Server Load

[Brandon Martus]

You may have noticed that the server is slow. Everybody is back from Atlanta and wants to talk. That's no problem .. that's why we're here. If the site gets slow, or doesn't respond -- please take a 20 minute break rather than hit refresh, or click the link 2 or 3 times. That only adds more stress to the server and consequently lengthens the time it takes for the server to recover from such load.

As said in the previous announcement .. we are working on a plan to upgrade the server capacity to prevent this in the future.

Thanks.

[JonBell]

Brandon - Try installing Turck MMcache (http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/index_old.html) as a PHP Module - It basically caches all of the compiled scripts in memory, so for example, every time that someone hits a thread, rather than recompiling that page and all of its includes, PHP just passes on the compiled page w/ whatever changes. I use it on MacMod.com (http://www.macmod.com/) to provide speed and reliability, and ever since I installed it, page load times have remained ridiculously low (even on a 2ghz celeron w/ 512MB RAM), despite high traffic (and the entire site is Mambo, a MySQL based CMS making a ton of queries etc and generally not being that efficient). It also does a great job with Gallery2 (http://p1x.stonewallcs.com/), again decreasing server load and decreasing load time.

If you are looking for a new server (and want to go dedi), I can recommend LayeredTech (http://www.layeredtech.com/) (wait around for them to have a blowout special) or 1and1 (http://www.1and1.com/) (their root servers are fairly reasonable), I have a number of servers with both. If you want a hand, feel free to ask ;)

[Ryan M.]

Brandon - Try installing Turck MMcache (http://turck-mmcache.sourceforge.net/index_old.html) as a PHP Module - It basically caches all of the compiled scripts in memory...So it actually takes the compiled formed of the PHP and saves in a memory cache? That could be nifty for sites no longer under heavy development... Or does it actually perform any "changing checking," IE check if the file or it's includes have been updated since the last compiled version save?

[Brandon Martus]

Yeah, we have Zend Optimizer/Encoder compiled in, which increased the speed by 40% or so. I will look into running Turck MMcache at the same time to see if it will help any. Thanks for the suggestion.

As for a new server -- I'd really like to go to 1and1's new server packages they just announced, but the problem with them (and most other hosts) is they only accept credit cards, and we can't do that. We're still working out those details (where/when to upgrade, etc)

[Brandon Martus]

So it actually takes the compiled formed of the PHP and saves in a memory cache? That could be nifty for sites no longer under heavy development... Or does it actually perform any "changing checking," IE check if the file or it's includes have been updated since the last compiled version save?
Some of them require a manual re-cache if you change any files, otherwise you will be using an old cached version even if you changed the file.

[JonBell]

Turck is only marginally faster than the Zend optimizer (the full version, not the free one that comes with PHP nowadays), and it isn't reccommended to have both installed (though you can)

Turck actually stat's the source every time, to see if it changed. I haven't had any issues with it using old versions, though I used to with mod_perl (found the way to change it). You can even tell it not to cache specific extentions, too.

I think that layered will take pretty much any payment, and they have a pretty sweet blowout going on now (http://layeredtech.com/order.php?packageId=84).

Whatever you pick, goodluck and godspeed ;)

[Mike AA]

You may have noticed that the server is slow. Everybody is back from Atlanta and wants to talk. That's no problem .. that's why we're here. If the site gets slow, or doesn't respond -- please take a 20 minute break rather than hit refresh, or click the link 2 or 3 times. That only adds more stress to the server and consequently lengthens the time it takes for the server to recover from such load.

As said in the previous announcement .. we are working on a plan to upgrade the server capacity to prevent this in the future.

Thanks.

My offer is still out there Brandon. I'm only running like 1% of my ability.

-Mike

[AIBob]

Turck is only marginally faster than the Zend optimizer (the full version, not the free one that comes with PHP nowadays), and it isn't reccommended to have both installed (though you can)

Turck actually stat's the source every time, to see if it changed. I haven't had any issues with it using old versions, though I used to with mod_perl (found the way to change it). You can even tell it not to cache specific extentions, too.

I think that layered will take pretty much any payment, and they have a pretty sweet blowout going on now (http://layeredtech.com/order.php?packageId=84).

Whatever you pick, goodluck and godspeed ;)
But is is open source :), you can modify it and rebuild it, removing anything that you would rather do manually, so that you increase the speed by even more :D.

[JonBell]

But is is open source :), you can modify it and rebuild it, removing anything that you would rather do manually, so that you increase the speed by even more :D.

Well, that, and Zend Performance Suite (http://zend.com/store/products/zend-platform/zps.php) (The comprable product from Zend) costs $995/cpu/year. Zend Optimizer, the free product doesn't really provide much if any of a performance boost, it's mainly there to run Zend encoded PHP files.

Oh, and according to the Turck site, it also outperforms the $1000 Zend Performance Suite ;)

[Brandon Martus]

Zend Optimizer, the free product doesn't really provide much if any of a performance boost, it's mainly there to run Zend encoded PHP files.
When I installed it a month ago or so I did notice a large improvement in the sites response time. I'll have to look into the MMCache thing later this week.

[Randy]

Hey Brandon,

My offer to you for resources still is and always will be valid. Don't hesitate to contact me.


-Randy