Rick,
I have noticed the Catamaran Sailor Site has started to go real slow again. Are the bad boys doing it to us again?

4/20/06 7am
Generated in 22.996 seconds in which 21.376 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

vs. Generated in 0.401 seconds in which 0.017 seconds were spent on a total of 6 queries. Zlib compression disabled.
During post.

It is going very slow for me, too. I have contacted our server guru, Chad Clarke, to check on it.

Hmmm, now it's working really fast again.

Chad Clarke just sent this message:
There was a process that was hung up and taking up system resources. I killed the process and things seem to be back to normal again. I will be working on migrating your site to the new server this week. After this is complete, things should really pick up in speed.

Chad Clarke

Mary,

I hate to pry or lead-on, but are there any plans in the works to update the forum software so we don't get these spam robots anymore?

Thanks!

Must still be working on it? Good luck. Hope Bill didn't do it to you like he did with all the auto updates for the Hewlett users.

Today:
Generated in 89.291 seconds in which 88.895 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

The only SPAM we had was on the sites that Anon posters were allowed to use. We had it that way to make it easier for folks to post in those forums.
The Forums were Results, NORs, Find a Crew and Meet Someone.
For a long time there was no abuse, but sure enough it got pretty bad.
So, I deleted all data and started those Forums over fresh and now you have to register to use them.

Other spammers that have registered have all posts by them deleted in batch, and then are banned from posting.
Rick

Rick,

You should review the user list too. There's a lot of names that appear to be set up for spam generation.

I have noticed a marked decline in speed as well. The other thing that seems apparent is that there are less posts on the forums as well. Maybe many people can not spend much physical time on the forums. If that is true then they need the speed to be able to surf, reply and leave.

Later,
Dan

Our web site tech person, Chad Clarke, sent me the following e-mail on April 26 in response to questions I asked. We have been really busy this week with the seminar, so I didn't get around to posting it. Some of you might find it interesting. I don't understand any of it myself.
* * * * *
(Following from Chad on 4-26-06)
Yesterday, I killed a few processes to fix the problem. The cause was that the backup scripts didn't complete in time and caused things to hang up. I am not sure why it happened again, but I rebooted the machine today. If this happens again, I will look into this further.

As for setting you guys up on a Virtual Machine, you should only see an improvement on your site and store. What the people don't know is that catsailor is still getting a dedicated server. However, it will be running 2 virtual machines on it. One will be linux and hosting your site, while the other will be windows and hosting your store.

The new dedicated machine is a dual xeon 2.8G, 4G Ram, 2-160G SATA-300 drives running at RAID-1. This is a pretty hefty machine to run only 2 virtual machines on. Each Virtual machine will have more horse power than their current servers. The catsailor.com site is currently on a dual P-II machine with 1G of RAM and a 20G IDE HD. The current store is currently on a shared hosting machine.

Tests have shown that drive performance is about 12x better on the new system than the old system. CPU performance is better as well.

As for the Virutal Server environment, we did lots of research. Based on price/performance, the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 came out ahead. We did look at xen, Virtuozzo, and VMware.

Another main reason for setting you guys up on a virtual server is for disaster recovery purposes. We still run our servers out of a New Orleans Data Center. We came close to some problems during Katrina last year, but the facility remained up and operational through the entire ordeal. The
owners of the Data Center have taken measures such as adding a 4th DS3 from a completely different network to allow for more redundancy. They haved also purchased a fuel truck and are stockpiling fuel to run their generators if needed. Anyway, with the Virtual Server environment that you will be running in, we will be able to move your Virtual Machine with relative ease to anther datacenter if needed.

The users who may have questioned the use of MS Virtual Server, may be the type of person who is anti MicroSoft. I am not sure, but I have looked at both linux and MicroSoft solutions and as I said above, at this point, MS Virtual Server R2 is the best in regards to price/performance to meet your needs.

Chad Clarke
* * * * *
P.S. from Mary:
All this should be happening, first for the store, and then for the forums within the next week or two, and then everything should be lightning fast.

Danger Will Robinson, danger, danger!!

haha

I love it when people think windows can't be a viable server option.

news to *nix lovers out there, it ain't your ball of wax alone anymore.

(I say this as a former *nix fan)

I believe it's just the opposite. During a visit to Microsoft's campus a few years ago I, representing my company, was accused of using LINUX. Our systems are based on a reduced command set of Berkely UNIX. The senior MS manager refused to believe me.

Turns out MS' two major revenue sources oer Office and the OS'. They don't really care about UNIX and Mac OS because they cost money. LINUX scares them to death because, basically, it's free.

Come to the light Maugan, come to the light.

I don't see how anyone could be anti-MicroSquish... they're such an ethically-run pro-consumer monopoly, err, company, and they produce only the highest-quality, crash-proof, virus/trojan-resistant, IETF/Open Standards compliant, secure OS platforms available... NOT!

RESIST the darkness... come towards the LIGHT...

5/03/06 1 regestered 3 not.
Generated in 45.407 seconds in which 44.625 seconds were spent on a total of 14 queries. Zlib compression disabled. or Generated in 65.688 seconds in which 65.132 seconds were spent on a total of 8 queries. Zlib compression disabled.

Why slow? Was faster during the hurricane.

We are trying to get the upgrade of the Forum and also switch to the new box this week.
Rick

New forum/server has been responsive so far, but in the last few weeks it feels slower again in periods? Might be just me, but..

Here is how long it took to load the frontpage to the forums today:
Generated in 24.409 seconds in which 24.374 seconds were spent on a total of 26 queries

Generated in 0.107 seconds in which 0.062 seconds were spent on a total of 12 queries.

Yes, now I also have good response times:

Generated in 2.61 seconds in which 2.572 seconds were spent on a total of 27 queries.