Major server drain issues (please help!)

[mrfield16]

So I have a server package that is:

65 GB Storage
1 TB Monthly Transfer
1 GB Guaranteed RAM
2 GB Burst RAM
Hardware RAID 10

Yet, with only 120 concurrent users, my servers crash due to resource overload. There was a caching issue, that has been resolved. But what else in this code would cause this? My forum was imported from another MYBB forum (switched domains)...so I wonder if Messed something up in the import process.

What areas can I address to speed up the process time and reduce the resource drain on the host servers.

The host did write this (asking me to upgrade AGAIN in my package):

(Hello,

It is a combination of code and connections. There are currently about 120 Apache requests that are being processed at a rate of 16/s:

# service httpd status
Apache Server Status for localhost

Server Version: Apache/2.2.23 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.23 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips
mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/5.2.17

Server Built: Oct 17 2012 19:56:29
__________________________________________________________________

Current Time: Friday, 26-Apr-2013 21:46:02 EDT
Restart Time: Friday, 26-Apr-2013 21:36:11 EDT
Parent Server Generation: 12
Server uptime: 9 minutes 50 seconds
Total accesses: 9543 - Total Traffic: 10.4 MB
CPU Usage: u146.77 s21.56 cu0 cs0 - 28.5% CPU load
16.2 requests/sec - 18.1 kB/second - 1146 B/request
117 requests currently being processed, 14 idle workers

_WWWWWWWWW_WWWWWKWWWW_WW_RWWWWWKKRRKWWR_WKKWRWWWWWWCWWR_WWWWWWKK
WKWWWWWWK_KWWWWWWWWWKWKCWW_WWRR._WWWR_WWWWWWR_WKRWWWWWW_W_.W.WRW
..WW...R_K....W.................................................
................................................................

Scoreboard Key:
"_" Waiting for Connection, "S" Starting up, "R" Reading Request,
"W" Sending Reply, "K" Keepalive (read), "D" DNS Lookup,
"C" Closing connection, "L" Logging, "G" Gracefully finishing,
"I" Idle cleanup of worker, "." Open slot with no current process


Your server is almost out of memory and is completely overloaded. I would like to suggest proceeding with the trial upgrade if only to keep your site running properly. Would you like to proceed with this?)

Site is http://www.fieldchatter.com/forum if you need to watch for anything.

Thank you!

[Nathan Malcolm]

Your host is correct. With your current setup you either need more memory or you need to fine tune it. You could try a combination of NGINX + php-fpm instead of Apache. I advise you upgrade to PHP 5.3 and install APC too.

What version of MySQL are you running? Are you using InnoDB? MySQL 5.5 plus InnoDB tables will give you a performance boost.

MySQL will probably need more memory. When there's little memory available you start to run in to issues. You should always have some spare memory in case of spikes.

Finally, I'd like to point you in the direction of the Big Board Owners group, a group on this community which is for users who have MyBB forums with 100,000+ posts. You can join this group by going to your User CP and clicking on "Group Memberships". There's a lot of information there from MyBB forum owners who operate at massive scale, going in to tens of millions of posts.

Let me know if any of this was helpful.

[mrfield16]

Your host is correct. With your current setup you either need more memory or you need to fine tune it. You could try a combination of NGINX + php-fpm instead of Apache. I advise you upgrade to PHP 5.3 and install APC too.

What version of MySQL are you running? Are you using InnoDB? MySQL 5.5 plus InnoDB tables will give you a performance boost.

MySQL will probably need more memory. When there's little memory available you start to run in to issues. You should always have some spare memory in case of spikes.

Finally, I'd like to point you in the direction of the Big Board Owners group, a group on this community which is for users who have MyBB forums with 100,000+ posts. You can join this group by going to your User CP and clicking on "Group Memberships". There's a lot of information there from MyBB forum owners who operate at massive scale, going in to tens of millions of posts.

Let me know if any of this was helpful.

Very helpful thank you!!

So this is common for 120 concurrent users?

MySql is version 5.1.68
PHP version 5.2.17

[Nathan Malcolm]

It can vary from setup to setup. You'll see a huge performance increase if you upgrade to MySQL 5.5. Do you have a monitoring system in place? It would be a good idea to have something like Munin installed so you can monitor the changes as they happen.

[mrfield16]

How do I do both of those tasks? I will do them :-

[Nathan Malcolm]

If you compiled MySQL from source you'll need to recompile it. If you installed it from a package manager you'll either need to upgrade it (yum upgrade ..., apt-get upgrade ...) or if the repo hasn't got MySQL 5.5 yet you might get away with installing the mysql package from remi.

http://rpms.famillecollet.com/

If your server is managed you could get your host to perform these tasks for you or you could hire someone if you don't feel comfortable doing so yourself.

[mrfield16]

Thank you!

[mrfield16]

If you compiled MySQL from source you'll need to recompile it. If you installed it from a package manager you'll either need to upgrade it (yum upgrade ..., apt-get upgrade ...) or if the repo hasn't got MySQL 5.5 yet you might get away with installing the mysql package from remi.

http://rpms.famillecollet.com/

If your server is managed you could get your host to perform these tasks for you or you could hire someone if you don't feel comfortable doing so yourself.

I have the upgrade option....will it mess up my forum though? If I simply click the upgrade options...?

[Nathan Malcolm]

I'm not sure how you're upgrading but MyBB is fully compatible with MySQL 5.5

[mrfield16]

I would just click UPgrade and follow the 7 steps in WHM :-) Do I need to shut down my site first so no one can post?