Hi,
I have a very high traffic SMF forum which I host on a dedicated server. Luckily it's "managed hosting" because I know nothing about servers.
I've never really paid much attention to the "server load" before but I just integrated FlashChat into my forum:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=17856
and decided that I should peek in on this "server load" figure every once in a while because FlashChat can apparently be resource intensive.
Right now it's at 14.53. I'm assuming this is bad!
What IS server load? What number should it be? What happens if it gets to high? And what kinds of server settings should be changed to keep it down?
Is there a way to track whether FlashChat is the problem or instead if it is the SMF forum? The problem may be FlashChat but then again there are only ever like 5 people chatting at a time so I don't necessarily think it is the culprit.
I don't know if this will help but here's the description of my server:
Base Configuration /w cPanel/WHM
Intel P4 3.0 Ghz with Hyperthreading
800 Mhz Front Side Bus
1 GB PC3200 Dual Channel 400Mhz DDR RAM
120 GB 7200RPM drive with 8MB cache
1000 GB transfer
4 IPs included
RedHat Linux 9.0
cPanel/WHM (latest version)
Thanks!
"Server Load" means an average the cpu usage and memory usage.
With high load, the servers down and can hung and it becomes slow.
I don't know how many cpu uses the flashchat, and how many load average have without it.
Sorry for my but english, but i want to help you (i have a dedicated server), and you can have a " very high traffic SMF" with 1 gb ram, with optimized MySQL (query cache, etc).
Many hostings when you have a lot of traffic (and they sell "unlimited traffic", put the load average to excuses to get out your web.
I wonder if the fact that my server is "fully managed" means I could ask them to tweak some settings for me since I don't know what I'm doing and don't want to muck things up! :o
Can someone give me some advice on what kinds of things I should look into? Like what are the optimal mySQL settings? etc...
first try to see with phpMyAdmin or similar how many query's you have per second....
I think MySQL consumes the most part of your cpu.
I'm spanish user, so i have my own manual to optimize mysql, but this is in english:
Take a look.
HOWTO: Optimize MySQL 4.0.12 after installation 2-Parts
http://forums.ev1servers.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20983
I'm the admin of a forum with topics 44801 and 222004 posts
Excellent. I'll read that thread about MySQL.
I just checked phpMyAdmin and the Queries Per Second is: 119.15
Does that seem normal or high?
High...
Maybe you have a big forum or too many websites in the server...
But don't worry, i have 1 gb ram and my MySQL can do 150 querys per second (but with problems) xD
So remember depends of many factors, not only querys per seconds (SCSI disk, size of tables, etc).
That is rather high. Your hits seem to be comparable to Ben_S's:
http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/index.php
More or less. Although he has a ton more topics than you do. You might want to look at this topic for some tips on server tweaking:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=23245.new#new
I'd also appreciate seeing mysqladmin stat, and uptime values. If you want, I can also try to track down what's hogging your CPU/memory - it's quite possible it's MySQL, in which case slow query logging should help track it down.
-[Unknown]
I would imagine flash chat is probably the problem if you have a lot of users online, disable it for 10 mins or so and see what happens to the load.
Quote from: [Unknown] on January 12, 2005, 09:12:43 AM
I'd also appreciate seeing mysqladmin stat, and uptime values. If you want, I can also try to track down what's hogging your CPU/memory - it's quite possible it's MySQL, in which case slow query logging should help track it down.
-[Unknown]
I turned on "log slow queries" just now and restarted mySQL. The "long query time" variable was already set to "10" -- does that seem right or should I bump it down to something lower?
Well, we have ours here set to 4... and logging enabled currently. But, 10 isn't a bad value either - the idea is to catch slow queries, or locked queries, etc.
-[Unknown]