Very Slow Response - May 2013

[Rick]

It was a little sluggish earlier, but seems fine at the moment, which makes troubleshooting tricky. I have an open ticket to hit next time I catch it being slow.

Exact times, response times and error messages (with exact times) are helpful.

Migration involves:

Transferring all the files
Transferring the mailing lists
Transferring the databases
Transferring the domains and getting the DNS re-configured
...and so on.

It can be done, and if things get much worse I'll consider it, but last time we shifted servers it took a while to sort out, and I'd rather not put effort into that until I'm certain our current provider isn't prepared to respond. There's quite a few months already paid for, too.

[Mike]

There's quite a few months already paid for, too.

They should be giving us a refund for failure to provide the service.

[Les R]

It was a little sluggish earlier, but seems fine at the moment, which makes troubleshooting tricky. I have an open ticket to hit next time I catch it being slow.

Exact times, response times and error messages (with exact times) are helpful.

Migration involves:

Transferring all the files
Transferring the mailing lists
Transferring the databases
Transferring the domains and getting the DNS re-configured
...and so on.

Rick, I realise it would be a bit of work, but i don't think it would be as bad as you think. You certainly WONT need to transfer the domain and the DNS protocols takes seconds to point to your new web host nameservers.  Files are a simple FTP job, not sure on the mail lists, but would imagine that shouldn't be a problem though the database export and import so it matches what you currently use, will be the only real headache in the process.

Hopefully they pull their finger out, but if you decide to do something, I'm happy to help if any is needed.

[Rick]

Most of the time the sites work fine. Occasionally they're a bit sluggish. While the sites were a bit sluggish this morning, I was able to upload the monthly presentation and do other stuff, so they weren't actually unusable from my point of view. I have reported the sluggish responses, and the hosting company is going to try changing some things at their end to see whether it improves matters.

Having a record of specific time windows when the sites are sluggish or unusable would be useful.

[Rick]

Rick, I realise it would be a bit of work, but i don't think it would be as bad as you think.

I did the transfer work last time we moved servers, so I know what's involved. The set-up now is slightly more complicated than it was last time, but I'd have more time to work on it. However, I'd much rather the hosting company found and fixed whatever's causing the trouble. I suspect it's database-related and probably caused by other customers databases on the same shared server, but I'm not ruling out the possibility that it's down to our forum database having almost trippled in size in the last four years...

[Mike]

It's a bit more than 'sluggish' Rick. For example just now I clicked the REPLY button to reply to this post and it took over 20 seconds. It's almost unusable at times and quite regularly I get the 'Error code: ERR_CONNECTION_RESET' message.

[Rick]

I'm clearly not seeing the same level of poor performance as you're seeing, then, Mike. I've seen a few occasions today when responses took over 30 seconds, but no cases of connection resets or other such failures.

[Rick]

The hosting folks report that they are working on reducing the load on the server hosting our sites.

[Mac]

but I'm not ruling out the possibility that it's down to our forum database having almost trippled in size in the last four years...

How big is our database then, it can be that big.

maybe we should spolit the forum into two
one that holds everything for the current year
and one that holds everything else, and on the 1st of Jan
archive everything from the previous year.

Its not that hard to build SQL queries to access the old database,
so at least you can still search.

On another note, it says at the bottom we are on 1.1.18 of the forum software
the current version is 2.0.4. is it worth looking into the upgrade?
it might be a combination of bug fixes and server issues.

Mac.

[Rick]

We're on a shared server, so the chances are high that poor performance is caused by something else. The database may have trippled in size but server performance should also have increased. I'll only consider doing stuff like that to the database if it's identified as the prime cause of a performance problem.

The update from 1.x to 2.x is something on the list, but the bulk of the changes are of the "greater flexibility and complexity" variety, and, barring intermittent poor performance (which is probably server-load related), this version works well enough.

[mickw]

Painfully slow at 07:29 (forum time) took over a minute to post a reply

[Rick]

Yes, things have been a bit sluggish at intervals this morning. I'm watching it fairly closely. Some of the load may be down to bots crawling all through the new version of the main site...

[Mac]

10:19 Saturday 24th Aug,
Taking ages to get any pages up,
they have not timed out yet, just slow.
Mac

[Mac]

This is getting stupid now.
It took over a min to post one reply.

At what point are we going to change servers?

are we paying a lower rate for a crap service?
because that's what we are getting.


10:28

Mac.

[Les R]

very slow here also.

As a side note - not sure which domain host / site host you are using, but do you have a option to action things when the domain includes www as an input or not?

ie

http://orpington-astronomy.org.uk/ gets you through to the root dir and things I guess you might not want to be seen. (I haven't looked honest!)

whereas

http://www.orpington-astronomy.org.uk/ correctly brings up the site index page.

I guess as no page name is shown, you are using frames? (which is not the best way, and might attribute some of the sluggishness here.)

On a host I use, you can set to direct any input (ie www or not) to wherever its meant to go. Using frames youve got one option. Much better to change the nameservers and make this all transparent. (Though I am just making assumptions here, so apologies if thats not right!)