Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Support => Server Performance and Configuration => Topic started by: starbois on September 18, 2005, 10:52:43 AM

Title: Maximum users at any single time
Post by: starbois on September 18, 2005, 10:52:43 AM
Just wondering if users (guests and login users) are only allowed to browse or search, roughly how many users can the forum support at any single time, given that server is running on say CPU 1.5G and 512 RAM?

Also, will disabling features such as PM, Calendaring, Statistics, Avatar, Chat and etc make the forum faster for browsing and searching? And what other settings can I configure on SMF to make it zoom?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Maximum users at any single time
Post by: [Unknown] on September 19, 2005, 01:02:23 AM
There should be no hard maximum for the software, obviously.  The limits you hit are generally caused by MySQL, Apache, and PHP configurations.

This forum is running on a Celeron 1700 with 512 megs of ram.  When there are more than 300 people online, it isn't so happy.  This is mostly because this forum gets a lot more searching than other forums do - in general, by and large.  If we disabled search entirely here, it would definitely make a difference.  As it is, we have it disabled during peak times.  We're getting a new server, though.

I would say the calendar has little effect on resources, as do pms for the most part.  The worst things are (not in order):
  - searching takes a lot of resources... if you have them, you're fine, but if you don't... ouch.
  - sending emails can take its toll, especially in large bulk - load will climb.
  - chat software can eat away at your server's resources more than you might think.
  - external avatars, if checked for size, or any other external internet activity, slow things a lot (really, this is the problem with emails.)

How many posts do you have so far?  How many users online at the same time, or in the same 30/15 minutes?  Are things slow for you right now?  Are you on a dedicated server?

-[Unknown]