Forum lags when 450 + users online !

[Lautaro]

Hello,

I'm having a serious problem with my forum / server. I believe there's something wrong configured or w/e it is that it's making my forum to lag ( A LOT ) when there are 450 or more users online.

My partner said he was checking the MySQL "database connections" while the forum was lagged and he saw there were running like 300 queries at the same time ! This seems to be happening only when there are 450 or more people surfing my forum.

I believe I shouldn't have any of this problems, here's my dedicated server specs:

Operating System: CentOS Linux 5.5
Kernel & CPU: Linux 2.6.18-194.26.1.el5 on x86_64
Processor Info: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz, 16 cores
Real Memory: 15.67 GB total, 10.41 GB used
Virtual Memory: 9.74 GB total, 170 MB used
Local Disk Space: 441.74 GB total, 35.70 GB used
Up stream / Down stream ( internet connection ): 1000mbps
Forum Link: http://forum.gamezaion.com/

When I got the server it had cPanel/WHM installed, but I am now using "Webmin", however cpanel is still there (not sure if this affects at all ).


Thanks !

Regards,
Lautaro.

[metalguy639]

The CPanel installation most likely will have no effect on the server running slow or lagging. It sounds like what is happening is that the database is having a hard time keeping up with the requests. This can happen for several reasons.

1. Your server cannot handle that many requests at once. - To solve you would have to get your host to up the amount of request that the server handles. Or at the very least have your host look into it for you. It may or may not be a vBulletin issue.

2. Your server is getting hammered from hackers or others looking for a place in. I've actually seen something similar to this with a client where his site was crashing every few hours literally. The host said that he had too many connections. Come to find out it was an attack sourced from Trend Microsystems, someone had hacked them and was using them to hammer other sites causing them to crash. This client runs vb 4.

3. If you are running vb 4 and you have noticed this as a problem every since installing vb 4 then that is probably what the issue is. There is no real way to fix it other than trying to optimize the server & vbulletin as much as possible. There are things that you can try that may or may not fix it.

Looking at your setup, it looks like your real memory is spiking kinda high I would think. Has it always done that?