Upcoming server move for the ATX Community

[Eric]

Hello all,

We've had some (very few, but more than zero) issues where database tables have crashed during times of heavy load on the server.  These load spikes are usually related to other sites that I'm responsible for that happen to share resources with the ATX Community.

These haven't been significant issues, and in fact have been very easy to resolve when they arise, but it does cause brief downtime on the Forum.

So, in the interest of constant improvement, I would like to move the ATX Community to its own server (VPS) with its own dedicated resources.  There are other server configuration changes/challenges that I'll tackle at the same time.  Because this is the only forum I maintain, I am less experienced with performance tuning for this software than, say, more standard website content management systems.

All that to say, I am expecting it to be a slightly bumpy transition but with improved speed and stability in the long term.  There might be as much as one or two days of downtime followed by intermittent hiccups until everything is smoothed out.  I'm aiming for mid-May to get this work done, but there is no hurry on my end.  If there are business reasons to put it off longer, please speak up!

Thanks!

[Abby Normal]

Thank you and good luck with the move!

[jklcpa]

Any time is ok with me for the conversion business-wise, but I may have withdrawal during the downtime.

As always, thank you for taking care of us so well, Eric. 

[mcb39]

I am having withdrawal ever since the 15th.  I would like to see these extensions disappear.  I am so totally disappointed in the IRS for various reasons; many  of you can relate.  I am disappointed in ATX for pouncing on us before tax season was even (over?).  I have since been bombarded with emails and calls and snail mail from them.  They choose to attack when our resistance is at its lowest.  I only want to sleep.  

I am fine with whatever Eric does for us.  It can surely only make our lives better and easier.  Thanks again to Eric and all of you for what you do for me.

[Catherine]

Thank you, @Eric, for everything you do for us.

Do you need any donations at this time to fund the new server? If so, please let us know!

[Eric]

On 4/23/2024 at 8:53 PM, Catherine said:

Thank you, @Eric, for everything you do for us.

Do you need any donations at this time to fund the new server? If so, please let us know!

You're very welcome.  I feel like people should be donating to Judy instead, as she's got more to do with keeping this place running smoothly than I do. 

I doubt there will be any significant change in cost--instead of one powerful/expensive server, I'll have all my sites broken up into multiple smaller, less expensive virtual machines.  We'll see how the first few days go.  Because the whole site is dynamic, I can't get away with leaning on caching as much as I do with your average static website.  E-Commerce sites are similar in that way.  

It'll be interesting to see the CPU/RAM required to run the site when it has its own dedicated resources to work with.  If resource use seems excessive even after tuning, I may entertain caching the site for guests (those who aren't logged in) so that content might be outdated by an hour or two unless you log in.

[Lee B]

4 minutes ago, Eric said:

.  If resource use seems excessive even after tuning, I may entertain caching the site for guests (those who aren't logged in) so that content might be outdated by an hour or two unless you log in.

That might make sense, except that some regular users probably check the site without logging in just to see if there is anything new that might be interesting.

[jklcpa]

3 minutes ago, Lee B said:

That might make sense, except that some regular users probably check the site without logging in just to see if there is anything new that might be interesting.

The site does have the option to stay logged in, and stays that way until the user clears browsing history unless leaving cookies intact.  I'm logged in almost all the time.

The site also has the ability for a user to log in anonymously too and stay that way.

 

[Eric]

12 minutes ago, jklcpa said:

The site does have the option to stay logged in, and stays that way until the user clears browsing history unless leaving cookies intact.  I'm logged in almost all the time.

The site also has the ability for a user to log in anonymously too and stay that way.

 

Both good points.  Even in a situation where the site is cached for logged out users, the TTL would be set to a low value, likely to an hour or less, so they would still see almost all of the most recent content.  Then, after that period of time, the cache expires and the next hit generates a fresh copy.

It would go a long way to dealing with all of the bot activity that the site sees.  Every hit from one of those bots is processed like any other, which generates multiple database queries.  Serving them a static file would be tremendously more efficient.

In any case, I'll know more once the move is complete, and I've had time to work on the server/software configuration for a little while.  There's a reasonable chance we'll be able to get away without the caching layer at all.

[Lee B]

Good point about the bot activity. In which case, caching the site makes a lot of sense.