Why the forums are so slow

MSE_Martin

The techie team have desperately been trying to sort it. I thought I would explain the problem

1. The site is under enormous demand, double anything we've ever had before - its wonderful but a struggle. Having said that this was the reason i moved servers, I predicted this and had hoped we could deal with it

2. The main site is still on the old servers, its under stress but coping. The problem with the old servers was never to do with demand but poor routers to Canada

3. The Chat Forum is on the new UK based servers. Actually its split across three load balance servers. And here's the problem, one of them had a major hard drive failure yesterday, so severe its gone off line. That left two of them to cope with the biggest demand ever, even worse as these are new we then discovered they weren't balancing the load properly. Which meant some people got a zippy server and most a poor one.

The current situation is we're trying to get another server back online. We've take avatar graphics off for guests to help with the load, but its only a small impact. The two existing servers are now balanced, and coping, but only slowly, i decided better to keep the site up that take it off line, though regulars may want to take a wee break and let the newbies play.

4. Where we go from here.

Martin has had major rants, as i'd predicted all this and paid to make sure we coped. Yet we haven't. So we have a 'bandwidth reduction programme' planned, plus getting the third server up and running and possibly a need to get a fourth one.

I know you're frustrated, but Brendan and Neil were both still working on the servers past midnight last night and started again early today. We've had more people visit the site than ever before today, more join the tip than ever before, more in the forum than ever before, and considering we're a server down we've actually done well.

I am determined to get this site zippy and smooth, no matter what it takes (or costs - ugh i hate saying that). However it takes time. This site is less than three years old and was build for £100 expecting 1000 visits a year not 2 million a month

martin

elvis_bloggs

MSE_Martin wrote:

....The main site is still on the old servers, its under stress but coping.

Arn't we all.

trigger_mike

A victim of your own success Martin!

tomstickland

I'm all for a bit of a "forum diet" to make it run as fast as possible.

robowen

MSE_Martin wrote:

Martin has had major rants,

Martin shouts most of the time anyway..

..whats he like when he rants :eek:

rob:rotfl:

pavlovs_dog

MSE_Martin wrote:

Martin has had major rants

is anyone else concerned for the big cheese here? i think all the stress with the servers is starting to show...this is the second time today ive seen him refer to himself in the third person

Former_MSE_Andrea

Don't worry, he does that quite a lot

robowen

pavlovs_dog wrote:

is anyone else concerned for the big cheese here?

It's my life's ambition for people to refer to me as being a 'big cheese'

...and Martin has done it at such an early age :rolleyes:

rob:rotfl:

robnye

robowen wrote:

It's my life's ambition for people to refer to me as being a 'big cheese'

surely he must be a big ripe cheese by now..... :snow_laug

MSE_Martin

It's gorgonzola boy here, what can i say, the severs are working like a brie now, i'm less cheddar'd off.

aliasojo

That was sooooo bad that I just had to thank you for it Martin! :rotfl: