The Sign of a Robust AV Website

birdonthebeach

birdonthebeach

Full Audioholic
I'm reminded of an old Far Side comic. A lady is talking to her dog in great detail, as if he understands every word. A bubble over the dog's head shows what he is hearing: "blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah...."
 
majorloser

majorloser

Moderator
I See Your Lips Moving, But...............

"Do you speaka any English? DO-YOU-UNDERSTAND-THE-WORDS-THAT-ARE-COMING-OUT-OF-MY-MOUTH?" - (Chris Tucker from "Rush Hour")

:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
A

admin

Audioholics Robot
Staff member
So I log on to post some more articles at Audioholics.com only to be presented with a rather slow website. What's up? Looking into the issue I find out that our article on 1080p and the Acuity of Human Vision has been Slashdotted. So what's any adept site owner to do when presented with a nice /.-ing? Max out the site! Try to publish more articles! See how far you can take it!


Discuss "The Sign of a Robust AV Website" here. Read the article.
 
Warpdrv

Warpdrv

Audioholic Ninja
I noticed that the site was extremely slow this mourning for me, now i know why...

You think slashdot is something, hows about I give you a real treat, by posting this at Digg.com and see what happens....

That is a site that if the article is something substantial, it will bury your site in no time at all... Its hard to maintain a crippling blow that will be dealt to you from many of these info sites....
 
M

MDS

Audioholic Spartan
I'm reminded of an old Far Side comic. A lady is talking to her dog in great detail, as if he understands every word. A bubble over the dog's head shows what he is hearing: "blah blah, blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah...."
I think it was 'blah, blah, blah, Fluffy, blah, blah, blah, Fluffy' (the only word the dog understands is his name). Man I miss the Far Side.
 
birdonthebeach

birdonthebeach

Full Audioholic
I think it was 'blah, blah, blah, Fluffy, blah, blah, blah, Fluffy' (the only word the dog understands is his name). Man I miss the Far Side.
AH! Yes - that is right!!!! So it would be "blah, blah, blah, Audioholics site, blah blah"

:D
 
avaserfi

avaserfi

Audioholic Ninja
That slow down was driving me nuts this morning. I was trying to get my "fix" before class and couldnt get the forums or the homepage to load, I needed a break before my test!
 
K

kleinwl

Audioholic
Yes... the site is really slow.

On the other hand, think about all the new people exposed to Audioholics!

<Cheer>

Anyway,

The real question is: What maxed out? Was it your broadband connection, your Raid drives (SAS, NAS, SATA)? or simply your Cpu time.

What kind of server are you running? Are you going to upgrade because of this?

Please share all the gory details!!!
 
Yeah, we're going to upgrade. Currently the forums and ads are sitting on the same dedicated server. We're splitting them up as soon as I can nail down some time. What happened was the ad server was simply running out of the ability to "serve" ads - apache can only do so much without what's known as a caching server/system, and that server doesn't have one... If we split it up (forums and ads) and add a caching system on the front end we will likely be able to withstand a Digg and /. blast simultaneously.

For the rest of you that was:

Yeah, blah blah upgrade. blah blah forums blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah server. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah nail down blah blah time. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah running blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah server doesn't have one... If we blah blah (forums blah blah) and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Digg and /. blah blah.
 
K

kleinwl

Audioholic
Yeah, blah blah upgrade. blah blah forums blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah server. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah nail down blah blah time. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah running blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah server doesn't have one... If we blah blah (forums blah blah) and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Digg and /. blah blah.
So are you intending to use web or proxy caching? Or a gateway cache? If you decide to use a gateway cache... what is the best method to hold the frequently access pages? Do you crush as much ram as possible into a server and hold the pages in that, run some "flash" drives, or a 15K RPM SAS RAID?

I congraduate you on becoming bottlenecked. It's always better to know that you are using the hardware than it's going to waste.

BTW: Thanks for sharing! I know this is not an IT hardware site... but it is interesting to hear what it take to serve a site like Audioholics... rather than just some PIII running Microsoft Server 2003 SBE.
 
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gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
BTW: Thanks for sharing! I know this is not an IT hardware site... but it is interesting to hear what it take to serve a site like Audioholics... rather than just some PIII running Microsoft Server 2003 SBE.
You have no idea. Clint is only referring to the forums and ad system. We have 3 dedicated servers with dual processors and 2Gig RAM/each running the actual site. :eek:

The monthly expenses keep piling on my credit card :( so please send in your donations today. LOL :)
 
K

kleinwl

Audioholic
I can understand.

So who is your "go to" IT guy then? Clint? I would understand if handling the website / upgrades / etc. was a full time job and a half.

Still it's is amazing how something that would require an entire data center to run can now be fitted in a single computer (of course a fairly powerful dual cpu / quad cores server) with a "few" TB hard-drives.
[plus, of course all the "peripherials" which is where it really gets expensive]

I know... I'm probably the only one here that cares... but I would love to know what you are actually running. I've rolled a few servers... but the've only be the formentioned Small Business units... hardly anything like audioholics.
 
gene

gene

Audioholics Master Chief
Administrator
So who is your "go to" IT guy then? Clint? I would understand if handling the website / upgrades / etc. was a full time job and a half.
No I am trying to move Clint away from that role so he can focus more on content and further developing more services for Audioholics. We have the Plone developer and a Nasa consultant (no joke) managing the site for us now in addition to having all of our servers hosted on dedicated managed servers located offsite.
 
We could tell you but then we'd have to.... well, you know.

5 servers, across two datacenters. Varnish, pound, zope-dbs on 3 servers (with apache handling redirects among other things)

phpAdsNew on 1 server, vBulletin on another (currently both apps are on a single server but that is changing this weekend).

Right now I sound smarter than I am... but only to those who don't know better.
 
W

westcott

Audioholic General
Congratulations!!1

It is a problem many websites wish they had.

I am confident that your growth will only be exponential from here. I, and I am sure others, are always referring to your website as a source for quality reviews and accurate information for calibration and setup.

Keep up the good work and prepare for the onslaught.
 
K

kleinwl

Audioholic
Very cool guys. Sorry it took so long to respond... but I had to find out about all those programs....

So the fact that you are using two datacenters implies to me that you are "renting" time on hardware from someone rather than doing it yourself. I understand... that even makes alot of sense. You don't want to be overloaded when a server goes down and your busy swapping out motherboards.
 
It's an issue of throughput. You want your server right on a backbone with network redundancy and power backup, not in a garage with a T-1 line.

They also "manage" the system by keeping the OS updated/patched for security and provide 24/7 access for support, rebooting, etc if we need it.
 
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