New server - Update From Alex

[Rhonda]

This just in from Webmaster Alex:

Our new servers are loaded and ready to go! We will be migrating the boards tomorrow (friday) evening. The boards will go down at 9pm eastern time and you should plan on the migration taking 6 to 8 hours.
If you would like to help test the new servers go here:
http:\\216.167.116.58
You will see a version of the boards that looks a few days old. You can go ahead and post etc, change your avatar, your signature, whatever you want. Any changes or posts will be overwritten when we migrate.
All the usual board rules apply.
If you find any problems please post on the tech support board
Thanks
Alex

 

[des1954]

Will this speed things up a bit, Rhonda??? I can get so impatient!!

Thanks for the warning about the board being "down" while the transition is going on.

Deb

PS - I'm sorry!

 

[ejmbibb]

WOW, I tried the new one, it is F A S T !!!!

I can't wait, thanks for the update!

 

[Rhonda]

Will this speed things up a bit, Rhonda??? I can get so impatient!!

Thanks for the warning about the board being "down" while the transition is going on.

Deb

PS - I'm sorry!

Yes!! Things will be much faster now!

Sorry for what?

 

[BigDaddyRog]

Now that the migration is over.....how is it? Do you guys think its running faster? Im having trouble connecting and figured its just MY server...but Im connecting right on up to other sites. I keep getting the "CAN NOT CONNECT..." message, the I refresh and it will usually get it the second or third time....are you guys doing some tweaking today? Is it just me? I hate this computer!!! GIMME A HAMMER!!!!

This is my 6th(6st?) attempt at this post

 

[drafthorsecrazy]

Right now....mine is loading Dis pages V E R Y slowly. The speed seems to come an go.

 

[CCIntrigue]

Right now....mine is loading Dis pages V E R Y slowly. The speed seems to come an go.

Same here. It's driving me crazy!

 

[LarryJ]

Mine has been spotty since the change and I can't get into the photo section. Even after a successful login I get a message "We are down getting ready for a server move"

Larry

 

[des1954]

The speed varies. I thought it was just because a lot of people were on the site, but it was very slow late last night - or early this morning - depending on your perspective

 

[des1954]

WoW! It's really hit or miss! This is my 3rd attempt to post this.

 

[lawnspecialties]

Is it just me or this server still slower than the old?

 

[Shannone1]

It still opens slowly for me too. Sometimes it's fine, other times it takes a long time to open each page. And there are MANY double posts on all of the foums.

 

[loveDmouse]

It seems really slow to me. Every once in a while you get really fast and then it is gone.

 

[Disney Campers]

Update from Alex

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We know there have been some issues with the boards and I wanted to give everyone an update. I've included a non-technical and a technical version. Since the server move we have run into several issues:

1. The code that was supposed to keep people from using the built in search and keep them on the board tracker search wasn't working right. Some people were able to access the built in search which quickly kills the boards.

Technical- Hows this for a query???
Count: 1 Time=1208.00s (1208s) Lock=0.00s (0s) Rows=8744.0 (8744), alex[alex]@[10.240.13.143]
SELECT
thread.threadid, thread.forumid, post.userid
FROM thread AS thread
INNER JOIN post AS post ON(thread.threadid = post.threadid )
WHERE post.postid IN(N,,{repeated 146966 times}N) AND thread.forumid IN(N) AND post.visible = N

Yes that is 1208 seconds

That is fixed and by all accounts performance has been better today.

2. The hard drives weren't fast enough- sometimes new isn't as much better as you would think

Technical- the old database server was 4 10k scsi's in a raid 0+1. The new one has 4 15k SAS in a raid 0+1. We are not seeing much difference at all. We are looking at adding 2 15k SAS's for the OS and having a 6 disk raid 0+1 or going with 2 drives for the OS and tying into our hosts fiber channel SAN.

It's going to take a week to sort that out.

3. We are getting a little big for the "stock" version of the software.

Technical- it doesn't scale all that darn well

We are considering bringing in some expert consultants that are specialists in mysql performance to look at the code and see what they can do. We know that long threads are becoming an issue. I'll just copy a quote from the vbulletin board to explain:
vb stores the threadid and dateline in the post table. Whenever a bunch of posts needs to be selected, vb filters the post table by threadid and orders the results by dateline, and takes a few of the posts (of course there is an index involved). In other words the query is similar to

SELECT * FROM post WHERE threadid=$threadid ORDER BY dateline LIMIT 8575,15

which means that mysql will have to throw away the first 8575 results and then return the next 15. If my understanding is correct, this is the reason why large threads are bad. We need only 15 rows, but mysql has to analyse thousands.
With some threads approaching 125,000 posts you can see the issue. We don't want to have to put thread length limits back so we are looking for options.
__________________

 

[BigDaddyRog]

Update from Alex

Ummmmm....what'd he say?

 

[loveDmouse]

Ummmmm....what'd he say?

I got that the boards are waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy slow which of course I had figured that out on my own.
I don't do computer speak very well.

 

[clkelley]

The way I'm reading his update is the problems we were having were not just due to the previous servers being overloaded.

The problems we are having seem to be the size and popularity of the boards themselves, and we are outgrowing the actual software.

In order to truly fix the problem, they may have to migrate us to new discussion board software, have some real geeks write some code to make this software run more efficiantly than it does, OR (he doesn't want to do this) put additional limits on the size of threads, pictures, signatures, etc.

 

[PrincessNED]

I believe that all means ... " it ain't fixed yet"

 

[BigDaddyRog]

I believe that all means ... " it ain't fixed yet"

Now those are words I can understand!!!!! K.I.S.S. ...Keep It Simple Silly


of coarse, my Mom used to tell me that stood for Knights In Satans Service...because she didnt want me listening to the GREATEST BAND IN THE WORLD.... and Gene Simmons looked like the devil to her!!! Its hard growing up with a super religious mom!! I was always gonna go to hell!!! I was 8 and on my way to eternal damnation already