Current Overload Problems

[Checkmate]

I just want to let everyone know I'm well aware of the huge traffic AS is getting every evening. Rest assured that I hate downtime and unresponsive problems just as everyone and I'm trying my best to work toward a permanent solution.

Update: A highly experimental upgrade and config has been applied to mysql. Hopefully, this will reduce the downtime a bit.

 

[nanashi1]

Hmm... What I only recommend can, is that maybe ASF for few days shut down making can - Where these days/times use can for an hard- and software check up: From the smallest part of ASF... And for some solution searching as well.


Well, I can without ASF for few days endure, in exchange that then ASF in 95% clear goes...

 

[Yuka Jean]

If you have a lot of traffic, wouldn't be wise to upgrade your server ? More traffic probably is bring you more revenue. Is there an issue with upgrading servers ?

 

[corocoro]

If you have a lot of traffic, wouldn't be wise to upgrade your server ? More traffic probably is bring you more revenue. Is there an issue with upgrading servers ?

At our scale servers have to be collocated, which means we have to carefully plan and test what hardware we should get. There's enough (anime) forum administrators around who were/are incapable of doing that and as a result made bad purchasing decisions. We see no need to join their club of shame.
Also, since we do not accept donations and have only very few advertisements on the forum, we have always been operating at a loss. The slightly increased cash inflow will not be able to offset the upgrade cost over the lifetime of the new servers, so it doesn't even figure into the upgrading/purchasing decisions.

 

[Checkmate]

If you have a lot of traffic, wouldn't be wise to upgrade your server ? More traffic probably is bring you more revenue. Is there an issue with upgrading servers ?

We actually upgrade our server back in October 2014 with the following specification:

Dual Intel Xeon 2670v2
20 Cores + HT
256GB RAM
4 x 480GB Intel 730 RAID 10
LSI 9265-9i w/ FastPath

At this point, the forum traffic sacle much faster than the hardware upgrades. It is no longer a good solution at this time.

 

[Yuka Jean]

Well, I am not sure what to say. Usually when a site gains so much traffic http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/anime-sharing.com (you're probably higher than Alexa data in rank), you would need to upgrade. I think you can manage bigger servers but it comes with bigger headaches, so that is understandable not to rush things.

 

[Checkmate]

Without going into too much details, the case we are seeing here isn't related to server hardware (given we use only 30% of the server total hardware capacity of all time) it's more like the problem of software cannot handle the traffic itself.. A different approach to solve the problem is planned but it is also more complicated, including limited budget and technical challenges.

 

[Yuka Jean]

When you're mentioning software, are you speaking of Vbulletin ?

 

[Checkmate]

When you're mentioning software, are you speaking of Vbulletin ?

No, rather, the underlying software: mysql, PHP-FPM, etc.