[jsterling]

I also host our servers with Softlayer after the Leaving The Planet for the same reasons and yes it is Ironic that they are one company now controlled by Softlayer

I wouldn't leave Softlayer. Pretty much the best DC provider in the U.S.

The 500 errors aren't related to bandwidth anyway.

Bail, do you have any logs outlining any of the 500 issues? I know this is a longshot but have you considered testing a Windows server installation? The PHP advancements over the past couple years has been huge and IIS is rock solid. Microsoft has written a Fastcgi module and a PHP cache package and a Rewrite tool that works like mod_rewrite that is all very stable. There are a ton of other tools available as well to help with high-load hosting.

Some links to info:
http://www.iis.net/download/wincacheforphp
http://www.iis.net/download/FastCGI
http://www.iis.net/download/URLRewrite

I assume you may have some custom scripts that may run on Linux only but I figured I would ask.

[BAILOPAN]

jsterling: We haven't tried it, I don't think it's an option we can put on the table given everything else we do is on Linux.

We still have a ton of things to try, too.

[jsterling]

I figured. Do you have logs?

[LumiStance]

Originally Posted by jsterling ... and IIS is rock solid.

That made me smile. I don't know the reliability of IIS these days, but it has a very colorful history.

[Dravu]

Originally Posted by LumiStance That made me smile. I don't know the reliability of IIS these days, but it has a very colorful history.

It's a hell of a lot better than it used to be, but nothing can beat the flexibility and security of Linux. Not to mention that Bail would have to start paying a licensing fee on top of everything else if he made the switch (which would be a pretty dramatic change as well).

[BAILOPAN]

Originally Posted by jsterling I figured. Do you have logs?

The fcgid spew is cryptic and useless at reconstructing information for postmortem analysis. We've gone as far as we can in diagnosing this problem short of deeply understanding fcgid's source code.

My weak guess here is that there is some communication problem between php-cgi and fcgid. The latter claims the former won't respond, and apache blocks, so mpm-worker starts up new threads. It starts up new threads until it reaches a limit, then starts dishing out 500 errors. A few seconds later, fcgid gives up and tries to kill every PHP process at once.

It all happens very quickly, once every few hours, at no predictable time. Increasing connection limits isn't a solution, since it would not solve the underlying problem.

I'm not out of tricks yet. Tonight the forums will move to a dedicated apace instance. From there we can begin isolating down the problem to either a specific vhost or attempting different configurations (such as mod_php).

[WebNoob]

I know you've probably gotten dozens of suggestions for hosting, but here's one more ;-)

While we use serverbeach for our gameservers, I'm using 100TB (http://www.100tb.com/) for our fast download (and a few other things) and I've been very happy with their reliability and support response times. Couple that with a 1GB pipe and 100tb of bandwidth, and they're pretty future-proof.

[Warbucks]

Originally Posted by WebNoob I know you've probably gotten dozens of suggestions for hosting, but here's one more ;-) While we use serverbeach for our gameservers, I'm using 100TB (http://www.100tb.com/) for our fast download (and a few other things) and I've been very happy with their reliability and support response times. Couple that with a 1GB pipe and 100tb of bandwidth, and they're pretty future-proof.

FYI, 100tb.com is a reseller of Softlayer.

[rjckE]

Hey guys, it's Web Compiler working ok?

I get this:

Your plugin failed to compile! Read the errors below:

And there are NO errors below!!!

What's happening?

[Thrawn2]

Originally Posted by BAILOPAN Problem with Europe is, as you noted, is that I doubt a contract over there has any legal meaning for me in the States

afaik it has. thats at least what my favorite german based hoster (hetzner) says in its general terms and conditions (9.4).
i would recommend contacting their support and ask about specifics.
you can't go wrong with hetzner.