Server Configuration Suggestions...

[FANO]

Hi.
I own one of the biggest sports FORUM in Turkey. With 25.000 members, and almost 90.000 posts per week.

I use a dedicated server from verio. time to time my forum slows down.
There is a w3wp.exe file shows in task manager, uses so much CPU...

Do you know what is w3wp.exe? And how can I make it not use so much CPU so my forums dont slow down all the time...

Do you think I should go for 2 servers for my forum... One for mysql, and one for the web...

Any suggestions?

FANO

[KingSpade]

Unless you are just dead set on a Windows server, I'd switch over to a dual-server setup running CentOS. One server running Apache, POP/SMTP and the general basics and one running MySQL as a database server.

It really depends on what you're running now and what you can afford, although I'd start each server off with at least Dual Xeons (Intel) or Dual Opterons (AMD) and 2GB of RAM each. You may find 4GB of RAM to be more suitable for the MySQL database server as it will be taking most of the "hit" with that amount of posts and activity.

As above, it really depends on what you can afford and what you're paying at Verio right now, although a dual-server setup would be the next best move for you to be honest.


Edit: Information on w3wp.exe here.

[FANO]

Hi Kingspade, thanks for your reply.

Let's say you're my system administrator. And you have to configure 2 servers. (1 database, and 1 web). What would your configuration be?

Money is not a problem. Can you give me detailed suggestions?

I asked VB. They said they re not server experts. so they can't help us. So I need an expert to give me suggestions on this issue....

Thanks...

[KingSpade]

Well, it would really boil down to how many people you have online and active at any given time. You can check this by simply viewing the who's online bit on the forum index. Also, you need to take into consideration your timeout cookie.

To get an idea of how many people you really have online without resetting the cookie so often, set it to 3600 seconds (1 hour) and check.

As for server reccomendations, I'd try and go for the following setup (this is a blind-estimate, seeing as I don't know how many users you have online at a time and at peak).


Server 1 - Web Server

- Dual 3.4/3.6GHZ Xeons
- 2-4GB's of RAM
- 2x 73GB SCSI Drive (10,000 RPM or 15,000 RPM model)
- - Setup over a RAID array for redundancy

CentOS (*Nix variation, it's not Windows)
CPanel (easy to update)


Server 2 - MySQL Server

- Dual 3.4/3.6GH Xeons
- 4GB's of RAM
- 2x 73GB SCSI Drive (same as above)
- - Setup over a RAID array for redundancy

CentOS
CPanel


Now the above probably isn't going to be cheap and will probably range between $600-$1,000 per month, depending on who you go with, but if you are averaging over 500 online at ANY time, you really need to go ahead and seperate the servers because once you start hitting 600-1000 online at once, the server will probably just die or MySQL/Apache will crash and restart, then repeat .


As for optimization, you can check here in the server config forum and ask Eva if he will help you to optimize my.cnf (mysql's configuration file) for you. He can also help with minor apache modifications and optimizations.

[kau]

Why are you suggesting Xeon's over Opterons?

[KingSpade]

Only a handful of *reliable* dedicated server providers offer opterons. I am not speaking of the budget providers either. Xeons have been shown to handle loads just as well, especially from my tests and from those I know running larger communities, including one more private community local to my town (which uses a dual-server setup, much like that noted above).

I've never had issues, speed or other, from Xeons, which is why my reference was made to the Dual-Xeon units. After all, most of the issues with running an online community generally come from a shortage of memory, not specifically *just* processing power. Between that and not optimizing PHP, MySQL or Apache and expecting it to work out of the box with such high traffic ratio's.

[kau]

I run a community of 60k users and from my direct observation Opterons outperform Xeons by far.

[KingSpade]

I run a community of 60k users and from my direct observation Opterons outperform Xeons by far.

It's not that I doubt the stability, however, as mentioned above, only a handful of *reliable* hosts offer them. For reliability, going with a budget dedicated seller isn't really a solution, especially if you value your community. Budget providers would include ServerMatrix, DedicatedNow and other various such businesses (not that there is anything wrong with them, but, they're not mission critical hosts).

For MC websites, I'd go with rackspace.com.

If you have a suggestion as far as a host goes, by all means suggest it as I am sure the OP would love to get some ideas .

[FlyBoy73]

If money is not an option, I would do what I am in the planning stages to do. Buy your own servers and Colo them.

I currently have (2) dedicated dual xeon servers each with (2) 73 Gig 10k SCSI's. I don't have either server maxed out with features but they leave a lot to be desired and I am paying on the other side of $500.00 per month before management, etc.

I have studied in-depth for the last 6 months on server performance and simply put, the Opterons win in almost any situation where it relates to hosting forums (and other), and usually by a wide margin. You will get some people citing sometimes obscure areas where they may excel but I just don't see it applying to what we are doing with forum hosting.

I've spent much of today working the numbers on what we are looking at purchasing for our servers. We're planning to go with 2x Opteron 270 dual cores, SCSI RAID Hardware(either a 5 or 10 array) w/Cheetah 15k.4 73gig drives & 4 GIGs of RAM for the webserver in a 2U system. (About $4.5-$5k)
For the web server we're going to use a 1U w/265 Dual Core Opteron, (2) Gigs of RAM, (2) SCSI 73gig 10k's w/Raid 1 etc. That is probably going to be around $1,500.00 but I have specs for non SCSI at the moment.

Our primary forums usually has between 1,000-1,700 people on during the day and our second forum has around 250-400.

If anyone is interested in purchasing your own Opteron or even Xeon equipment, check out www.apaqdigital.com . I found them on Web Hosting Talk and there are a lot of people who really praise this guy and after talking to him earlier today, I can understand at least why in part. He's really helpful and friendly.

As for Colo'ing, we're probably going to use www.DedicatedNow.com . They offer 1U/2U or mini tower colo for $99/month w/1200 Gigs of bandwidth. They also offer a variety of managed options. I think they have a fully for around $69 more a month. I would have preferred a local colo (I'm in Houston, Texas) but all that I found start off reasonable, but after you factor in bandwidth, the prices go way up. We do over 10 Gigs a day for our primary forum.

Now, if I could afford Eva and the rest of the vB server gurus as full-time server admins, we would be set!

My 2 cents..


Here is one of the servers that he spec'd for us and is not listed there.

Database server:

[FlyBoy73]

King,
I am not sure what exactly you term mission critical but you can go ahead and add EV1 as peers to DNow, etc. All of these people have similar data center designs and connectivity. You can also setup clusters, load balanced servers and more if needed, even across multiple DC's, and even the big players that claim enterprise level servies have equipment failure.

I will agree that Rackspace could be termed (though there are lots of complaints out there about some of their archaic equipment and system builds) mission critical but if he or anyone else is doing the bandwidth / activity levels as he stated, the cost of using RackSpace is going to be through the roof. I'd venture a guess he could build a system that would be more mission critical & hi-performance for less than what a year or two of RackSpace would cost and own the equipment & cover management.

It's not that I doubt the stability, however, as mentioned above, only a handful of *reliable* hosts offer them. For reliability, going with a budget dedicated seller isn't really a solution, especially if you value your community. Budget providers would include ServerMatrix, DedicatedNow and other various such businesses (not that there is anything wrong with them, but, they're not mission critical hosts).

For MC websites, I'd go with rackspace.com.

If you have a suggestion as far as a host goes, by all means suggest it as I am sure the OP would love to get some ideas .

[KingSpade]

While I agree rackspace is a bit more costly, in terms of server space and bandwidth, it really depends on what you need in a host and what your budget is.

DedicatedNow and Ev1 are budget server providers, just about any (non-reseller) host will tell you the same. While DedicatedNow may not currently, they at one time did include Cogent in their bandwidth peering mix, as did Ev1 (not tested either recently).

To me, anyone specifically using Cogent falls into the budget provider mix as Cogent is a rather poor link, even if it is used as a backup. The bandwidth is cheap, as is the connection....any don't even get me started on those that use cogent as their primary/only peering link (as I've seen some) .

My reccomendation of RackSpace is based off their reputation, my limited use of their service for business and what they can provide. About any company can piece together a server and hand over the root information to you and let you tinker away, but if your website is important to you, you rely on it for income and it is your job, I'd personally rather keep it away from budget providers and let a business known for exceptional service take care of it.

Now, please take note, SM, DN and Ev1 are good providers and could probably provide whatever the OP may require upon contact and I am quite sure they can, as above, it really depends on what you need.