Site performance, Server errors, outages and tunings

[Like Ra]

I noticed two huge peaks yesterday:

    this is the combined second peak

    two peaks are clearly visible here

It does not like that it was a site rip, because the cache is still intact. Need to analyse the logs... Another reason to implement HHVM instead of PHP ASAP.

[Like Ra]

Yesterday I removed Google Analytics tracker (the last tracker) from all pages. I do not use this statistics anyway, I do not think that Google increases the page ranks based on the GA tracker, the mobile versions do not include the tracker, it's blocked by some AdBlockers and visitors usually prefer not to be tracked. At least I noticed that the page responsiveness jumped up a bit and the site metrics agree with me. So, win-win situation 😉

[Like Ra]

The migration from Xen (EOLed) to KVM (new default virtualization platform at Linode) did not go well last night and the virtual OS did not boot. I logged a case within Linode and currently the system is working using the rescue kernel. The reason why it did not boot up was explained by the engs (different device names), but right now I do not see any old names in the config. Either they were reset properly by the rescue kernel or there is something else... Need to investigate further, so please expect more "downs".

[Like Ra]

Rebooted to the correct kernel. Everything looks fine 😉

Linode claims that the performance should be much better, than with Xen, but I do not see it in the web-performance measuring tools. But the booting up time is indeed shorter, and I see much less disk activity. What is good.

Next is forum software upgrade (security and bugs). More work 😁

[Like Ra]

Unbelievable...  Simple migrating from one virtual environment to another solved the problem that was bugging me for years - high disk utilization. Under the similar load the I/O rate now is 5-10 times (times! not percent!) less than before.

   

Not bad, huh? I do not think that it's noticeable for a "normal visitor" under "normal load", but it definitely makes the system much more resilient and immune to peaks, scans, rips, etc.

[Like Ra]

The CPU is now different:

Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2630L 0 @ 2.00GHz 15MB cache

And it's different again:

Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2680 v3 @ 2.50GHz 30MB cache

Looks like another free improvement 😉

[Like Ra]

I have updated the forum software to the latest version. Let me know if anything is broken.

[herrpee]

You make long days Ra 😊

[Like Ra]

Yeah, I need 36 hours a day...

[madjack]

Yeah, I need 36 hours a day...

Though I'm not a doctor I feel that I should prescribe some rest - you're working very hard and all that work without any play can't be good.

May I suggest a break from up-grading and improving the aeady very excellent site and taking some time to relax and maybe, just maybe, enjoy a little self-bondage fun yourself?

MJ