Server Optimisation for IP.Board

[abetts]

I'm on a dedicated server, it's more than capable of running IP.Board (3.1.3) at the traffic levels I have but it's quiet slow.

What settings would you recommend to speed it up?

Server spec:
HP DL120 (G6) Dual Core G6950 (2x2.8Ghz) 4GB RAM 2x250GB SATA RAID1
CentOS
cPanel
mySQL 5.0.91
PHP 5.3.3
Apache 2.0.63

It's a $500/month full managed solution and my 200 concurrent user forum should be able to serve pages faster than with a 1.7 - 2.1 second page generation time. The server is 24 hours old!

Any hints/tips please?

http://www.thelotusforums.com/forums/

[Rhett]

I'm on a dedicated server, it's more than capable of running IP.Board (3.1.3) at the traffic levels I have but it's quiet slow.

What settings would you recommend to speed it up?

Server spec:

HP DL120 (G6) Dual Core G6950 (2x2.8Ghz) 4GB RAM 2x250GB SATA RAID1

CentOS

cPanel

mySQL 5.0.91

PHP 5.3.3

Apache 2.0.63

It's a $500/month full managed solution and my 200 concurrent user forum should be able to serve pages faster than with a 1.7 - 2.1 second page generation time. The server is 24 hours old!

Any hints/tips please?

[url="http://www.thelotusforums.com/forums/"]http://www.thelotusforums.com/forums/[/url]

I tried to sign up with facebook..... when I went to create account... it says the car field can't be blank... that portion of your sign up screen is hidden and can't be filled in.

anyway I can't see your load times as a guest... but it's not too bad.... but I can point you to faster hosting for 1/4 of what your paying as well.... sounds like someone is bending you over. :)

[abetts]

I've never had someone say that before, fixed now and the car/name fields aren't mandatory.

I'm not after cheaper hosting, I'm on a 12 month contract and after running forums for 7 years and many, many hosts I'm happy with the host, it's just I need to know how to configure the server so that IPB runs as fast as it can.

Invision will set up the server php/mysql/apache but at a price. I think the info should be available as this is pretty basic stuff for running a forum well.

[blair]

You'd probably have more luck in this forum: http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/406-server-management-resources-optimization/

Lot's of tips there too.

[Rhett]

I've never had someone say that before, fixed now and the car/name fields aren't mandatory.

I'm not after cheaper hosting, I'm on a 12 month contract and after running forums for 7 years and many, many hosts I'm happy with the host, it's just I need to know how to configure the server so that IPB runs as fast as it can.

Invision will set up the server php/mysql/apache but at a price. I think the info should be available as this is pretty basic stuff for running a forum well.

Fine tuning a server is more about tuning it to your needs... it's not something a general answer can be given, it's a combination of make sure you are using the resources you have and also leave enough for growth etc. The main two pieces to the puzzle are apache and mysql, in order to help you more we will need you to post your stats of your site as well as your mysql logs so we can see how the server has been performing.

Are you running xcache or another cache software?

[G Fox]

It would help to know what you have already implemented; memcached, sphinx, static domain for images, etc.

[abetts]

You'd probably have more luck in this forum: http://community.invisionpower.com/forum/406-server-management-resources-optimization/

Lot's of tips there too.

I didn't even know that existed! That'll teach me not to scroll down!

I'll have a read through there first looking for suggestions. It's essentially a vanilla server, nothing changed from a stock CentOS install.

[abetts]

PS Just turned on memcache, down to 1.6 seconds! :D

[Gary.]

Your main concern should me your mysql, And for $500 a month with management, I would be on to there a$$ and getting them to tune the hell out of it, Its not your job as you pay for it.

Now if your loads are low anyway you don't need memcache or memcached but if you do then you need them both installed for it to function, IPB does not require this or anything that IPB has so you should move from that.

Have you ran the mysql tuner or done tweeking on this or is the my.cnf as default ?

from SSH run:

wget mysqltuner.pl

Then:

chmod 755 mysqltuner.pl

Then

perl mysqltuner.pl

Post the config of your my.cnf and the output of the mysql tuner for futher help.

vi /etc/my.cnf

[abetts]

I've now arrange for invision to tune the server, their price is very fair and will probably save me weeks of experimentation.

For info, here's the details from a brand new server install. The only change I've made is to enable query cache and install memcache

my.cnf
[mysqld]
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

# Disabling symbolic-links is recommended to prevent assorted security risks;
# to do so, uncomment this line:
# symbolic-links=0

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

query_cache_type=1
query_cache_limit=1M
query_cache_size=32M

Now for the mysqltuner results:

>> MySQLTuner 1.0.1 - Major Hayden <major@mhtx.net>
>> Bug reports, feature requests, and downloads at http://mysqltuner.com/
>> Run with '--help' for additional options and output filtering

-------- General Statistics --------------------------------------------------
[--] Skipped version check for MySQLTuner script
[OK] Currently running supported MySQL version 5.0.91-community
[OK] Operating on 64-bit architecture

-------- Storage Engine Statistics -------------------------------------------
[--] Status: +Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster
[--] Data in MyISAM tables: 443M (Tables: 1416)
[--] Data in InnoDB tables: 1M (Tables: 50)
[--] Data in MEMORY tables: 380K (Tables: 2)
[!!] Total fragmented tables: 52

-------- Performance Metrics -------------------------------------------------
[--] Up for: 21h 9m 28s (2M q [30.189 qps], 61K conn, TX: 15B, RX: 518M)
[--] Reads / Writes: 87% / 13%
[--] Total buffers: 34.0M global + 2.7M per thread (100 max threads)
[OK] Maximum possible memory usage: 309.0M (7% of installed RAM)
[OK] Slow queries: 0% (0/2M)
[OK] Highest usage of available connections: 30% (30/100)
[OK] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 8.0M/254.0M
[OK] Key buffer hit rate: 97.1% (87M cached / 2M reads)
[!!] Query cache is disabled
[OK] Sorts requiring temporary tables: 0% (42 temp sorts / 380K sorts)
[!!] Joins performed without indexes: 3478
[OK] Temporary tables created on disk: 8% (40K on disk / 467K total)
[!!] Thread cache is disabled
[!!] Table cache hit rate: 0% (64 open / 254K opened)
[OK] Open file limit used: 12% (125/1K)
[OK] Table locks acquired immediately: 99% (2M immediate / 2M locks)
[OK] InnoDB data size / buffer pool: 1.2M/8.0M

-------- Recommendations -----------------------------------------------------
General recommendations:
Run OPTIMIZE TABLE to defragment tables for better performance
MySQL started within last 24 hours - recommendations may be inaccurate
Enable the slow query log to troubleshoot bad queries
Adjust your join queries to always utilize indexes
Set thread_cache_size to 4 as a starting value
Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits
Variables to adjust:
query_cache_size (>= 8M)
join_buffer_size (> 128.0K, or always use indexes with joins)
thread_cache_size (start at 4)
table_cache (> 64)

[Gary.]

Your MySql has not been modified or optimized in any single way.

I have sent you a PM also :)

[abetts]

Just a quick thanks to Gary who has done some work on my server and now my page generation times don't even get to 0.1 seconds, they're even quicker (currently 0.07!). Now the rest of the internet bores me as it's so slow, my server is like greased lightening!

Thanks Gary, you're a star mate, excellent work and terrific value for money!

[Bono]

If you need to use Apache, at least upgrade to 2.2 it's much faster than 2.0.
You can also install xcache that will help also.

And for that price they should provided you server with SAS drives, that would also lower your iowait.

[Zhana]

You are paying way too much for a server, you can get servers for 300$.

[3DKiwi]

You are paying way too much for a server, you can get servers for 300$.

My dedicated server is US $180 per month. Dual Core, 2HD's, cPanel 3gb memory. For $500 I would want something much better than what the member is getting.

3DKiwi

[abetts]

Do you read all the posts in the thread? My page generation time is noticeably less than a tenth of a second now the server is correctly configured. How much faster do you think it should be?

[Bono]

This is my page generation without memcache, if you are referring to stats on the bottom of forum.
0.0548 sec
My server: quad core 3220, 4gb of ram and SAS drives paying that $260 on premium provider, server is little outdated my avg. load is 30%.

[yacenty]

Bono: 0.0548 sec
with how many users online - it's really connected.
At night I have 0.05, at the peak I have 0.30 - but then there is circa about 1300 users online

[Gary.]

I think Bibs_TLF and the main costs of his machine is down to His drive speeds as they was reporting 12,000rpm, Extremely FAST !

His server now pulls a page speed of 0.3 seconds - His average mem usuage is 14% - His average CPU load is 0.20 on peak time and 0.00% in idle.

His I/O wait is 0 with 0% swap, What we did was modify the php, Inserted custom rules and Optimised the way his CPU treats things using SPRI

He has an active user community with 200 online per min, When we enabled dbug level it was reporting: 0.0187 sec

His drives proved a bonus when tuning his machine, Its a forum you don't come across alot with such speeds on an active community.

[Bono]

Bono: 0.0548 sec

with how many users online - it's really connected.

At night I have 0.05, at the peak I have 0.30 - but then there is circa about 1300 users online

It doesn't matter all day long I have 0.05-0.08 loading speed. And I have more than one site but I can tell you on average I got on my webserver 80-100 requests per second, and Mysql has 250 QPS.

[yacenty]

on my site in a peak time we are reaching 400QPS and max is 200 requests per second