Server upgrade?

[Psionicist]

Hi there.

234 community supporters, times $25 USD per account (assuming some users registered before the raise to $35) is $5850 USD. This is community supporters only, not counting ads and such (I assume the ads pay the bandwidth).

Why don't you use this money and upgrade the server to something lean and mean? Say... Dual Xeon, Gigs of RAM and SCSI disks. Certainly you can afford it. Just for the heck of it I configured a kick ass server at Dell with all the bells and whistles for about $3900 including VAT.

This will certainly speed things up.

 

[Piratecat]

To forestall the inevitable backlash - Psionicist, please don't tell Morrus that he can "certainly afford" something unless you happen to be his accountant. I think a much, much better approach is to recommend how you would change the server if you were doing so, and let Morrus manage EN World. You're often a tremendous help technically, but this is the sort of thing that is best handled by email.

"You may give me a ride to work every day, and I never give you gas money, but this car goes too slow. You have enough money in your bank account; why don't you just blow it all on a sports car instead of budgeting and planning for things, or keeping a safety reserve? You should get one of those new BMW convertibles so that I can ride in it. You certainly can afford it."

Also note that some community supporters are given their titles for free as thanks for community work, that $10 or so of the $35 goes to rpgnow - that's why I still take Paypal from folks at the old $25 amount (actually $28, to cover fees) - and that much of the Community Supporter donations were spent buying the original server. Thus, your original estimation is significantly inflated.

I know you didn't mean to, but your message sounded more like a rude accusation than anything else. That approach isn't usually very helpful. If you'd like to discuss this with me by email, please feel free, and you're welcome to drool over new server configurations either here or in the Computer forum.

Note that we are upgrading to the new version of the BBS software fairly soon.

 

[Psionicist]

Just trying to help. About 8 hours per day I cannot access EN World. When I can, the site is considerably slower than other web pages/forums the same size. EN World is larger than two years ago, and I can feel it.

vBulletin is a very nice forum software - responds quickly with few users, but it is really demanding when some hundred users tries to access it simultaneously. This is mostly because of database queries, sessions and such. I won’t go into technical details here, but a vBulletin board with 12000 members needs a very powerful computer for smooth operation.

To prove my point. This is the uptime for enworld: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.enworld.org
Reboots once per week.

This is www.techreport.com, your average computer website, about 5000 forum members: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.techreport.com
Reboots twice per year or thereabout.

This one is pretty cool: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=wwwprod1.telia.com
Up and running after 4½ years of operation.

This is just an advice. Dual processors and SCSI disks would make a huge difference, promise.

 

[kreynolds]

Just trying to help.

And it's definately needed.

 

[Morrus]

I don't understand that graph, but I have not witnessed 8 hours downtime every day. What hours are you experiencing this? It must be while I'm asleep, although I haven't heard any other mention of this seemingly massive problem which I managed to overlook completely!

 

[kreynolds]

The boards just dropped (within the last two minutes) for the second time for me today (both from my office and from work, two different ISPs).

 

[kreynolds]

Check it out. Boards dropped again (again, 2 different locations, 2 different ISPs). I don't know if this is happening to anyone/everyone else, but just in case, I think it's worth mentioning. Could be that nobody realizes how shoddy the uptime can be, so maybe pointing out the down times will help. *shrug*

 

[Morrus]

Well, the server itself is coping just fine. According to cyberstreet, we're exceeding our allotted bandwidth fairly regularly, which I imagine is the culprit. I'm talking to them about increasing it, but the monthly fees are getting ever more expensive.

 

[kreynolds]

Well, the server itself is coping just fine. According to cyberstreet, we're exceeding our allotted bandwidth fairly regularly, which I imagine is the culprit.

I figured that was the case. It's a rare event that I can't ping the server, but fairly often (on average once a day), that the site can't be reached.

Can anyone say Hivemind?

 

[Psionicist]

Morrus: I have a couple of ideas how you can get unlimited bandwidth for your website for virtually nothing at all, if you are willing to physically move the server to another server park.

Before I e-mail you details (if you are interested at all), can you tell if the server is placed in US or UK?