Custom mini-profile backgrounds disabled, U2U notice... (and new servers)

We've ordered a new cluster of 3 servers, each with two Dual-Core Opteron processors and high-speed SATA hard drives. Soon, ATS will be back to "smokin' speed". One of these monster-servers (with 4 gigs of ram) will be dedicated completely to serving just the ATS board (we're not yet ready to jump to the overhead and expense of load balancing).

However: As traffic will only continue to increase, we're also looking at ways to optimize our current code base (again). Among the extra loads are the additional database look-ups needed to display your custom backgrounds (especially on longish threads). For now, this feature is disabled while I monitor the impact on the servers.

U2U Notice: We'll also be looking at things like u2u in-box totals. Right now it only displays your most recent 25 received U2U's, also as a performance test... if you want to see older U2U's, either delete current ones, or move them to your saved folder (no display limit). We may end up limiting how many U2U messages you can retain in your inbox (it's complex, but the inbox total effects system performance more than the others since it's "looked at" every time you load a page, and listed every time to hit the memCenter).

We regularly experience over 60,000 visitors a day and about 180 database queries a second with our current stressed-out server cluster. I fully expect a new traffic surge once the improved cluster is online and giving ATS a new performance boost. So we need to make sure that overall functionality is preserved throughout the next round of high-traffic issues (our likely next milestone of concern is around 120,000 daily visitors).

Wow ATS hasn't even been going that slow for me, just a little bit. I can't wait to see how fast it goes with the new servers!

Same here. No problems with the speed. Can't wait to see the change with the new servers.

I'm just amazed at how much information is flying out of, into, and through ATS at any given moment.

BIG UP ON THE SKEPTIC OVERLORD for keeping up with all this stuff, this place must be a pretty time consuming Hobby, from the technical end!!! Its hard to think of how this place would operate without the Overlord

BUT I FEEL SO NAKED!!! I thought I had been robbed....

Cool on the upgrades....

[edit on 29-4-2006 by loam]

Too bad I didn't read this thread before I tried to change my look,

now I'm short on some points

Anyway I can retreive them?

U2U me the details CelticMist.

Jak

I've noticed some server perfomance lags around 6 am est almost on the dot every single day(when I'm up at that time that is), hopefully this will address this issue. What's up with that anyway?

Thank you Jak

for the help, much appreciated

Not even a background colour? Wow... ghetto.

What is Yarcofin without his Purple?

If we want to conserve a ton of bandwidth, why don't we just put the entire site into a super-low-bandwidth mode? Take out signature lines and mini-profiles altogether, turn all icons into text, etc.

[edit on 29-4-2006 by Yarcofin]

In reality, "bandwidth" isn't the issue. We use about 1,600 gigabytes per month, but have 6,000 total gigabytes available.

The issue is the overall processor cycles and database queries required to support some of the "extended" services.

For example, right now, even with the query disabled to grab your background image/color, and on a slow Saturday night, we're currently averaging 162 queries to the database every second.

Would removing the tagging system do anything to help? I would imagine that'd be quite a big chunk of something. I don't know if it's queries or not.

Ya' know...Yarcofin may have a good point there. Is the tagging system really utilized that much? From what I can tell, most people have no idea how to use it....I know I don't.

Not really, that's one very-efficient query each page-load of a thread against a well-indexed single-table.

The thread-view (like right now) is what kills, as a complex "join" query gathers forum, thread, and user profile information for up to 20 posts at a time. The tags are nothing compared to this. Anything that is done to optimize (or reduce) the thread-view querise has a massive impact on the entire board.

What about limiting the number of posts on each page then? A lot of people probably open up a thread and immediately flip to the last post on the last page, loading everything in between in the process when they don't utilize it.

It could get messy and be a bit of a hassle, but that's one option.

Maybe 5 posts on a page instead of 20, or even just 10 will theoretically cut queries by half.


[edit on 29-4-2006 by Yarcofin]

That might be one way to go, but presents other problems.

So far this month, we've had just shy of 1 million users click into ATS from a search engine search. And a very quick glance at the last few days shows that easily 40% of those searches are clicking directly to "deep content", meaning page X of a multi-page thread. Since Google has indexed us under our current 20 posts per page... suddenly page 10 of a thread would contain different material than what the user had potentially expected to find when they clicked on the search-link.

Would you like to get even more complicated? I can you know

Oh I know you can get more complicated, don't worry .

Well won't those.... things that work for Google that search web pages (I'm so technical). Think they're called spiders or crawlers or something... won't they eventually find the new pages and replace them?

And anyways that happens with a lot of pages I view. I just use the cache button on Google to find it better.

But I can understand why unconviniencing Google searchers could be bad for business.

If I get any more amazing resource-saving ideas I'll let you know.

Looking to my right as I post this, smilies could probably go. Not very essential. But that again most likely has nothing to do with queries.

I like, sooooo dare you

man, you can see my square.

does ATS support .png files as avatars?

Would it be possible to make it so that a person's first post on a page has all the extraneous information, and then the rest just have their name and avatar? Would that cut some of it down?

Is there anyway to predict what pages are going to be viewed much, likesay, anticpate it? Perhaps then pages could be in some sort of ultra-low bandwidth mode if they aren't being viewed by many people, and then all of those together might represent a lifting of the server's load?