Hosting/Performance Dilemma

[Boss-Hog]

Hi all,

I'm hoping some people read this post and can offer a viable solution(s) to the problem we find my site faced with. My co-admin and I have been with HostPC for seven to eight years and always received top notch service from the then owner at reasonably affordable prices. He let us know when we were generating enough traffic to warrant a move to a more powerful server and we generally trusted his advice. Well, as many of you know, HostPC was sold several months back, which I just found out about when trying to get to the bottom of the problem I'm about to describe and it's left us with a dilemma.

For the past two or three months, our site performance has gradually gotten noticeably worse - pages load slower, generic database errors are now becoming prevalent, etc. We currently run vBulletin version 3.8.6 with the latest patches. Since I did not know my hosting company was sold, I attempted to contact the former owner, as we've always done, for help with the problem, but because of the sale, he of course did not respond. All I'm trying to say with this is that it's been going on for quite some time now, but now it's to the point that our site (redszone.com) is barely usable and at times, it isn't. When I opened a support ticket and described the problem, I was told the problem is twofold: 1). our database is far too big (an example cited was a 1.2 GB Post table) and 2). our current traffic far exceeds the specifications of the high-end shared server that our site currently resides on. Specifically, I was told that the MySQL levels far exceed normal usage of a shared hosting account and that recent changes that were made per user (10 simultaneous sql connections per second) further restrict the site from working as normal. I don't know if this is verbatim or an exaggeration for effect, but we were quoted as we currently have 50+ visitors per second with each page trying to do 5+ SQL queries.

As far as the first problem, that's easy enough for me to take care of if I could get the prune posts function to work, but only a very small handful of posts are actually pruned before the operation times out. On a similar note, I can't even make a reliable backup for my own peace of mind because the operation obviously times out within AdminCP or phpMyAdmin and as far as I know, since we're on a shared server, we do not have SSH access. That I can not currently backup our database is very troubling.

As far as the second option goes, we're attempting to be sold on a virtual private server or dedicated server. When I asked which VPS would accommodate our current traffic levels, I was told the most expensive one on this page (VPS-4). I don't know enough about this stuff to realize if the most expensive VPS is truly necessary to handle our traffic or a less expensive VPS would suffice; hence, I'm posting this message here. If you don't mind, please check out the page I linked above and if someone could explain whether VPS-4 or a dedicated server sounds truly necessary, I'd really appreciate it. I imagine that I will need to provide some site statistics in order to assist with that advice, but I'm not really sure what I need to provide, so if you can tell me what I'm looking for within our statistics, I should be able to provide that. Any advice you can offer to get our site running functionally again, regardless of the option (moving to a different server, hosting company, etc.) would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[snakes1100]

Do not prune posts & threads from your DB to appease the host.

Unfortunately you didn't provide a whole lot of detail on the forum, other such info as hacks/addons installed, image storage etc will help others to provide you with info.

Remember as well, as they state on the VPS servers, that "FREE Fully Managed Support", doesn't mean they will perform maintenance, optimization of the VPS etc for you either.

Another note about their VPS is the fact that the Linux based OS's aren't even running a 64bit version, but the winblowz based version is, makes no sense, i'd find a new host.

[vbenhancer]

go there: http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum...-Configuration and ask Eva2000 for help with more details -- read the stickies...

[snakes1100]

He's not on a VPS right now, he's on a shared server, so how is a server optimization going to help Nex?

[vbenhancer]

he want solutions... depending on his site configuration and needs, we can find the best way for him to be hosted, even if it required to change place...

btw, this is a forum for site reviews, not server configs... take care.

[snakes1100]

Actually this thread was moved to this forum for some odd reason, it was posted in the server help forum.

He can't change his "current" configuration though, he "don't" have the VPS yet.

[WEBDosser]

i recomend http://www.cheapvps.co.uk/

[Boss-Hog]

Yes, I wasn't sure of the proper forum for this thread, so I posted it where I thought it best fit.

I was intentionally vague in my original post because while I knew additional details would be necessary to make any kind of real recommendation, I wasn't sure exactly what was needed. To clarify, most of the posts I attempted to prune were completely unnecessary in that the site is somewhat time sensitive (it's a baseball discussion site) and the posts I had started deleting dated back as far as 2005. They're not truly necessary, but I never gave serious thought to delete them until it was suggested that was a major part of the current problem. Additionally, we've had a large number of threads out there for some time and these performance issues didn't start until a couple of months ago, so unless we hit some "magic number", I highly doubt pruning a large amount of old posts will completely resolve the problem.

The statistic package my site uses is Awstats, so anything that package can provide, I can post here, if needed. I'll start with my list of currently installed addons - I have not made any major changes in that regard in some time:

Admin Log In As User
Banned Members Filter by Rafael Lopez
Display Number of Spiders
Enhanced Captcha Image Verification
Flashchat 4 Integration
Guest Tracking
Live Topic
Members who are using Flashchat 4
Most Recent Searches
Multiple Login Detector
Passive Video [Lite]
Sakera's Hide Poll Result
Smilies in Quickreply
vBCode table
Who Has Read a Thread

We typically have ~125-150 users online at a time between guests and registered members but since this is a baseball forum, that number can occasionally be significantly higher, such as during baseball games or after a significant event (trade, free agent signing) occurs. The amount of visitors we receive now is in line with what we received months ago prior to this happening, so if that's any indication, the number of users alone shouldn't be the root cause. In December 2010, we generated 55.15 GB of bandwidth; on average for 2010, it was 62.34 GB a month. My total database size is 1.76 GB. Per Awstats, for the month of January so far, from 1/1/11 to 1/20/11 at 4:30 PM EST, we have received: 21,352 Unique Visitors, 88,916 Number of Visits, 1,452,438 Pages, 6,420,582 Hits and 21.79 GB Bandwidth (256.94 KB/Visit). My image storage method is storing items in the database and has been set to that for quite some time.

Snakes is correct in assuming that with the status quo, I can not change the server configuration due to being on a shared server. I don't know the first thing about server management, so I would assume I'd need my hosting company to handle that. I do not have any specific needs such as RAID. My two objectives with this thread are to determine 1). If I would be better served switching hosting companies and 2). If not, which of the packages that HostPC offers best meets my needs (instead of just assuming the most expensive VPS is what we need). Again, if there's other information you need from me in order to offer your advice, please let me know what it is and I'll do my best to provide it. Thanks again for everyone's help.

[Princeton]

moved to Forum & Server Management posting guidelines

This forum is intended to be used for any technical discussion regarding Forum and Server Management.

Some topics that will fit this forum:
- Optimising your database (for basic server optimisation, please use Server Configuration)
- Using alternative search methods
- Tuning your forum for scalability
- Tuning your forum for best performance
- Securing your server and board.
- Multiserver configurations

Topics that do not fit this forum:

Hosting Discussions.
Please use vBulletin.com for discussion on hosting companies or server suggestions: vBulletin Hosting Options

General PHP/MySQL/webserver configuration.

Please use vBulletin.com to get suggestions on your servers configuration on the topic of general PHP/MySQL optimisation. On the vBulletin.com Server Configuration you will get suggestions by one of our Support Professionals.

[snakes1100]

Originally Posted by Boss-Hog

Admin Log In As User <-- Disable, unless you need to use it, query per page as an admin browsing.
Banned Members Filter by Rafael Lopez
Display Number of Spiders <-- Useless, remove
Enhanced Captcha Image Verification
Flashchat 4 Integration
Guest Tracking
Live Topic
Most Recent Searches <-- Useless
Multiple Login Detector
Passive Video [Lite]
Sakera's Hide Poll Result
Smilies in Quickreply
vBCode table

If you want to stay on the vhosting, you can do the above for now.