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SP Performance??

Discussion in 'Sorcerous Sundries' started by Barmy Army, Mar 13, 2012.

  1. Barmy Army

    Barmy Army Simple mind, simple pleasures... Adored Veteran

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    I don't mind a bit of slow performance, I can live with it, but SP is taking at least 30+ seconds to load a page, often a minute a more. What gives? Hosting issues, or is it my machine?
     
  2. Blades of Vanatar

    Blades of Vanatar Vanatar will rise again Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    [​IMG] I don't seem to be having any speed issues on my work laptop right now, maybe it's your machine Barms.
     
  3. Gaear

    Gaear ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful

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    Been slow for me too.
     
  4. Marceror

    Marceror Chaos Shall Be Sown In Their Footsteps Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I have noticed it a couple of times as well. Getting to this thread from the main page took a good minute. I had a similar experience posting in a user group.
     
  5. 8people

    8people 8 is just another way of looking at infinite ★ SPS Account Holder Adored Veteran

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    [​IMG] I'm currently bickering with my ISP as my internet hasn't been 100% since I moved in and has suddenly got worse the past month or so, but I haven't really noticed any particular slowness in Sorcerers - though this particular thread took longer than I expected to load :p

    [Edit]

    Damnit Barms, now the whole site is lagging! :nono:
     
  6. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Yea, we've been having intermittent issues because one of the sites on the server is using up most of the resources, sorry about that. We'll be fixing that one way or another shortly though as it really can't wait any more. Just hang in there for a while longer until I sort it out.
     
  7. Merlanni

    Merlanni Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!)

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    Is there a hint, like we need a new server, in your words?
     
  8. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    There are a few things I can still do in terms of optimizing performance on this one so I'll see if that's going to be enough. If not, it's either getting a better server (as we're maxed with the upgrades on this one) or moving some of the more intensive things off it to a CDN for instance.
     
  9. Merlanni

    Merlanni Veteran New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!)

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    I guess that we do not dare to look at a new server money wise?
     
  10. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Well, that's the most expensive & time-consuming option (moving everything to a new server) so I'd try everything else before resorting to that. Might not have much choice though... we'll see.
     
  11. Harbourboy

    Harbourboy Take thy form from off my door! Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I thought Barmy was going to do a performance for us. Disappointed.
     
  12. Marceror

    Marceror Chaos Shall Be Sown In Their Footsteps Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Might you consider adding an additional server? Instead of just replacing, a second web server that is load balanced with the first would require less down time and add some redundancy. With load balancing you wouldn't be required to scrap the existing server, and the new server wouldn't necessarily need to be an uber-powerful system. Another server that matches current specs that's handling half the load would effectively double capacity.

    This may still be cost prohibitive (without know the details of how SP manages its hosting) but I thought I'd throw it out there just the same.
     
  13. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Yea, cost is the only factor really. We're going to go that route effectively anyway with the integration of a CDN, which I expect will be more cost-effective overall.

    The problem with leasing a new server is that we're now under Softlayer, whose prices are 50-100% higher than The Planet's previously. It's somewhat amusing that we've been hosted in essentially the same place for 10 years, but the original company RackShack has gone through so many acquisitions and takeovers over the years that it's not even funny. First EV1 Servers, then The Planet, now Softlayer... give it a few more years and it'll probably be Google.

    Anyway, RackShack's prices were great, EV1's were affordable, The Planet's were pricy unless you managed to get a super special offer (which I did on this server) but Softlayer's now are pretty much prohibitive. I'm not really keen on moving anywhere else though because apart from the price of new hardware I'm mostly happy with everything else here.
     
  14. Marceror

    Marceror Chaos Shall Be Sown In Their Footsteps Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I'm not familiar with those hosting providers, but I know that many of them don't support more advanced multi-server configuration anyway.

    If you ever do feel like the prices are getting too costly, you might consider a cloud solution in the future, rather than leasing a server. Terremark/Verizon has what seems to be a strong public cloud environment out of Amsterdam that has reasonable prices (better than Amazon EC2 in my experience). You could easily dial up 2 or 3 VMs there, with a couple serving as web servers and perhaps another serving as your backend database. They may not offer load balancing services though, but since you host several websites you could simply run certain websites on 1 webserver and others on the other. Depending on the size of your VMs you might pay anywhere from $50 - 100 a month per VM for smaller ones (maybe less), or up too a few hundred per month for fairly powerful ones (2VPU, 8GB RAM ~100GB storage). You can certainly get more powerful VMs, which of course you have to pay for.

    I have no idea if this would be a better price point for you. This also requires a fair knowledge of server configuration, as they provide the VMs, but you need to set up the web servers, databases, etc. Here's more info if you're interested. You can do a live chat with them to get questions answered and even have them provide pricing.

    http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/pricing.aspx
     
  15. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Moving everything to a real cloud (not just some shared hosting masking as cloud) would almost certainly be considerably more expensive than pairing our existing server with a CDN for our more resource-intensive tasks... but given the completely different pricing model it's very hard to predict in advance without testing, unfortunately.
     
  16. Marceror

    Marceror Chaos Shall Be Sown In Their Footsteps Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    I guess there's an issue with the term "cloud" in general. It's one of the most over-used terms in networking right now, as everyone wants to say they have a cloud offering even if they actually don't. And there are so many applications and working definitions of the term cloud that it can really get... err, cloudy.

    From a server hosting perspective, I define a cloud as an environment where virtual servers can be brought online with absolutely no concern or consideration on the part of a consumer for the physical hardware behind it all. Terremark has such a cloud, as does Amazon (Elastic Compute Cloud), IBM, Microsoft (Azure, though this sort of its own animal) and a few others.

    Server clouds allow consumers to pay only when their servers are in use, usually on an hourly basis, bring up as many VMs as needed on an on demand basis, and terminate them on an on demand basis.

    Anyhow, yes it certainly could be that this model is more expensive for what you're doing. In certain scenarios that I deal with I find it to be a huge money saver, and the flexibility and lack of capital costs are hard to beat. Just thought I'd throw it out there, for what it's worth. :)
     
  17. Taluntain

    Taluntain Resident Alpha and Omega Staff Member ★ SPS Account Holder Resourceful Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) New Server Contributor [2012] (for helping Sorcerer's Place lease a new, more powerful server!) Torment: Tides of Numenera SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!) BoM XenForo Migration Contributor [2015] (for helping support the migration to new forum software!)

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    Yea, "cloud" is so trendy every crappy shared hosting provider overnight suddenly had "cloud" services available. It's anybody's guess how many "cloud" providers actually have the capacity to meet heavy resource usage of ALL their clients vs. those where you start hitting resource usage caps pretty fast. There are a few well-known legitimate names that you also mentioned but beyond that it's... heh, cloudy. :shake:

    I appreciate the idea though. Everything's on my list to check at this point, really.
     
    reepnorp likes this.
  18. joacqin

    joacqin Confused Jerk Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I do not seem to able to access SP from home anymore. My internet is fine, all other sites work but SP doesn't work at all. Has it been down during the mornings and evenings? I can use it from work, slowly but it loads.
     
  19. Barmy Army

    Barmy Army Simple mind, simple pleasures... Adored Veteran

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    That won't be SP. What browser are you using? Try clearing temporary internet files & cookies.
     
  20. joacqin

    joacqin Confused Jerk Adored Veteran Pillars of Eternity SP Immortalizer (for helping immortalize Sorcerer's Place in the game!)

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    I will, I use firefox at home and IE at work.
     
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