Big Forum and a Catch 22

[ldk]

Hello all.

I'm still struggling with trying to get my forum to perform better. It's really painfully slow and I'm experiencing server crashes and database corruption a few times a week. I'll admit up front that I'm not wise in the ways of hardward and database inner workings and so forth. I know just enough to get by!

My forum has just under 60,000 members. Monthly stats: 300,000 unique visitors and 20,000,000 page views.

In reading this forum, I know that the following two things will help the situation:

1. Converting some database tables to innodb. They are all myisam right now. There's a great thread here by [unknown] that recommends certain specific tables to convery to innodb.

2. Upgrading to the latest version of SMF. I'm currently using SMF 1.1 Beta 3 Public.

Problem is... I've tried to achieve both of the things above on multiple occasions and every time I try, my server just crashes part way through. I can only assume the machine just gets overwhelmed. It's a big pain in the butt because as you can imagine it takes *hours* to do  and then it just craps out part way through. I always do a backup beforehand and then when it craps out I need to restore the last backup which also can take hours. It sucks!

What should I do?

I'm totally willing to invest in a more powerful server if that's what it takes. My current server is this one but I have 4GB of ram not 1GB: https://www.servint.net/xeon/

Thanks for any advice you all may have!

Leah

[Ben_S]

Leah,

I'm willing to take a look at your box to try and get it performing optimally also I seem to remember Compuart offered to help you with the upgrade.

[ldk]

Thanks Ben. Compuart did offer but then dropped out of touch. Not blaming him of course. I'm sure he's incredibly busy.

Couple questions just to wrap my brain around things a bit more...

1. Do think SMF upgrade script would work better if I was able to convert some tables to innodb first?

2. There's this article here which recommend converting a large table to innodb in pieces. Do you think that would help me? http://mysqld.active-venture.com/Converting_tables_to_InnoDB.html

[Tony Reid]

Really feel for you

Just like to say that I'm suprised your board is still running fully on myisam.

I had to convert to innodb last year when my forum hit 500,000 posts because it kept crashing.

The other thing is that when you go to 1.1RC2 - you will notice a significant increase in speed also.

All the best of luck with getting this sorted.

[ldk]

I guess I should consider myself somewhat lucky that it's still running in myisam mode! And it's good to hear that you think those two  changes will make a big difference.