Forum Speed - Intended Solution

TeaLeaf · April 28, 2011, 05:14:54 PM

Since the last forum software patch in particular, we've noticed a performance hit on the 'New Posts' and 'Home' links of the forum. However we also noticed, to a much lesser extent, a slowing of the forum when we moved from a Linux-hosted VB3 to our current Windows-hosted VB4. A hardware bottleneck has already been ruled out.

Whitey and the server crew (thank you all) have been digging around looking for solutions, but the bottom line is that it appears that we're limited by the extent to which some bits of software play happily with some bits of Windows. The latest forum software patch simply exacerbated the problem.

What we're proposing to resolve this issue and hopefully say goodbye to the current levels of forum lag is:

Migration of game servers, rcon tools and other software services currently on Windows-BA3 to Windows-BA4
Retasking BA3 as a Linux server dedicated to running the forums (taking over from BA4)

We've already had a duplicate of the forums running under a Linux VM and the performance seems much improved. So when we've finished migrating current services from BA3 to BA4 we'll install Linux on BA3 and get the forums up and running on BA3.

In order to assist with this process we've recently purchased a 2TB NAS which will also provide us with additional & readily accessible storage space for server images, old game servers, .iso images etc.

It looks as if the NAS should be installed within the next week (give or take a day or three) and Linux will arrive on BA3 to take over hosting our forums shortly thereafter.

Fingers crossed that this will solve the forum performance problems. Certainly on the VM version they were non-existent.

Tutonic · April 28, 2011, 05:39:04 PM

Cheers for the update TL, and thanks for all the hard work server bods.

T-Bag · April 28, 2011, 06:09:28 PM

Nice work. Hopefully this fixes everything.

OldBloke · April 28, 2011, 06:36:06 PM

My thanks to Whitey for spending hours on Google looking for the causes/solutions to this issue. Much appreciated, matey :thumb:

Penfold · April 28, 2011, 08:08:05 PM

Yes indeed - thanks Whitey

smilodon · May 19, 2011, 05:15:15 PM

Notice anything........:clap2:

Whitey · May 19, 2011, 05:15:26 PM

You should notice a huge difference in the speed of the forum. Thanks to Gandy for finding the plugin causing the problem!

Penfold · May 19, 2011, 05:17:59 PM

And also thanks to Whitey who has spent (literally) hours working on the forum.

Nice one chaps and thanks. :worship:

T-Bag · May 19, 2011, 05:22:00 PM

Wow, HUGE difference. Main page loads almost instantly and the "What's New?" section is under a second. Great work.

Squonk · May 19, 2011, 05:46:52 PM

Quote from: T-Bag;325265Wow, HUGE difference. Main page loads almost instantly and the "What's New?" section is under a second. Great work.

wot he said ^

S

KKND · May 19, 2011, 05:54:03 PM

Thnx both for the work you guys are doing.

Blunt · May 19, 2011, 06:06:15 PM

Excellent work!:yahoo:

TeaLeaf · May 19, 2011, 06:28:48 PM

Massive thanks to Whitey and Gandalf for their work on this. Whitey has literally spend days looking into fixing this and Gandalf's tech knowledge was the final piece needed to solve the puzzle and implement the fix.

This forum is DAMN FAST now! :worship:

Thanks fellas! :thumbsup: :dmw: :cheers:

smilodon · May 19, 2011, 06:29:54 PM

It's certainly been a long and unpleasant process although I have not been actively involved in the work myself. We believed the problems were probably related to our move from a Linux server to a Microsoft one rather than anything specifically wrong with the new version 4 of vBulletin. Whitey and Gandalf did almost all the work with Whitey taking the lead in setting up and running a second forum on BA3 which runs Linux.

The process of pinning down the reason for the forum lag is laborious and slow but it's finally been sorted and we now should be back to a fast, functional forum. One of the features of the forum is a plugin/hook system. Basically this allows for bits of code to be inserted into the PHP files that make up the forum software. This in turn allows 3rd party plug-ins (of which we run a few) to add functionality to the forum without us actually having to hack the existing PHP code about. It seems that one of the plug-ins we have that uses the PHP hook function was taking for ever to load up and hence we had the painful slow down every time we first accessed the forum through our browser. Once the plug-in was properly activated the rest of our forum browsing didn't suffer from the lag. We have disabled the offending plug-in and now the forum seems to be working as intended.

The offending plug-in turns out to be the 'dMw Server List 0.0.1 Game server status plugin'. this showed a list of our servers on the deadmen.co.uk home page and their state. It's certainly not a mission critical plug-in and clearly forum speed is of much greater importance to us all than a quick peek at our servers. Therefore we've pulled the plug on it. In time we might look to find a better implementation of it, but for now welcome to the new improved deadmen.co.uk.

Once again many, many thanks to Whitey and Gandalf who have given up a not inconsiderable amount of their time to digging out the route cause of our woes.

Lameduck · May 19, 2011, 06:40:11 PM

..it off a shovel. Well done all