Search crashes and/or slows my server

[Tim Wheatley]

Large forum, 25k members and around 1 million posts.

Always have 300 members online, running most recent version of php etc, running vB 2.3.0.

I have had to set the search so that people can only search every 30mins, here's how I just described what happens to another admin...



The user searched for 'crash' on our forum. Our forum is about racing simulations and also motor sports in real life etc, you can imagine how many times the word 'crash' comes up.

Have I reached a limit of usage with the search or something? We don't have all posts indexed, we've only indexed from about 10,000 posts ago.

Any common reasons for this? I'm not finding anyone else with this problem?

The webserver is Apache/1.3.27 (Unix) PHP/4.3.1 mod_perl/1.27 on Linux (dual xeon 2.4 ghz with 2gb of ram.)

and the sql server is a dual 1ghz with 1gb of ram.
and the sql version is: Ver 8.23 Distrib 3.23.48

And they both have 100 mbit out to the world.

help!

[Steve Machol]

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=70117

[Tim Wheatley]

Ok, I now have all that information, but is there somewhere more private I can send/post that information?

[Steve Machol]

If you need privacy use the support system:

http://www.vbulletin.com/members/support_form.php

[Tim Wheatley]

Done, thanks Steve (once again!)

[Steve Machol]

I assigned your ticket to eva2000.

[Tim Wheatley]

By the way it's come up with my co-admin's Mikkel's name, not mine. He'll forward any mails etc to me anyway though.

[eva2000]

replying to your ticket right now :)

[Tim Wheatley]

Superb, thank you very much, we obviously didn't limit our apache to 150 (we have many many more than that on out site at once), but near enough everything else we input as you said and it's running very, very well. Thank you! :up: :up:

[eva2000]

apache maxclients is not the same as vB's max online users

apache maxclients = max concurrent visitors in 1 second

vB online users = concurrent users online with in 900 second interval (default vB cookie)

i doubt you'd ever get 150 concurrent vB members on at the very same 1 second interval

[Tim Wheatley]

But isn't setting apache to a max of 150, setting the whole web server to 150, not just the forums?

[eva2000]

But isn't setting apache to a max of 150, setting the whole web server to 150, not just the forums?
yes but it's more than adequate for most servers - most servers i worked with with adequate hardware set to maxclients of 150 are handling 200-600 vB users online over 15 min period

maxclients 150 new visitors in 1 second constantly, would be around 900 x 150 = 135,000 visitors in 15 min period ... in theory

i have maxclients set to 200 on my server and handle 250 - 1000 vB users over a 30 min period

[Tim Wheatley]

Ah ok... Our web server is shared though (SQL server isn't)... we have a lot of sub sites, all of them with lots of hits which probably does cover 900+...

[Erwin]

If you don't mind hacking your forum, try this hack:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51716

It works very well in cutting down search server loading.