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Now With More Power!


Albert

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Greetings!


Earlier today I moved the database for AtariAge to a new server. This means the web server and database server are now on separate machines, and they communicate with a fast, private connection. The new database server has a ton of RAM and should be able to cache the entire forum database in memory. The database also resides on a fast SSD drive, versus a spinning rust hard drive, so that also helps. And the server is running a newer version of the database software that has improved threading support, which can take advantage of the server's 24 CPU cores.


The primary goal is to eliminate long pauses and timeouts when loading pages on the forums. I'd love to get some feedback from users about how responsive the forum is. And if you see anything that's not behaving as it should be, please let me know!


Another improvement is the elimination of downtime in the middle of the night (for those of us in North/South America), or at less opportune times for those overseas in Europe, Australia, and Asia. We will now be able to do hot backups of the databases, so daily downtime is now a thing of the past.


This change also paves the way for migration to a new version of the forum software this winter. The software is more resource intensive, so the new database server will help reduce any impact the hungrier forum software may have otherwise had on the site. I also plan to migrate the store to completely new software, and the new store is also more resource intensive in terms of database usage.


I still have some changes to complete later today that will further speed up the forum database, but I wanted to shake out any problems before I perform the next steps. This will result in brief periods of downtown, but not nearly as long as earlier today.


Many thanks to everyone who's purchased a forum subscription. These subscriptions help pay the server hosting fees, various software licenses (the forum alone is ~$300 a year), and other costs associated with running AtariAge. And these costs just went up significantly with the addition of a new server dedicated to keeping the site fast and responsive.


If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!


..Al

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Access seemed brutally slow sometimes, over the past month or so.

Today, at least, it is much faster.

Thanks for the report! Yeah, I was experiencing a fair bit of slowdown the past few weeks, it was definitely time to do something. Should get faster as well once I make some additional changes later tonight.

 

..Al

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Tons of ram...SSD...24(!) CPU cores...you can't let us geeks hang in the wind like that. We want some specs! 8)

 

All you need to know is that it lets me PM 5 MB nude photos of myself to random AtariAge members every 30 seconds (with the automated feature that is only available to subscribers) without putting a strain on the system.

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Speaking Of subscriptions, the link that describes the benefits of being a subscriber is broken or non-existent.

https://atariage.com/forums/page/subscriptions

 

I have tried it a couple times in the last couple months.

 

I would like to see the benefits, maybe it would push me over the edge into subscribing.icon_wink.gif

Edited by H454
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Things do seem to load faster to me now. This site never really crawled on me, but there was a noticeable slowdown in recent weeks. Sometimes the site is down for 20 minutes or so late at night (usually sometime between 3:00-4:00 a.m. EDT). If I do late-night browsing soon, I'll let you know if I experience the site being down or not.

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Speaking Of subscriptions, the link that describes the benefits of being a subscriber is broken or non-existent.

https://atariage.com/forums/page/subscriptions

 

I have tried it a couple times in the last couple months.

 

I would like to see the benefits, maybe it would push me over the edge into subscribing.icon_wink.gif

Interesting, that page loads fine unless you load it with https. Here's the page:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/page/subscriptions

 

The forum only uses SSL for the login pages, and the forum does not maintain encrypted pages while browsing. This is something that's better supported in the newer version of the forum software, but not the version we are running. How are you coming across this page?

 

..Al

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Things do seem to load faster to me now. This site never really crawled on me, but there was a noticeable slowdown in recent weeks. Sometimes the site is down for 20 minutes or so late at night (usually sometime between 3:00-4:00 a.m. EDT). If I do late-night browsing soon, I'll let you know if I experience the site being down or not.

The site won't be down in the middle of the night for ~20 minutes from here on out.

 

..Al

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Another improvement is the elimination of downtime in the middle of the night (for those of us in North/South America), or at less opportune times for those overseas in Europe, Australia, and Asia. We will now be able to do hot backups of the databases, so daily downtime is now a thing of the past.

Yay! :thumbsup:

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