An idea for helping the forum with it's load issues.

[Lord Raiden]

I'm not terribly sure how well this will work because I'm not totally familiar with how Vbullitin works, so this idea may not even be possible. But this has apparently been done before with other high volumn forums and it's worked. So it may be worth a try if you guys wanted to speed up the forums. Basically what happens is the forums are separated out into two servers and accessed accordingly by a load balancer or dns round robin. Both servers have identical forum software setups and everything. The thing that sets this apart is the two of them chitchat back and forth updating each other as new stuff is posted so that there's maybe a 1-2 second delay between when something is posted on one server and when its updated on the other. Kinda like how two separate dns servers would update each other with zone transfers. At least that's how my understanding of this would be. I've never actually done it before, but I've heard of this happening. It's probubly not possible, but I just wanted to pass it along to see if it might be of help.

Of course then again, there's always that nasty little money issue associated with running two servers compared to just one. ^_^;;

[GHDpro]

I think DNS round-robin might be fine for a static site, but might be rather complicated for a forum.

What can be done to split the forum up on two servers (and what has been done in the past already afaik),
is to simply have the site (scripts) on one server and the database on another. This way the tasks
are divided up and each server can be optimized for a specific task. Of course such servers should
then be connected directly using a VERY fast (gigabit?) link.

The current solution afaik is to simply use one VERY powerful server with multi-CPU, loads of ram, etc.
The reason the "server busy" messages might still exist is because even a very fast system can
still be brought to it's knees if the configuration isn't optimal.

Now please note that I'm NOT the server admin, so above is mere speculation.

[Lord Raiden]

Yeah, that's cool. I'm just throwing out an idea to help maybe spark some thought on this issue to possibly get some ideas rolling that might actually help somewhere, somehow. That was kinda my goal. Cause even if I can't help physically, helping out with ideas works just as good and anything that helps you guys out is a plus for everyone. :D

[Mb81]

I think DNS round-robin might be fine for a static site, but might be rather complicated for a forum.

What can be done to split the forum up on two servers (and what has been done in the past already afaik),
is to simply have the site (scripts) on one server and the database on another. This way the tasks
are divided up and each server can be optimized for a specific task. Of course such servers should
then be connected directly using a VERY fast (gigabit?) link.

The current solution afaik is to simply use one VERY powerful server with multi-CPU, loads of ram, etc.
The reason the "server busy" messages might still exist is because even a very fast system can
still be brought to it's knees if the configuration isn't optimal.

Now please note that I'm NOT the server admin, so above is mere speculation.

Well, i will try to explain.

1.) Loadbalancer / DNS is nonesense for non-static sites. Also you would need at least 3 fast servers which share apache/mysql load. On the other hand, i really doubt that would much either.

2.) The method Gerard mentioned (and already used) isn`t bad but have 2 disadvantages. MySQL reaction time is slow (even with 8 gigabit, as we saw) and goes into terra bytes of traffic. Especially by using VBulletin.

3.) About configuration. It is optimal but the load might goes a little high while i`m working it.

The only thing that makes sense, if the server busy which keeps up (and i doubt that) is to look for better cpu.

@Raiden : Which bigger forum you were refering to ?

[Lord Raiden]

Anandtech is one of them I know that's really huge and I was using as an example, but they use a different board software (fusetalk) that runs on cold fusion. So I don't know if that helped their situation any. And just as a reference, they've got 83,497 active or semi-active members whereas we've only got 16,784 at last count. So their board is easily 4x's the size of ours and runs perty good.

[Mb81]

Anandtech is one of them I know that's really huge and I was using as an example, but they use a different board software (fusetalk) that runs on cold fusion. So I don't know if that helped their situation any. And just as a reference, they've got 83,497 active or semi-active members whereas we've only got 16,784 at last count. So their board is easily 4x's the size of ours and runs perty good.

First, they also got around 6 banners alone at the start site (lol). Then it is a complete other software which might not even use mysql as you mentioned, too. Also this forum doesn`t have tons of high load features (there are alot), big avatar, endless signatures, etc...

About registered users; that doesn`t matter. It matters how maybe people on the board currently. And with around 500 Users animesuki isn`t really the smallest anime board; or better, is there a bigger one ?

[Forsaken102]

Umm... I'm relatively clueless in these types of matters...

but, why not host different sub-forums on different servers... e.g., the General and Anime subforums on one, and the Series Discussion and Animesuki & Technology sub-forums on a second server?

If I'm being stupid, I'm sorry... I'm sure you've already thought of this. but, just to toss some ideas out there. And, if money IS an issue, there's already a Donation thread going, and members (myself included) willing to donate $$ to the cause.

Of course, doing it this way may well mess up the "who's Online" feature.... or, maybe not. Depending on what one has to do for this.