[InflatableSoulmate]

Originally Posted by zeroibis Another option may be to invest in a better form of RAID in order to also increase your I/O performance. You should try to generate some logs to see how stressed your disk is and if it is under heavy load you may want to add more drives to spread it out. Running even a 3 drive RAID 5 would go a long way to increasing I/O performance and also providing you with some data redundancy. If your not already you should be trying to log your cpu and ram usage to help identify bottle necks. Your Server Load Averages should not be above 2 in ideal conditions to avoid lag or instability. 3 and above is an indication that problems are coming soon if you do not increase your specs. I must admit that I find it a bit funny that the mighty programmer BAILOPAN does not know much about how to run a web server.

Some of what zeroibis said makes sense to me and some does not, so the above quoted bits are things I have comments about.

First, about RAID levels. RAID can improve performance and/or reliability, and RAID1 is a good choice for a server that is limited to 2 drives if reliability is something you need to focus on. Hardware RAID1 generally isn't known to give you performance boosts, but linux software RAID1 will use some neat tricks to improve performance to nearly the same level as software RAID0. All software RAID will, however, use more CPU. If you can go to a higher RAID level, you can sometimes reduce the amount of wear on the single drives in the array, increasing your server's lifespan slightly. Also, if high I/O is an issue, you will want to sneak striping in somehow to increase performance.

The load numbers that zeroibis noted may have been right for certain systems, but not for all... Linux admins have been noting that the load averages are not a reliable way to judge actual system performance. Machines with higher numbers on cores can handle higher load averages in theory, but that again depends on how that load is distributed among the cores. There are likely better system monitoring tools that pro admins could recommend.

And, programmers don't necessarily have any hardware experience, so there's no reason to think Bailopan, who runs this giant beast of a project as a hobby, should have been expected to be a fully prepared systems admin expert.

[BAILOPAN]

zeroibis: I don't think anyone really understands how mod_fcgid and php-cgi really interact. Given the lack of documentation, conflicting advice all over the Internet, and complete, out-of-box brokenness of mod_fcgid's stable release - I'm not even convinced that its maintainers know what's going on.

We know disk I/O is not our bottleneck, but we don't know what is. All we know is that randomly, communication dies between PHP and Apache, and this causes 500 errors. I've circumstantial evidence that MySQL may need severe tuning and more RAM, but it's not clear whether this is related.

We have a few paths forward if we want to give up debugging, but the engineer in me would like to understand problems before trying to fix them.

[dataviruset]

How about mod_php and apache2-mpm-itk or peruser, perhaps?

[Land of plenty]

Originally Posted by BAILOPAN zeroibis: I don't think anyone really understands how mod_fcgid and php-cgi really interact. Given the lack of documentation, conflicting advice all over the Internet, and complete, out-of-box brokenness of mod_fcgid's stable release - I'm not even convinced that its maintainers know what's going on.

hmm... you do seem to have a bit of a thing for working with poorly documented software

[Omega_K2]

Originally Posted by BAILOPAN Omega: A few people have told me prices are better in Europe. Problem with Europe is, as you noted, is that I doubt a contract over there has any legal meaning for me in the States

The applicable law to my understanding is simply the one in the respective country. I'm not sure whether any issues from that may arrise, though I think it may be worth to take it into consideration. I think there may be local sm users/mods living in europe that are more familar with their respective country's law and can help out with potential issues.
Looking at the price of a server alone, EU-servers are, again, much cheaper. Just an example:
http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/pro...duktmatrix-eq/
The EQ4 is roughly 68,50$ / month;

When looking around for a US-Dedicated server I could only find similar servers with similar contract conditions starting at 200$/month and going up to 300$/month (this may have changed in the mean time though, considering it has been a year already)

[MjrNuT]

Originally Posted by BAILOPAN Warbucks, what sort of deals do you mean, and what sort of providers do you think offer them? Our biggest problem right now is understanding our load. The second biggest problem, which made this incident really painful, was not having easy access or ownership of the hardware. One potential plan for new infrastructure calls for two or three servers, instead of one. Pricing this out with our current provider is extremely expensive - enough such that colo looks attractive, with lower fixed costs and easy access, even given the higher up-front cost.

I would guess its hard for Warbucks or anyone to be able to recommend the deals. I'm sure you wish to not provide specifics about the infrastructure in a public space either. In view of your other posts, makes sense to me as well to understand the load, its contributing factors, etc. Maybe the pertinent question is: The provider currently used by AM able to diagnose in parallel with you? I actually can't tell if you have managed or unmanaged setup. Me thinks the latter as you were able to send of the HDD.

I see the Colo idea as making some sense, which be more conducive if you're physically close enough for any needs. However, what about a managed solution? Managed solution that includes auto-backups, support, etc.?

I'm confident you've had this entertained in various forms or another, so just tossing out there.

Thanks for real Gold that AM has brought to myself and those I share the works with from here.

[Warbucks]

Originally Posted by BAILOPAN Warbucks, what sort of deals do you mean, and what sort of providers do you think offer them? Our biggest problem right now is understanding our load. The second biggest problem, which made this incident really painful, was not having easy access or ownership of the hardware. One potential plan for new infrastructure calls for two or three servers, instead of one. Pricing this out with our current provider is extremely expensive - enough such that colo looks attractive, with lower fixed costs and easy access, even given the higher up-front cost.

I sent you a PM.

[Warbucks]

Originally Posted by Omega_K2 The applicable law to my understanding is simply the one in the respective country. I'm not sure whether any issues from that may arrise, though I think it may be worth to take it into consideration. I think there may be local sm users/mods living in europe that are more familar with their respective country's law and can help out with potential issues. Looking at the price of a server alone, EU-servers are, again, much cheaper. Just an example: http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/pro...duktmatrix-eq/ The EQ4 is roughly 68,50$ / month; When looking around for a US-Dedicated server I could only find similar servers with similar contract conditions starting at 200$/month and going up to 300$/month (this may have changed in the mean time though, considering it has been a year already)

There is a one time setup fee on those machines. You can't just look at the specs and the monthly price. You need to look at their network, the infrastructure design, the providers they use, the hardware they use and their support. Everyone has different needs. You need to shop around and find a provider which suits your needs.

Anyone who has been in the dedicated/co-location business long enough knows that price means squat. It's a cut through industry and there are plenty of crappy providers out there trying to undercut each other. The old saying "you get what you pay for" really does shine in this industry.

[FaTony]

Originally Posted by zeroibis ...implying that moral ground are relative.

Yes, they are.

[zeroibis]

Originally Posted by FaTony Yes, they are.

Then you can not be angry for anything as morality is relative. People can do what ever they want as long as they personally believe it is ok.

If you believe that lying is wrong and I at the same time believe that it is not than as morals are relative lying is both wrong and not wrong. However something can not be multiple things at one time under the came conditions. Just as water can not be liquid water and ice at the same time nor can something be right and wrong at the same time. Your statement is logically impossible.