Comments on: I need a break

By: Oliver

Oliver — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 08:58:25 +0000

Design wise if you get stuck with anything and need some help give me a shout, I’ve followed you for a while now and you seem like a really nice guy

By: Max

Max — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:34:44 +0000

I hire a company similar to TouchSupport to manage my server, but to be honest, I wouldn’t trust them with such a *mission-critical* job. I’m with PlatinumServerManagement.com.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:05:47 +0000

Thanks for the recommendations, I will start looking around soon. Yesterday things got kinda messed up… the server got in a ‘bad place’ where there were too many disk-bound activities going on and it wasn’t possible to read/write fast enough to catch up. I eventually smoothed it out and it’s back in its normal groove today… hopefully for another 6 months!

I need to figure out a way to generate the “global stats” report without killing the disk. Even if I write into a memory table, that report involves querying the entirety of every single site’s logged data, which means reading ~25GB off the disk on top of normal load.

I wonder what it’d cost to have a second physical disk put in the box…hmm:)

By: ses5909

ses5909 — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 08:08:13 +0000

I’ve noticed it on w3counter. I have a server management company that I would highly recommend: http://www.touchsupport.com.

I started using them over a year ago and haven’t looked back. For what I need I pay $50/month and it’s well worth it.

I used to try and manage my server myself but I hated it and it’s not something I have any interest in learning how to do, much less do well.

By: Roger Stringer

Roger Stringer — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:08:32 +0000

Making to decision to outsource your work is never a fun choice, but it ends up being a decision that can work well.

Just remember to make sure that whoever you do get, knows what they’re doing.

By: Dan Grossman

Dan Grossman — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:20:00 +0000

I’m using all the RAM on the box… there’s one last thing I can do to reduce query load when I have time to write and test it, then I do need to simply partition the database across a second server. Not that hard, just costly and needs a bit of code to direct requests to the appropriate database. I’ll get around to it all eventually… December I have to focus on maximizing sales at the advertising sites. It’s the busiest month.

By: Ryan Williams

Ryan Williams — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 12:39:54 +0000

Maybe it’d be worth considering using one of the various server management companies to look into the underlying server issues and make sure it’s running as best as it possibly can.

It’s relatively inexpensive, and it sounds like you need some kind of quick fix for the server that you can’t really do yourself at the moment. If it was running fine before it must be a configuration problem.

Servers can be great to learn and play with when things go right, but if things go bad and you don’t have an intimate understanding of them grounded in personal experience it’s very easy to get in over your head.

Short of throwing more hardware at it I can’t see what more you can do. By the sounds of it you have a very optimised application!

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:46:16 +0000

Only the freshman year. The next 3 years are 6 months class, 6 months coop. No break, straight into the 9 month senior year of class.

By: Max

Max — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 04:08:37 +0000

Wait, what? Drexel doesn’t have a summer break?

By: Kevin Muldoon

Kevin Muldoon — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:12:44 +0000

I would definately encourage you to oursource some of your work if your getting swamped. If you let things get on top of you then you may find all of your websites will suffer in one way or another.