Subforum scalability question

Started by dirtfilledcarriage, September 27, 2022, 01:47:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

dirtfilledcarriage

Can SMF run with large amounts of subforums - several thousand, perhaps?

I won't go into a lot of detail but the use case is several hundred mini communities with a number of subforums each, leading numbers to eventually be in the thousands. I know it's not a typical setup but the reason for it is baked into the project; only saying because "do you really need that many" isn't a valid response here as in this weird instance we do, lol. Concurrent users can range from 500-5000 at any given time.

The subforums wouldn't be shown on the main forum list, but rather accessed through a directory if that makes a difference. It's definitely on dedicated hardware, and throwing more hardware at it isn't a big deal, but I know some issues become exponential and impossible to mitigate through brute force, lol. It's hard to find any numbers on when things might become an issue and what might help reduce those issues.

Kindred

There are limits based on the variable size...
But, honestly I think there are better designs for your setup, even based on your explanation
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Sesquipedalian

Having thousands of nested boards should be fine, provided that you have enabled caching in SMF's admin panel and you are using a well performing cache system. If you don't, you might see slowdowns on the board index page. Apart from that, performance will depend largely on your database engine and underlying hardware.
I promise you nothing.

Sesqu... Sesqui... what?
Sesquipedalian, the best word in the English language.

mickjav

Quote from: dirtfilledcarriage on September 27, 2022, 01:47:58 PMCan SMF run with large amounts of subforums - several thousand, perhaps?

I won't go into a lot of detail but the use case is several hundred mini communities with a number of subforums each, leading numbers to eventually be in the thousands. I know it's not a typical setup but the reason for it is baked into the project; only saying because "do you really need that many" isn't a valid response here as in this weird instance we do, lol. Concurrent users can range from 500-5000 at any given time.

The subforums wouldn't be shown on the main forum list, but rather accessed through a directory if that makes a difference. It's definitely on dedicated hardware, and throwing more hardware at it isn't a big deal, but I know some issues become exponential and impossible to mitigate through brute force, lol. It's hard to find any numbers on when things might become an issue and what might help reduce those issues.


This sounds nuts to me

How do users find subforms that relate to them?
I would assume you would be running one or more queries for each subform?

Advertisement: