78 replies to this topic

[Albert]

Over the weekend I pulled the trigger and ordered a new server for AtariAge.  Order in this case means I am leasing a dedicated server from a hosting company (of which there are quite a few!)  The current server is a bit long in the tooth, doesn't have a great amount of disk space, uses a six year old processor design, and only has 4GB of RAM.  The new server has considerably more disk space (and four drives, so I'll be running a RAID 10 setup, for speed and redundancy), much faster processors, and 24GB of RAM.  We'll also have more bandwidth capacity.  

The increased disk space and bandwidth will allow me to allow larger attachments, which are currently limited to 2MB in size.  I'll also be able to finally use the "Downloads" module I purchased a while back for the forum, without fear of running into a disk space wall.  The biggest improvement, though, is the amount of RAM.  This will allow the database and forum to use RAM to cache considerably more data than they can now.  The new server is also managed, which means I have to spend less time doing day-to-day tasks maintaining the server.

With any luck I'll have the new server online this week for testing, and can flip the switch and transfer the site over next week.

..Al

[Chuck D. Head]

Cool beans!! Sounds like a substantial upgrade, but I bet we can still manage to bog it down and overwhelm it with our sheer volume of nonsense before too long.

[Albert]

I'm not very good at being patient with these things!



..Al

[almightytodd]

This is great news.  This site already performs much better than Facebook on a variety of devices that I use; including Blackberry, Nook Color, and an old Pentium 4 machine with a quarter gig of RAM.

[Albert]

I now have control of the new server!  



Time to get to work!

..Al

[carmel_andrews]

Does it go at the speed of light?....Or warp factor 10 to using star trek logic

[Random Terrain]

It's been almost 24 hours. Are you done yet?

[Albert]

Random Terrain, on Tue Feb 5, 2013 6:39 AM, said:

It's been almost 24 hours. Are you done yet?

LOL, I wish it was that easy!

..Al

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Will the regular 11am (my timezone) ~10 minutes downtime be gone then too?

[Albert]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Tue Feb 5, 2013 9:16 AM, said:

Will the regular 11am (my timezone) ~10 minutes downtime be gone then too?

My plan is to come up with some other backup mechanism that doesn't cause the server to grind to a halt.

..Al

[Albert]

I just received this image from the General Manager at the hosting company I leased the new server from.  Totally unexpected, and made me laugh out loud!



I think I'm going to like this company.  

..Al

[Trinity]

Wow! All of Atari Age in that little box!

[Albert]

Trinity, on Tue Feb 5, 2013 8:00 PM, said:

Wow! All of Atari Age in that little box!

That's an amusing way of thinking about it.  Yeah, those 1U servers are pretty thin!  And that sucker has four hard drives in it.

..Al

[Random Terrain]

Trinity, on Tue Feb 5, 2013 8:00 PM, said:

Wow! All of AtariAge in that little box!

That's what she said.

[Trinity]

Random Terrain, on Wed Feb 6, 2013 5:00 AM, said:

That's what she said.

[Jaymiester]

I know this thread is about the server upgrade and your busy with that, but are there any plans for an Atari Age app for Android / Apple in the near future?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Jaymiester, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 2:49 PM, said:

...are there any plans for an Atari Age app for Android / Apple in the near future?

What would be the advantage?

[Mr SQL]

Thomas Jentzsch, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 2:52 PM, said:

What would be the advantage?

Good point Tom; I think the majority of apps in the app stores could have been done in the browser though so why not put web pages in there too?

[Mr SQL]

Hey Al what database are you using? Just curious, feels like you are running MySQL if I had to guess

[Albert]

Mr SQL, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 3:13 PM, said:

Hey Al what database are you using? Just curious, feels like you are running MySQL if I had to guess

Probably 99% of the forums out there are using MySQL, including AtariAge.  You really shouldn't be able to discern that, though, when things are running smoothly.  Ideally I'd have the database server running separately from the web server, but that's a somewhat expensive proposition.  I am going to setup replication to another server, though, and then do daily backups from the slave instead of the master, which will fix the site going offline at 4am every night.

..Al

[theloon]

I've been getting up at odd hours to program my MMSBC 2 Atari 2600 game.  Towards 3am to 5am AtariAge goes a little wonky and unresponsive.  Hopefully bigger iron will help with that.

[Mr SQL]

Albert, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 3:16 PM, said:

Probably 99% of the forums out there are using MySQL, including AtariAge.  You really shouldn't be able to discern that, though, when things are running smoothly.  Ideally I'd have the database server running separately from the web server, but that's a somewhat expensive proposition.  I am going to setup replication to another server, though, and then do daily backups from the slave instead of the master, which will fix the site going offline at 4am every night.

..Al

Al,
the backup window gave it away but I think MySQL is OK - you were getting pretty good performance from the database side before the AJAX upgrade to the software; that upgrade was pretty buggy at first, the AJAX created client side bubbles that could crash a workstation if the page was left up over night and probably bogged the server with too many unnecessary database hits.

I would think AtariAge is awesome even if you ran it on an 80's BBS ... wait a minute, what am I saying? I think AtariAge would be even more awesome if you ran it on an 80's BBS

[Albert]

First shot of AtariAge running on the new server:



Now to get the forums running!

..Al

[Albert]

Mr SQL, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 3:53 PM, said:

the backup window gave it away but I think MySQL is OK - you were getting pretty good performance from the database side before the AJAX upgrade to the software; that upgrade was pretty buggy at first, the AJAX created client side bubbles that could crash a workstation if the page was left up over night and probably bogged the server with too many unnecessary database hits.

The backups have gotten progressively worse over time.  The database is nearly 6GB in size at the moment.  And you can't really backup a database full of (mostly) MyISAM tables without locking them.  Needless to say, this is a good opportunity to change the way database backups are done!

As for the AJAX, I don't think it's too bad--certainly some of the AJAX calls are balanced out by not having to do full page reloads.  For instance, Quick Replies that add your post to the page without reloading.  Which is a pretty common task.  And pretty much all AJAX calls require some interaction from the user.  Even the "Spy" page has a limited window where it will run before it stops updating the page.

Quote

I would think AtariAge is awesome even if you ran it on an 80's BBS ... wait a minute, what am I saying? I think AtariAge would be even more awesome if you ran it on an 80's BBS

That would make a great April Fool's joke.

..Al

[Gregory DG]

Albert, on Thu Feb 7, 2013 4:53 PM, said:

And you can't really backup a database full of (mostly) MyISAM tables without locking them.

Are you going to convert them to InnoDB ? I've been using it instead of MyISAM for awhile now...