Site performance, Server errors, outages and tunings

You do not have recompose a post. Just reload the page later and it will be posted. I hope you do not use Exploder (dunno how it works there).

It always happens from 13:00 till 13:45 CEST. No sensible response from the hosting company.

Well in that case I wont post anything during that time.

Well when is later? Sometimes one minute later all works again. Sometime even 10minutes later your pages are not accessible ...
Next time I get Server Error outside your time window I ll inform you.
krinlyc

[Like Ra]

It does happen outside if this window, and usually I know when this happens, because I have a monitoring script which check for the system load every 5 sec, kills processes according to the load and logs everything to a file.

The problem is - I can't do anything about it. Either there must be less VPS'es per hosting system, or an upgrade to another hosting plan ($80 - still a VPS, though) is needed.

It does happen outside if this window, and usually I know when this happens, because I have a monitoring script which check for the system load every 5 sec, kills processes according to the load and logs everything to a file.

The problem is - I can't do anything about it. Either there must be less VPS'es per hosting system, or an upgrade to another hosting plan ($80 - still a VPS, though) is needed.

Just stumbled on this post...
I think $80 for a VPS is just ridiculous for a relative small site like this.
You could maybe have a look at Hetzner.de for a VPS.
And if you could spend $50 a month, why not just take a dedicated server? More memory, no shared processor and much much more hard disk space.
Altough, I haven't had any VPS at Hetzner, I do have many dedicated servers over there and they are fast and uptime is almost 100%. Altough they are based in Europe(Germany), there connection to the US is also very good.

[Like Ra]

About Hetzner. Very good reviews, very good prices, but look at the terms and conditions:

6.2 The client undertakes not to publish content that may violate the rights of third parties or otherwise violate the law. The placement of erotic, pornographic, extremist material or material not deemed in good taste is not permitted. We are entitled to block access to the account of any customer who violates this.

No erotic materials permitted. And "good taste" is very subjective. So, "no go" for fetish/bondage sites.

[Like Ra]

The system was effectively down for 7 hours. Spent 2 hours in a live chat session with support, escalated ticket, (an admin was indeed working on the system), went to bed at 6AM.

The result - the system is still mostly down.

[Like Ra]

Almost 20 hour of down time.

The VPS finally crashed and could not boot up. The problem with disks is not gone. Escalating the ticket again.

[Like Ra]

A disk died in the RAID. Pretty much obvious but was not tested by the hosters in time.

Resynchronised at the moment. I think it will take no less than 6-8 hours.

[Like Ra]

Looks like the disks are still synchronizing

[Like Ra]

The load has reduced. I suppose that the disks are in sync now.

[Like Ra]

I think the performance is quite acceptable now. I still get "server errors" from time to time, but the reason is not the disks from what I can tell. Unless there are activity spikes the monitoring programs do not catch.