Main Site - Please let me know if there are issues

[Patrick]

Just did a MAJOR cutover.

1. Moved from a 32-bit to 64-bit AWS instance so I can scale the thing easily.
2. Went from WP Super Cache to W3 Total Cache (I think there are some fans on these forums)
3. Moved to PHP 5.4
4. Database optimize
5. Cache optimize
6. Stability tuning

Hopefully that will speed things up a bit, and keep them fast!

Would appreciate if anyone sees bugs, giving us a heads-up.

 

[sboesch]

The navigation menu on the front page does not seem to be working in Chrome

 

[sboesch]

Just checked IE and Firefox, now working in either one of those as well.

 

[Patrick]

Looks like even with the new changes, the site was very unhappy.

Just reverted to the old instance and looks like I will be building a server this weekend and colo next week.

 

[Patrick]

Ok - 2x the CPU and 2.2x the memory. Let's see if it can make it through the weekend which is the slow point.

If anyone is bored this weekend, hitting pages that may not be cached would be greatly appreciated. If this doesn't make it through the weekend, the dedicated box will be built by then.

 

[sboesch]

What are the current server specs? I am not familiar with AWS offerings.

 

[Patrick]

Below are the specs. Just watching top... looks like the site was using 1.7GB +/- 100MB. I think what was happening was that a thread would try writing a cached page to disk, but between the swap file and the slow EC2 I/O (unless you pay a ton on the larger instances), it would basically hold that Apache thread while others were spun up. Swap got filled, and CPU got maxed out. 1 hour into it and it looks OK.

If anyone can just browse a few pages and see if it feels faster, it would be much appreciated. I have asked a few folks to and it seems like the site is moving a bit more rapidly at this point.

Amazon EC2 small vs. medium specs:

Small Instance – default++
1.7 GB memory
1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit)
160 GB instance storage
32-bit or 64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Moderate
EBS-Optimized Available: No
API name: m1.small
Medium Instance
3.75 GB memory
2 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 2 EC2 Compute Unit)
410 GB instance storage
32-bit or 64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Moderate
EBS-Optimized Available: No
API name: m1.medium

 

[sboesch]

I will hit the older pages and see how it goes for me.

 

[cactus]

Patrick, I know you are trying to get page load times down and it is working, but you might have gone overboard....

 

[sboesch]

It's broke n for me as well.

 

[Patrick]

Ha! Yea... just started happening at the 2hr mark. Thinking it is a W3 Total Cache issue. Working on it.

 

[Patrick]

OK back to WP Super Cache...

 

[mobilenvidia]

Patrick offer still stands If you would like to be on a dedicated server (with us)

E3-1230
8GB RAM
CentOS 6.3
2x1TB HDD's
1Gbps dedicated port
Dedicated IP
Cpanel
Based in Salt Lake City, nice trip in Route 50 to go and see it
More bandwidth than you can throw a stick at

Let me know,

 

[Patrick]

Thanks mobilenvidia! Looks like everything is working now. W3TC experiment is done.

Big thing that I need to get used to is that the site is not so small. I sometimes still think it is the same site getting 50 people a day a few years ago

Keep letting me know if there are issues, but should all be fixed and faster.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Briefly got the same above (no content) then nothing site won't load

Forums very slow too.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Back to normal now

 

[Patrick]

Forums are on a different server/ network (in the event one goes down.)

Currently trying ngnix on a 64-bit medium instance.

I was on the site yesterday when it died. Memory was fine but Apache decided to implode 26 hours into being the live site with spawned processes all taking 100% CPU. Also looks like the MySQL back end had some issues. Not good. It was the same setup as we were using for the 32-bit instance. Luckily, with AWS it takes all of 20 seconds to re-assign the IP to the old 32-bit instance, but it does look like I lost tomorrow's post and two comments. :-/

For those wondering, all three instances are up right now but traffic is on the 64-bit ngnix one as I am typing this.

 

[Patrick]

OK nginx is working. W3TC is working. CDN is up.

If you see missing images please let me now.

 

[PigLover]

The navigation bar at the top is still missing.

 

[Patrick]

What browser are you using? Happen to have a screenshot?