16 replies to this topic

[TriRan]

i need a little assistance

i'm currently configuring a webserver to host a couple websites my issue is i don't have enough available memory to be running apache, so i'm forced to use lighthttpd which i don't really know very well


my issue with lighthttpd is when i get around 10-20 users on the sites browsing around it starts to slow down and i mean 3-5 seconds per page load even Word press with caching enabled is having issues i've been poking around the configuration

from what i've gathered lighthttpd is a single daemon server but i've read where people use it to handle massive load upwards of 500 users with no issues i've tried configurations similar to theirs and it's just not satisfying me


these are the only settings in light http that really deal with the server performance and this is what i've got them at


#server.max-worker = 50
server.max-fds = 4048
server.max-connections = 2048
server.max-keep-alive-requests = 128
server.max-keep-alive-idle = 30
#server.max-read-idle = 60
#server.max-write-idle = 360

i've commented some out currently because when i tried them no matter what i set them to it made the performance even worse i've tinkered and tinkered and just can't get this to work right

anyone know how to setup apache to run on about 256MB max? and handle a light load of say 50 users?

[EBrown]

What OS are you using?

Thanks,
EBrown

[TriRan]

CentOS and i think i may just have to find another host... there may just flat not be enough ram

Edited by TriRan, 15 August 2011 - 02:31 AM.

[dlewis23]

TriRan, on 15 August 2011 - 02:30 AM, said:

CentOS and i think i may just have to find another host... there may just flat not be enough ram

How much ram do you have?

No matter how much get rid of lighttpd don't waste your time.

Install either the free version of litespeed or install apache + nginx

Both are vastly superior to lighttpd and use much less ram. Litespeed is my personal favorite because of the GUI that makes configuring and management real easy and quick.

[TriRan]

the server itself has 512mb with 0 swap or burstable i'm seriously considering switching hosts due to that because under the load of say 50-100 users i'll probably need more

i've also considered getting a seperate server for services like mysql and mail server etc but i don't know if i want that kind of cost for such small projects

[TriRan]

so i think i figured out the issue

i'm 99% sure the machine my vps is on is overloaded i talked with another company and they set me up a vps to try today for free and it's handling 50 users and not even breaking a sweat they will also be giving me more memory then i had before

~ triran

[EBrown]

TriRan, on 15 August 2011 - 06:33 PM, said:

so i think i figured out the issue

i'm 99% sure the machine my vps is on is overloaded i talked with another company and they set me up a vps to try today for free and it's handling 50 users and not even breaking a sweat they will also be giving me more memory then i had before

~ triran

Good good. Who were you using before? (Out of curiosity)

Thanks,
EBrown

[TriRan]

I was using fusevps. They are nice guys they gave me a lot of free upgrades but after experiencing this new host I can tell they were def overselling their vps I'm probably going to be switching to directspace.net

Edited by TriRan, 15 August 2011 - 08:29 PM.

[TriRan]

okay i've started migrating some of the data over you can see a pretty big difference in page load times

this was my original server

http://74.86.168.194

this is my new one

http://pmcgaming.com

[TriRan]

sorry changed some stuff and the first link went dead and i can't edit my post after so long try http://server1.pmcgaming.com < old and http://server2.pmcgaming.com

[xs1]

lol both load pretty seamlessly for me

[TriRan]

yeah but if you check the forums the page is generated a lot faster

with the switch i get more cpu power more ram more HD space and more bandwidth for about the same price plus the IO on the server is much higher

[TriRan]

okay i've finally got everything tuned fairly decent i've got it set up to handle about 600 requests a min fairly efficiently that should be way more then the server will ever need to serve the big killer it seems is MYSQL the process by itself is burning through about 145MB idling lol

under load it spikes to around 170MB-200MB the apache processes are using about 32MB each x 10 workers = 320MB under load so all in all around 512-600MB under load out of my 1GB pool i have some room for growth now it seems

i just thought i'd follow up here with how everything turned out and what my issues were

~ TriRan

[EBrown]

TriRan, on 19 August 2011 - 01:52 AM, said:

okay i've finally got everything tuned fairly decent i've got it set up to handle about 600 requests a min fairly efficiently that should be way more then the server will ever need to serve the big killer it seems is MYSQL the process by itself is burning through about 145MB idling lol

under load it spikes to around 170MB-200MB the apache processes are using about 32MB each x 10 workers = 320MB under load so all in all around 512-600MB under load out of my 1GB pool i have some room for growth now it seems

i just thought i'd follow up here with how everything turned out and what my issues were

~ TriRan

A guy I know wrote a C API that used MySQL and that is the big killer. He rewrote it using binary files and it was 10x faster. To the point where he had to measure load time in Nano-Seconds. (And it was on a PII machine.)

Thanks,
EBrown

[dlewis23]

TriRan, on 19 August 2011 - 01:52 AM, said:

okay i've finally got everything tuned fairly decent i've got it set up to handle about 600 requests a min fairly efficiently that should be way more then the server will ever need to serve the big killer it seems is MYSQL the process by itself is burning through about 145MB idling lol

The remedy for that is to not run MySQL on the same VPS. Get a hosted MySQL service if it ever becomes a problem.

[TriRan]

yeah they are small sites though and the server has a decent amount of RAM now so its not an issue even if it ever experiences the kind of load i put it through for testing it should be fine

its not a good idea to host everything on the same machine this i know i just don't have the need for multiple VPS's yet

[EBrown]

TriRan, on 19 August 2011 - 10:39 PM, said:

yeah they are small sites though and the server has a decent amount of RAM now so its not an issue even if it ever experiences the kind of load i put it through for testing it should be fine

its not a good idea to host everything on the same machine this i know i just don't have the need for multiple VPS's yet

Just a thought as I looked back on this, DLewis had a good idea. You could get a cheap GoDaddy Shared plan and put your MySQL databases on it. (They will handle them extremely quickly) They do external-database access.

Thanks,
EBrown