 18GIG SCSI HD's RAID1

I think that should be enough, lol.

Alex my GOD !!! - how much does all that set you back each month :eek: how's the load average looking on that setup :)

[Troy Roberts]

bigbig - how many page views are you getting per month? What do you think is the minimum setup that would handle your load?

[Freddie Bingham]

Originally posted by JimF
Originally posted by VirtueTech
At top peak hours we get around 340 concurrent users and the server handles well. Our server is:

Slackware Linux
Dual PIII 900's
5 36.4 IBM Ultra 2 SCSI Drives
RAID 5
1.5 GB of 100 mhz SDRAM


Yeah, I think NASA is using a similar setup on the space station ;).

-JIM

Last I saw, the Space Shuttle used no intel CPU's greater than a 386 - it takes them ALONG time to certify a cpu for use in space.

[bigbigsavings]

Troy,

Right now we're doing about 240,000 page views per day, and our current set up is barely handling it. The current database server (dual p3-700 with 1 gig of ram) with about 600 people online starts hitting loads of 10+ and the board becomes very slow.

Alex

[chrispadfield]

well it is certainly not here (busy) with only 2 members online at the moment. lowerst i have ever seen.

[eva2000]

hehe my vB has been closed for 58 hrs now and still 20 - 30 people are hitting it.. but that's scary that bigsavings' setup is barely coping with such a setup but is that just a vBulletin or is that including the site and other hosted sites ?

[bigbigsavings]

There's nothing else running on those servers, just the forum.

Alex

[Troy Roberts]

Originally posted by bigbigsavings
Troy,

Right now we're doing about 240,000 page views per day, and our current set up is barely handling it. The current database server (dual p3-700 with 1 gig of ram) with about 600 people online starts hitting loads of 10+ and the board becomes very slow.

Alex

Thanks. Is the database server the sole machine for the forum today? Or is it load balanced somehow?

I'm curious because we just got a new server for the forum. It won't have anything else on it. We're switching to vb from UBB sometime next week. The server we put it on is a dual 750mhz PIII, 1 gig of ram running RedHat Linux. We do 200k page views per day on average.

We also have a dual 650 mhz with 512 ram that we are going to be using for free email, html, and various other things on the site.

I don't really know much about load balancing. Do you think it might make sense to have the vb source code on one machine and the database on another? I'm a little worried about the load as we are still growing quite rapidly.

[bigbigsavings]

Our database server is dedicated to everything that has to do with MYSQL. As for YOUR setup, if you do 200,000 pageviews per day, I don't think that your dual p3-750 is going to fair too well. Our Dual p3-700 with 1 gig of ram, also running redhat is having trouble keeping up with our 220-240,000 pageviews per day, and you're not far from there. Feel free to email me at alexz@bigbigsavings.com and I can tell you some of the things we had gone through with our servers, so that you don't make the same mistake.

Alex

[Mike Sullivan]

Here's another huge vB - http://forums.counter-strike.net - Just converted, courtesy of Stallion. They were pruning daily with UBB. They're now running 1.1.4 with the additional indexes and it looks to be purring along.

Just now: 136 members, 270 guests. Little slower than it was about 2 hours ago :)

[bigbigsavings]

Version 1.1.4 DEFINITELY helped (although I'm still very upset about not having Private Messaging - as are the members), but the counter strike forums are quite slow for me. After you click on a link to a particular forum or to the main index page, it takes 4-5 seconds before the command is even recognized. Thats the same problem we were having.

PS. If someone can help me get Private Messaging installed, I'd be very appreciative.

Alex

[eva2000]

Originally posted by bigbigsavings
Version 1.1.4 DEFINITELY helped (although I'm still very upset about not having Private Messaging - as are the members), but the counter strike forums are quite slow for me. After you click on a link to a particular forum or to the main index page, it takes 4-5 seconds before the command is even recognized. Thats the same problem we were having.

PS. If someone can help me get Private Messaging installed, I'd be very appreciative.

Alex well i got PM 1.2.5 installed on 1.1.4 but it didn't work properly so i had to remove it :(

http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?postid=40481#post40481
http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=4557

it wasn't worth the hassle to install it, just wait for v2 :)

[werehere]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
Here's another huge vB - http://forums.counter-strike.net - Just converted, courtesy of Stallion. They were pruning daily with UBB. They're now running 1.1.4 with the additional indexes and it looks to be purring along.

Just now: 136 members, 270 guests. Little slower than it was about 2 hours ago :)

Both this one, and the bigbigsavings forum are monsters. I have been watching both of them, and they are going to be huge (gameplay style) very soon!

They both seem to load quite well for me, and I was not expecting it considering the amount of users, but it was pretty good!

Great job with those forums guys!

[Mike Sullivan]

Honestly, I think both the bigbigsavings and CS forums are HIGHLY limited by MySQL. You might be wise to look into running a custom Sybase backed vB. I know Matt Rogish is running one himself :)

[bigbigsavings]

Ed,

Who's Matt Roggish?

At this point, I'm thinking of switching to FuseTalk, since there are very LARGE forums running it without any problems (Anandtech being a perfect case). We can't keep upgrading our servers forever, it's already costing an arm and a leg for what we've got. Any solution would be good.

Alex

[Mike Sullivan]

Matt Rogish - mrogish: http://www.fanhome.com/
I believe all his boards are running on Sybase.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
Matt Rogish - mrogish: http://www.fanhome.com/
I believe all his boards are running on Sybase. yep i got a sneak peak at the new forums and they are cool - but at US$10,000+ for the Sybase license - http://www.sybase.com/products/databaseservers/ase/ it's expensive :eek:

the public forums are still on MySQL ... well last i heard...

[Mike Sullivan]

1/10th of Oracle - but not 1/10th of the performance.

But for someone who has 600 people hitting the boards, I highly doubt MySQL will cut it.

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
1/10th of Oracle - but not 1/10th of the performance.

But for someone who has 600 people hitting the boards, I highly doubt MySQL will cut it. wow does oracle really cost that much :eek: you can download for free the Sybase ASE from the right column of links posted on that url above - free on a development server so you could try it out

bigsavings, just curious with the amount of users on your forums, do you get alot of error 134 corruptions etc ?

[bigbigsavings]

eva2000,

So far, we have not had any corruption or errors. The only problem we really experienced was today (I posted about the slow queries, you read that message). Right now, everything is running perfectly, although I don't know how many people are online. If I had to guess by looking at the system usage, there are about 500-600 people on right now and the server load is just under 2.5.

This is WITHOUT being on the SUN servers yet.

Alex

[Troy Roberts]

You guys are scaring me here. :) We are planning to launch VB this week. I'm a little concerned now that it won't hold up to the load.

I guess we'll just have to give it a try for a day or two. We can always switch back while we get more hardware. :(

[bigbigsavings]

Troy,

Be afraid, be VERY afraid, lol.

alex

[eva2000]

Originally posted by bigbigsavings
eva2000,

So far, we have not had any corruption or errors. The only problem we really experienced was today (I posted about the slow queries, you read that message). Right now, everything is running perfectly, although I don't know how many people are online. If I had to guess by looking at the system usage, there are about 500-600 people on right now and the server load is just under 2.5.

This is WITHOUT being on the SUN servers yet.

Alex yeah i wonder, if you can remove the active users, but still list only the number of members and guests ? would take still take up the same resources (Ed ?) you're moving to SUN servers - plural :eek: that's gotta cost more than an arm and leg - you're in the US right ? why not sign up for paypal and referal your members to it and grab US$5 per referral ? certainly help :)

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Troy Roberts
You guys are scaring me here. :) We are planning to launch VB this week. I'm a little concerned now that it won't hold up to the load.

I guess we'll just have to give it a try for a day or two. We can always switch back while we get more hardware. :( hehe it's guys like bigsavings that are scary me into holding off full promotion of my forums until i have some money in the bank for upgrades etc... can't have me dying before i get started :)

[Mike Sullivan]

Oh, to anyone running a big board, try going into the options and turning off "hideprivateforums". There was a HUGE (double the rendering time) performance hit in 1.1.3, but it was at least lessened in 1.1.4. If it doesn't perform any faster, turn it back on if need be.

[Troy Roberts]

Do you think that the limitations are inherent in mysql or can I throw a good bit of hardware at it and be able to handle a pretty large load?

There may be a few of us that want that Sybase version soon. ;)

[eva2000]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
Oh, to anyone running a big board, try going into the options and turning off "hideprivateforums". There was a HUGE (double the rendering time) performance hit in 1.1.3, but it was at least lessened in 1.1.4. If it doesn't perform any faster, turn it back on if need be. first i heard of this... i have like 6 - 8 hidden private forums.. not much of an issue with my current numbers

[MattR]

Yes, it does! :)

I'm trying to get them all converted over to one set of PHP files and one database. It is pretty much final, and the beta is in the final stages. Hopefully Sybase can scale as well as all of the benchmarks have predicted!

If anyone is interested in Sybase + VB let me know.

[Chris Schreiber]

Originally posted by mrogish
If anyone is interested in Sybase + VB let me know.

I'd be very interested in hearing more about this... I installed Sybase ASE on my server just to get a feel for it. I know there are a couple of other vB sites that are or will be pushing MySQL to it's limits, so knowing what's involved to get a Sybase backend working would be very helpful.

Thanks,
-Chris

[chrispadfield]

what is there between sybase ($10,000) and mysql (free) ???

[Mike Sullivan]

Hope Matt doesn't mind, but this is from an email he sent me a little while ago:
...the big boys support a lot of great features that are currently in development or not scheduled to ever be released from mySQL developers... Transactions, Stored Procedures, Triggers, Cursors, integrated backup solutions, DB level full-text search engines (Sybase has this, I'm debating whether or not I want Sybase to do all the work that VB is trying to do), etc. Sybase/Oracle also use a different method of storing data (no ISAM hashes, eww) so that it offers a performance increase with large amounts of data. Essentially ISAM indexes are static, and as the relation grows in size, the ISAM indexes aren't updated. So performance steadily decreases. I believe mySAM is supposed to fix that (more non-standard), but the B+ and B* trees in the other RDBMS' implementation ignores that completely. Also the B* tree is faster because it links the leaf nodes in sort of a linked list, so you can traverse the tree laterally and horizontally instead of only up and down (technical definitions, of course) :)

[chrispadfield]

is was quite pleased when i understood 1 our of 4 of the words in that passage.. oh well..

[bigbigsavings]

That's a whole word more than I understood :) You should be proud of yourself!

Alex

[MattR]

No problem Ed/Mike! :)

Chris (Schreiber):
Sybase works pretty much out of the box. Their Red Hat Linux distro is a plug-and-play RPM. It sets everything up for you in the /opt/sybase/ directory (or something close to it).

Of course, there are plenty of ways to tweak it for optimal performance. However, with mySQL being pretty non-standard re-writing the whole DB backend was a bear. A lot of find-and-replace was needed! :) However, I was able to use stored procedures and transactions for a few of my hacks, so that makes it a whole lot faster than giving it to PHP to package up.

If you're familiar with embedded SQL in C++ (and the like) programming, you know how convoluted the process is... precompile the file, strip out all of the ESQL statements, generate app plans, etc. Each SQL statement in PHP has to follow the same processes, but PHP shields you from a lot of that. So, one SP call is more efficient than a bunch of ad-hoc queries (plus the SP is compiled, skipping the syntax and semantic checks that the RDBMS must do each time).

Our motives for choosing Sybase was that mySQL corrupts our tables on a weekly basis. Running CRON jobs to repair the tables becomes an annoying and time-consuming process (as several hundred thousand row tables (and one million row table) take a long time to fix if something breaks, and users are online 24-7, 365). That, and on peak times we'd have around 400 (give or take) users pegging the SQL server, which just killed it. Oh, and due to the way Linux/mySQL works is that there's an internal limit of max connections to around 1000 (IIRC) and with the launch of our latest site coupled with the overall increase in traffic we'd surpass that in a few months (hopefully! :))

The database abstraction layer was a bit of a hindrance in the porting case. Due to the structure changes, I had to re-write just about every query in the whole thing, so there wasn’t a big advantage to that.. just an extra REQUIRE’d file.

chrispadfield:
Actually, the price of Sybase varies depending on your server configuration. Sybase charges (in internet pricing, of course) per processor of your DB server. If I recall correctly, it is around $4800 per CPU. That is where the $10,000 came from in our case (dual CPU machine). Also, we purchased 24/7 365 call in tech support which was around $5000.

For all: Sybase ASE 11.0.3 is absolutely free for production use on the Linux operating system. It’s a couple of years old, but for free, it’s an excellent deal.

However, if you have a smaller box (say 1 CPU) and don’t need the extended tech support (8 to 5 tech support comes standard) you could conceivably walk away with a great Enterprise-class RDBMS for under $5,000. There are very few Relational DataBase Management Systems (RDBMS if anyone was wondering) in between there. There is PostGRES SQL, mySQL, MSQL, etc. that are all pretty much free. In the RDBMS world you either have free or expensive (Microsoft SQL Server 7/2000, Oracle 8i, Sybase ASE, etc.).

I’m quickly on my way to becoming a Sybase Certified ASE 11.9.2 DBA, so if anyone has any more questions feel free to ask! If I can’t answer them now, I will be able to shortly! :)

[Mike Sullivan]

That's about as much as I understood too, but you can't say I didn't try :)
(Note to self: Avoid DBAs in the future) ;)

[MattR]

Originally posted by Ed Sullivan
That's about as much as I understood too, but you can't say I didn't try :)
(Note to self: Avoid DBAs in the future) ;)

Hey! Just because we devote our lives to the wonderful SQL programming language and maintaining, upgrading, caring for, tucking into bed, and kissing our DB good night doesn't mean we're weird people!

Well.. Ignore what I just said. :)

[MattR]

Originally posted by Troy Roberts
Do you think that the limitations are inherent in mysql or can I throw a good bit of hardware at it and be able to handle a pretty large load?

There may be a few of us that want that Sybase version soon. ;)

Troy, sorry I forgot to mention your post in my other one.

mySQL, like any other software program, has limits. It can only do so much, and after a certain point it hits a brick wall. I admire it for what it does -- it's a great DBMS for FREE that allows people to get their feet wet with SQL and the whole DB design thing.

However, there's a reason why almost every large company in the world doesn't use it (they use Oracle, but don't get me started on that. Grr..). It just can't handle increased loads without crapping out. mySQL is built, from the ground up, for speed. And it delivers for the most part.

Of course, there's a trade-off for everything. You can't have speed with out sacrifices. For RDBMS purists mySQL sacrifices a lot, mostly ACID compliance. ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, and Durable transactions) is a specification developed for Transactional support. mySQL offers (I think the newest beta does support limited transactions) none of these things. You lose data integrity, stored procedure support (non-standard but useful), and a host of other things.

You can continue to throw bigger and badder hardware at the solution, but you will ultimately reach a performance plateau with mySQL, plain and simple. Several of us have either reached it or are on a steady course for it.

[Troy Roberts]

Thanks for the reply, Matt. I guess my question comes down to this: With 200k + page views per day can I use MySQL?

I have two servers. One is a dual 650mhz PIII. the other is a dual 750mhz PIII with on gig of ram. I'm thinking that it may be best to use the 650 as a webserver and the 750 as strictly a db server. Do you think that this will hold up in the short term?

I also plan on keeping threads around indefinately. We get a lot of in depth technical threads that we are going to build a links database to. I worry about the search over the long term.

I'm willing to pay for Sybase, but I hate to hold up the launch any further. I also worry about having a non-standard vb when it comes to support.

What do you think?

[chrispadfield]

is mySQL likely to imrpove significantly over time do you think? with companies like nusphere investing time and money into it is it ever going to be powerful enough to handle these sort of busy sites?

[eva2000]

Originally posted by chrispadfield
is mySQL likely to imrpove significantly over time do you think? with companies like nusphere investing time and money into it is it ever going to be powerful enough to handle these sort of busy sites? well i do hope so... but even if MySQL did start charging as the product got better, i doubt anyone would mine as long as it was within a price range we could all afford :)

[MattR]

Troy:
No problem! I think that mySQL will try and keep up. We've hit our max at less than that, so it is up to you. It will definitely help to get bigger machines, of course, but again there's a practical limit to mySQL somewhere (depending on your tweaks, it varies) and eventually you'll hit it!
Things with Jelsoft have gone well, and it looks like we've almost reached an agreement with them to add vB Sybase to the vB product line. So, it would no longer be non-standard, but just another choice for users!

Chris P.:
Well, obviously NuSphere is the best thing going for mySQL and they're going to bring a lot to the mySQL table (heh, pun). However, their tweaks (finally some row-level locking and better transactional support) are several months or more away, but they will definitely help it. However, it's a wait-and-see approach with what they are going to offer.


[Edited by mrogish on 11-14-2000 at 05:08 PM]

[eva2000]

Originally posted by mrogish
Thinks with Jelsoft have gone well, and it looks like we've almost reached an agreement with them to add vB Sybase to the vB product line. So, it would no longer be non-standard, but just another choice for users!

matt did i read that correctly, Sybase support for vB through Jelsoft eventually ?

[MattR]

Originally posted by eva2000
matt did i read that correctly, Sybase support for vB through Jelsoft eventually ?
If all goes well, we're looking at around January sometime for me to clean up the code and get it all pretty like. :)

Probably what I'll end up doing is taking the stock 1.1.4 code and porting it quickly over to Sybase, then adding PMs / Polls to it.

If that will take too long, I will, like I said, clean up my 1.1.3 code (plus all the tweaks) and then that will be the final version. It depends, but it looks like we're on that track. :)

[chrispadfield]

without being silly, wouldn't you want to do v2.0 code ???

[MattR]

Originally posted by chrispadfield
without being silly, wouldn't you want to do v2.0 code ???

It depends on when 2.0 comes out, but that would mean a WHOLE lot of work on my end, whereas I've already finished vB Sybase (a couple of months ago actually). If 2.0 DB code is pretty close to what we have now, and if the DB structure isn't too crazy it may be possible, but I can't make any promises with my schedule as crazy as it is now.

[Mike Sullivan]

Originally posted by mrogish
Things with Jelsoft have gone well, and it looks like we've almost reached an agreement with them to add vB Sybase to the vB product line. So, it would no longer be non-standard, but just another choice for users!See, the email didn't get lost. :) Just needed a subtle hint.

...mySQL table (heh, pun)./me runs like the wind!

[Troy Roberts]

One more question for you Matt. Do you think it would be better performance wise to use the dual 750 as strictly the db server and the dual 650 as the web server? Will the extra time spent transferring data back and forth have much of an impact? Both machines are in the same building.

[Dave#]

What a quality thread people:

I must confess to agreeing totally with all that Chris, Ed and Mr have said regarding the limitations and scalability of Mysql.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Vbulletin is the fact that despite the software still being in it's infancy the users and I supect the developers are looking at ports to RDBMS that will suit everyone from the hobbyist through corporate to the monster sites on the net.

I must confess to being quite heartened by thew discussion and I sincerly hope that the Vbulletin developers take theis thread on board when planning for the future.

[Aldreis]

> (they use Oracle, but don't get me started on that. Grr..).

When you have enough time, Matt, please, do... :D
There are a lot of members ( mostly lurkers, judging by the e-mails I keep receiving for this (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=173) thread ) with a special interest on anything related...

[MattR]

Originally posted by Troy Roberts
One more question for you Matt. Do you think it would be better performance wise to use the dual 750 as strictly the db server and the dual 650 as the web server? Will the extra time spent transferring data back and forth have much of an impact? Both machines are in the same building.

That is the way our set-up is (although it's a smaller web server). Seems to work well, and segregation like that is how most major websites work -- they have a couple load-balanced web servers all hitting one (or more) database machines.

[MattR]

Originally posted by Aldreis
> (they use Oracle, but don't get me started on that. Grr..).

When you have enough time, Matt, please, do... :D
There are a lot of members ( mostly lurkers, judging by the e-mails I keep receiving for this (http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=173) thread ) with a special interest on anything related...

Well, first of all, Oracle was / is 10 times more expensive than Sybase. For us (dual PIII 750) it was ~$15,000 vs ~$150,000. Also the Sybase price includes 24/7/365 tech support, but IIRC the Oracle pricing was normal business hour support.

Also, semi-official benchmarks (I think Oracle prohibits benchmarks from being permitted) show that Oracle is in fact SLOWER than Sybase at most everything...

http://www.mysql.com/information/benchmarks.html

There isn't a direct comparison, but if you look at the "Numerical comparison tables between DB2, Informix, MS-SQL, MySQL, Solid and Sybase on NT 4.0" and "Numerical comparison between MySQL and Oracle 8.0.3 running on a NT" charts, you can see that Sybase ASE 11.5 beats Oracle 8.0.3 pretty consistently.

Granted, these aren't the latest versions of either DBMS and they are running on WinNT 4.0, but expect approximately the same results on your Linux machine running the latest versions (I would expect similar performance benchmarks between 8.0.3 to 8.1i, but I'd expect quite a bit of gains from ASE 11.5 to ASE 12.0 (and soon to be 12.5)).

So, why in the heck would you choose a RDBMS that is 10X more expensive but SLOWER in most things that vB does? (If you look at SELECT_JOIN you can see that Sybase is over 4X FASTER than Oracle!)

Also, Oracle connect rates are around 1 sec (according to this benchmark), but Sybase has around a 0.1 second connect time.

Another thing is that Oracle is a HUGE memory hog. I have no clue why. I tried running it on one of my local development machines that has 512MB of RAM and a decent dual PIII (550Mhz x 2CPUs) and it just died. Granted, I'm sure if you're buying a $150,000 database you're going to throw huge servers at it, but Sybase ran beautifully and without any problems on that same machine.

Also, the Oracle 8i installer is horribly written (in Java, no less), and trying to install it from my Win2K machine was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. It took the installer 4 minutes just to show the first screen on my PIII 550 with 384 MB RAM. The rest of the menus were confusing, and the program crashed 3 times on me before I could get it installed.

Sybase comes in a convenient RPM format (along with other installers depending on the platform) -- all you have to do to get the DB installed is to run ONE command from the command prompt. You then run the setup program to configure the server (give it a name, etc.) -- that part is kind of tricky if you don't have any documentation handy, but the install manuals that come with it are very well written and I had no problems with their help.

To sum it up:
Oracle == hugely overpriced, incredibly high system resource usage, slower
Sybase == Down to earth pricing, can run on a MUCH smaller system, faster at most common tasks that VB does

One place where Oracle has it over Sybase is their tremendous marketing machine. Who hasn't seen 40 Oracle commercials in the past week? How many Sybase commercials have you seen?

However, there are some companies that use Sybase: AOL Web Mail (or so I'm told) and the New York Stock Exchange. I'm sure there are more somewhere, but I bet the rest have fallen prey to the Oracle steamroller.

[Edited by mrogish on 11-20-2000 at 03:01 AM]

[MattR]

P.S.
Sybase ASE 11.0.3 IS FREE!! I know Distributed.net uses Sybase ASE 11.0.3 for their http://stats.distributed.net server. They have huge databases with tens of thousands of people constantly updating it. If that's not proof that ASE rocks I don't know what is!! :D

I have no clue what version, if any, are free from Oracle.

Another plus for Sybase: it's incredibly easy to maintain. Granted, I'm working on my Sybase ASE certification, but out of the box it was up and running with no tweaking on my part. I can't say the same for Oracle, which to keep running well requires a full-time DBA to continually tweak it.

You should also take into account that 8i is a new-ish release of Oracle. Keep an eye on the bug lists for it and make sure you won't be impacted by anything.

And as a final point, I’ve already invested the time and energy of porting vB over to Sybase. Porting to Oracle would take more time and energy, and why waste your time and effort? :D

[etones]

mrogish... your a GENIUS!!!! :D

[Aldreis]

Matt, I am really grateful for your excellent and authoritative analysis.
I already received two e-mails ( from the lurking people I mentioned ) alerting me of your post... :D
Thank you for all the work!!!

[werehere]

mrogish,

Do you have a link to download Sybase ASE 11.0.3? I have searched and registered at Sybase, but I cannot find anything more than an upgrade to Sybase ASE 11.0.3, but that required that I had a license for a previous version.

I really am looking for an NT version so I can test it and play around, but one for NT, and one for linux would be best. If you have links for either I would appreciate it! :)

[Wayne Luke]

http://www.sybase.com/detail/1,3693,1010215,00.html

Only the Linux Version is available.

[MattR]

Thanks for all of the praise, although I wouldn't say I'm a genius.... Well, I can't argue with that!! :D:D

WereHere and anyone else,

http://www.sybase.com/detail_list/1,3691,2282,00.html

That is the page to go to for the downloads.

It has
ASE 12.5 Beta for Linux (http://www.sybase.com/detail/1,3693,1010930,00.html),
ASE 11.9.2 Trial for Linux (http://www.sybase.com/detail/1,3693,1010213,00.html),
ASE 11.0.3 FREE for Linux (http://www.sybase.com/detail/1,3693,1010215,00.html),
and ASE 12.0 Trial for NT/2000 (http://www.sybase.com/detail/1,3693,1009798,00.html).

Note that the Linux ones marked "Trial" mean that you are allowed to use the DBMS only for pre-production and evaluation use. It's based on the honor system, but if you try and put them on a production server and get caught, well, you won't be posting here for a couple of years probably! :)

The WinNT one is a 60-day trial. I don't know if it expires or if you're expected to just stop using it at the end of the trial period.

The 11.0.3 Linux version is again, 100% free for production use.

If anyone is interested in purchasing ASE, please contact me and I will give you the regional sales manager that we spoke to. We don't get a referral bonus or anything, but he treated us well and I'd like to pass his name on! :)

Also, truly evaluate whether MySQL will fulfill your needs. At $10,000 or more for a dual-processor machine, it can be a big investment and if done for the wrong reasons, well, it's not good.

We currently run the forums on MySQL (the Sybase-backed forums have a ton of new features that I've been coding and they're not quite finished).
We have approximately 950,000 posts (953,063 at the time of writing) and around 115,000 threads (112,586).

MySQL *appears* to be capable of handling somewhat large amounts of data pretty easily. It's when we get 300 or more users online at a time when mySQL just dies. Tables get corrupted (the dreaded 134 or 1037 errors) left and right, and performance grinds to a halt.

This is on a Dual PIII 750 with 1GB of RAM, and two 9.1 GB ultra wide SCSI's in RAID 1.

We evaluated the situation, including looking at the stats over time and future projections, and came to the conclusion that MySQL wouldn't cut it in the future. So, I went database shopping! :) After extensive research into pay DBs (Sybase, Oracle, MS SQL Server 7, etc.) and free ones (Ingress, PostGres, and a host of others), I selected Sybase and went to work on porting vB! :)

It appears to be handling the load rather well (I’ve imported all of our posts, threads, users and such) with only 100 people online at a time (we’ve had the moderators hitting it as hard as they can). When we launch, I’ll let you know how Sybase handles things! :)

So again, evaluate your current situation and think about what you need. Sybase is a great product, but I'd hate to see people waste money on it if they don't need to!!

P.S.
I didn't see WLuke's post -- it wasn't there when I sat down to type this, but I can see how it was hard to find even that link. I think their page is horribly laid out at times, but I've grown accustomed to it from several months of playing around with Sybase and getting EBFs (updates) -- so I know the method behind their obfuscated madness now! :D

[Edited by mrogish on 11-20-2000 at 06:23 PM]

[werehere]

Thanks guys.

I am downloading it now, and we will see! :)

[Sharg]

mrogish, I'm really interested in your results with the sybase DB system. I really hope to have you write update on it here.

I suggest also you talk to John about your sybase porting.

Benj

[Troy Roberts]

mrogish - Any results on the Sybase testing? I just tried to launch vb today. We shot up to just under 300 users online in a short while and the board choked. :(

We're trying to up the resources allocated to mysql right now, but it looks like I'll be back on UBB within an hour. :(

We set up the database on a dedicated dual 750mhz machine with a gig of ram. The webserver is doing fine. It's the database server that's getting killed.

I'm very interested in the Sybase results.

[Goldfinger]

jeez bigbigsavings board has over 42,000 members i think thats the biggest ive seen ever. wooooo.

sorry for bringing this old discussoin back i thought it said 2001 not 2000 in the date =\.

[Zorg]

Flashkit.com vb board has

Registered Members: 259,901

Now, that is BIG!

[Raz Meister]

I'm more interested in MattR post here:
Originally posted by MattR

If all goes well, we're looking at around January sometime for me to clean up the code and get it all pretty like. :)

Probably what I'll end up doing is taking the stock 1.1.4 code and porting it quickly over to Sybase, then adding PMs / Polls to it.

If that will take too long, I will, like I said, clean up my 1.1.3 code (plus all the tweaks) and then that will be the final version. It depends, but it looks like we're on that track. :)
So is Jelsoft going to incorporate MattR's port?

[upperking]

Damn i think my VB has to the busiest!!
i i must have 100,000 hits a day from my own ip seeing if anyone has visited my forum :)

[Heaven4me]

eva2000,

So far, we have not had any corruption or errors. The only problem we really experienced was today (I posted about the slow queries, you read that message). Right now, everything is running perfectly, although I don't know how many people are online. If I had to guess by looking at the system usage, there are about 500-600 people on right now and the server load is just under 2.5.

This is WITHOUT being on the SUN servers yet.

Alex
Its not working 4 me I cant get the website 2 load.

[N9ne]

Its not working 4 me I cant get the website 2 load.
:rolleyes:

PLEASE look at the date of the thread before replying. It's VERY annoying. This thread is from 2000 !

[Lacrosse Boy]

NO kidding. I was reading through it wondering why they were talking about version 1.1.4. Then I saw the date.

Let's not go dragging up old threads.

[YCrowley]

Ye, was looking at all the posts with 1.1.4 in and and thinking wtf?!

Looked at the date and realised meself, been drinking tonight :p

On the topic though, I think the busist vB ever atm was the old infogrames board (now atari) when they had plus 2000 people on them when ut2k3 was released...






.... m33p :>

[Hunter]

I motion to lock this thread. Can I get a second? :D