Come on, Own up...

[ramjet]

Alright, who broke the bloody forum yesterday? And most of today. 5pm in Oz and it's the first time I've been able to get on since last night. Sigh.

[Bibs]

Our hosts, who I'm about to call and swear at. A part of the cloud went down and the infected sites were moved to our section meaning that we effectively had 16 times more disk I/O traffic than usual which crashed the site. The add on which I've paid for (pro-active uptime monitoring) wasn't installed or was removed so the support team weren't automatically alerted and I was at Snetterton all day so wasn't in front of a PC to alert them. I'm going to shout at the host, demand some refunds and their first borns and move to another host, these ones are shit.

[ramjet]

Bibs,

I didn't mean to get you swarming on them like that. I just wondered and thought I'd have some fun with it. All of a sudden it was there and then it just wasn't.

[Bibs]

They were getting it anyway. I was dealing with it on the drive home from 9pm to close to midnight, then at 12.30 when it stumbled again and I was up this morning at 6am on the phone to them again. It's meant to be 100% reliable, it's 4 times the price of the old solution and now what I'm moving to is twice the price again but it has to be done, this is doing the site's reputation no favours.

[ramjet]

I sort of think that the site's rep is ok. Everyone knows that computers glitch. Well, except MACS of course. So if sometimes it goes toes up, I think everyone understands. We might be bummed out that we can't get on but ultimately it's not life threatening hey?

[Bibs]

Our server runs on Linux, the consistent problem we're having is Apache using too much memory and dumping processing including the auto-reboot which would solve it.

[ramjet]

That's what happens when people try to mix Charlie Brown and the Peanuts with indians. It is always going to end badly.

[Beady]

did you try switching it off then on again ?

[ramjet]

Someone broke it again!!!!!!

[Al]

Still looked real bad at 04:30. Lots of red writing over a generally blank screen is never a good sign! Mind you that might have been the bloodshot eyes. This morning the screen seems very bright........

[Bibs]

We're just about to move from Cloud hosting to a proper dedicated server, cost is

[Advantage]

[Bibs]

^ That inc £199 setup + VAT. If it breaks, I will resort to murder. We're having over 40,000 unique visitor sessions/month, the news front end of the site is almost as busy as the forums now. We're using up to 100gb of bandwidth and 40gb of space already! I'm calling up for more advertisers at the mo too, this is getting very pricey!

[Advantage]

Would it help if I had a look down the back of the sofa?

[Bibs]

We can afford it and with continued growth I think it's required. I'd rather the money went elsewhere to be honest, events and the like are very expensive to organise but I can't continue with the site as slow as it was before nor as unreliable as it is now.

[Kimbers]

This month i have 20p and a piece of used chewing gum left, you can have those. But seriously guys, if you want to help with the cost I recommend either becoming a full member or even buying stuff from the Forum online shop, which is great value for money!

[ifly]

Bib's I think everyone appreciates what you are doing and the uptime as far as I am concerned is excellent despite the odd glitch.

Have you looked at hosting offshore?

[Jonathan]

Same here - speed is fine, it's just the now and then when it just stops (database error).

I guess traffic is the killer.

How does the likes of SELOC etc achieve it ? (or not incase - I've not been there in YEARS !)

Edited February 17, 2010 by Jonathan

[Paul C]

Seloc's a very sad place at the moment, one of their universally agreed nice guys (Woody) died in his Lotus two weeks ago.

They are currently organising a cortege to Northampton Cathedral this saturday for his funeral.

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Lotus-drivers-in-parade-tribute.6075175.jp

[Jonathan]

That sucks, as I say I haven't been on since I had the Elise which was before the GT3, 5 years ago ! blimey time flies.

Sad to hear though.

[Bibs]

Seloc struggle, they often have 'slow down?' complaints and Lotus Central has fallen over and failed a few times recently. They have over 1,100 paid up members too however it's not a common theme that Lotus owners websites are all slow/have problems, it's the case that any website which has lots of traffic is hard to maintain.

In an ideal world we would have: web server, database server, backup server, mail server and so on, each task with it's own machine. Each of these at £265/month minimum each with our hosts, more likely much more expensive pieces of kit for a larger website. A site like Pistonheads will probably run off a farm of at least 20 load balanced distributed servers, but they are a huge company with lots of resources and staff getting paid large salaries to administer the technology and probably have over £100k of hardware just to run the forums.

We're doing the best we can with the resources we are able to utilise. It's not easy.

[Al]

I still think it is fantastic service and speed etc. is fine. Okay you have a glitch now and then but I doubt you will loose anybody during those short and very infrequent occurences. If you did they weren't worth having. As GKP said it is a lot of money for us saddos posting drivel no matter how funny and entertaining the drivel is.

Keep up the good work.

[rogerch]

Didn't we have a "Restoration" topic/thread, is it still here ? have I missed it? Can't seem to find it.

[ramjet]

I mean I started this topic but it was only in jest. No malice whatsoever meant and I'm sure none was taken. The glitches don't bother me either. Just stirring the pot is all and posting another topic that we can all drivel in hey? from me as well for the job done.

[Bibs]

Roger, try harder.

Michael, you're welcome to post up whatever you like, it's not taken badly or wrongly but this is a discussion forum so discussion of the forum is allowed mate