Forum Hardware Improvements

[ubuntu-geek]

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to take a quick minute or so and let the community know some changes we made to the forums hardware these past couple of days. I am sure you have been noticing over the past couple of months the forums were slow or even down for extended periods of time. Our hardware was simply overloaded with the huge growth the forums have received these past couple of years.

During the past couple of week's we've been working hard with Canonical to get more hardware to help reduce the strain our servers have been experiencing. I am sure you have noticed the forums being down this week for extended periods of time while we've made configuration changes to facilitate the new hardware that was put in place today at 12:00UTC.

So far we've been running with the new web server configuration for about 3 hours and the forums are snappy and very responsive. However, we will continue to monitor in case any issues arise.

I would like to thank everyone who was involved in making this upgrade happen and for the forum community for hanging in there while we made these changes.

We appreciate the community here and we hope everyone will have a better experience when using the forums.

[kostkon]

Good news, good news...! :)

But the forums are still a little laggy for me. I am pretty sure this is temporary.

And, finally, a thanks from me to the mods (and Canonical) for this upgrade.

[LaRoza]

The sqeaky wheel gets the grease it seems :-)

I am sure the FC is very happy to finally have new hardware. Have fun with it :-)

[bapoumba]

Thanks to you for all your hard work, u-g :KS

[Rocket2DMn]

A big shout out to the people at Canonical for hearing and supporting us. Thank you all, the community really appreciates it.

[hessiess]

Forum seems the same to me:)

[rudihawk]

Well down here in South Africa is seems light years faster! Thanks! :)

[Elfy]

Thanks for that - seems to be a huge improvement here :)

[y@w]

Much better. Thanks!

So, just out of curiousity and since this is the Community Cafe.. What kind of machines are powering this bad boy? I know I'm curious and I'm sure there's plenty of other Linux geeks here too that would like to read about it.

[jpeddicord]

\o/

[notwen]

Thumbs up on my end. Danke. =]

[mips]

What exactly was changed hardware wise?

[aaaantoine]

Hmm, now that you mention it, this site was pretty slow, wasn't it?

[LaRoza]

What exactly was changed hardware wise?

They added another 64 k of RAM and doubled it.

[ubuntu-geek]

What exactly was changed hardware wise?
We added another web server so the load is now balanced between to web servers.

[Rocket2DMn]

They added another 64 k of RAM and doubled it.

Nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM.

[handy]

The forum is zipping along down here in Oz too.

Thanks to all concerned, great job.

[ubuntu-geek]

I'm glad everyone has noticed an improvement! Thanks for the feedback.

[Elfy]

No, thank you :D

I've had this issue a couple of times today - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=974928

But personally I'd rather that than no new server :)

[jdrodrig]

We added another web server so the load is now balanced between to web servers.

Those servers run Windows Server 2008, right? :D

[ubuntu-geek]

Those servers run Windows Server 2008, right? :D
sshh don't tell everyone..

[Joeb454]

Actually, one is Windows Server 2008, and the new one is a Mac OS X (Leopard) Server ;)

[Frak]

Pics or it didn't happen :)

[Thirtysixway]

How many servers power the forums? With thousands of users you have to have more than 2 servers...

[jpeddicord]

How many servers power the forums? With thousands of users you have to have more than 2 servers...

Two web servers (as of now), a cache server, and a database with slave if I remember right. ubuntu-geek could provide more details.

[Frak]

Pics or it didn't happen :)
Again, Pics or it didn't happen :)

[drubin]

Two web servers (as of now), a cache server, and a database with slave if I remember right. ubuntu-geek could provide more details.

Please could he :)

[altonbr]

For the curious Linux user, is there a post stating any of the technical specifications of the server cluster you guys are running?

[sharon.gmc]

I'm glad I learned that. . ..Thank you for the info. . .

[drubin]

For the curious Linux user, is there a post stating any of the technical specifications of the server cluster you guys are running?

Closest thing I have seen on the forums with regards to specs.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6257036&postcount=15

[Frak]

So I hear UF is ran on a cluster of TI-86's...


;)

[Lostincyberspace]

If you want new hardware, you could ask the community.

Set up a Paypal fund-raiser and we will take care of the rest. If every active user donated just one dollar then you could get some really good hardware. I also think that $5 is the minimum that should/could be accepted cause of fees and such. Not sure on the details, but It should not be to hard.

[Frak]

If you want new hardware, you could ask the community.

Set up a Paypal fund-raiser and we will take care of the rest. If every active user donated just one dollar then you could get some really good hardware. I also think that $5 is the minimum that should/could be accepted cause of fees and such. Not sure on the details, but It should not be to hard.
Limits limit. When getting something needed, it is not wise to impose a limit.

[Lostincyberspace]

The only reason I said that is I heard that with fees and everything 5 dollars is the effective minimum to be able to actually contribute money to the project, other wise it is just paying for fees, and helps no one. If this is wrong then tell me, I don't have first hand experience with it so this is just the way I understand it.

Personally I would more than happy to give about $5 a month so this place can be better.

[Frak]

The only reason I said that is I heard that with fees and everything 5 dollars is the effective minimum to be able to actually contribute money to the project, other wise it is just paying for fees, and helps no one. If this is wrong then tell me, I don't have first hand experience with it so this is just the way I understand it.

Personally I would more than happy to give about $5 a month so this place can be better.
The fees aren't a set amount. Depending on the nature of the account, it's from 2%-15% of contributions. A $1 donation only fees from $0.02-$0.15 yielding an 85%-98% profit.

[Lostincyberspace]

Oh Kay then I was just misunderstanding, no need to worry about it.