Hi all, I run a large entertainment website, using ColdFusion MX. It has evolved over the past 9 yrs or so from tcl to php to CF4 to MX.
We serve over 12,000,000 .cfm pages a month right now with over 700,000 uniques per month. Our single server is a dual xeon 2.0 with 4 gigs of RAM. We use redhat, mysql and httpd. Pretty simple setup really, and I'd like to keep it that way. I am a big fan of optimization. Unfortunately, the server has started bogging down in peak hours, and I think I'm nearing the end of the "optimize it" challenge. I've optimized queries, tweaked settings, query cached, cf_accelerated, sucked frequent db stuff into application scope, etc. However, it appears that there's simply too much load at peak hours to keep the site running fast. Most of our templates are the usual efficent run-of-the-mill stuff, CFQUERYs and outputs, session and client variables (to db). cfstat shows approximately 20 pages/second during peak, where server load spikes up to 5 or 6, and requests start queueing causing nasty latencies. A few questions: 1. Does 12,000,000 .cfm pages / month (distributed normally over the day, peaking around 4 PM ET) seem like a lot for a single xeon 2.0? Do you think its possible for me to squeeze a lot more life out of this machine by investigating further optimizations, or does it sound like it's time to abandon that exercise and get a second machine? Can anyone else who is using a dual xeon on linux heavily let me know what sort of load / pages the thing is successfully serving? 2. I'm not so sure that we're using RAM effectively, even with mysql set to use lots of memory and cf set to cache lots of queries and pages. "Free" shows the following stats. It appears to me that a large amount of memory isn't being used by cf or mysql, even when the site starts slowing down: Mem: 4068096 4023912 44184 0 55516 3321412 -/+ buffers/cache: 646984 3421112 Swap: 2048276 34752 2013524 If I'm reading this correctly, there's a ton of memory doing nothing while the machine starts suffocating. Any ideas on how I can put that memory to use? 3. Could the use of database client variables be causing peak hour sluggishness? I've always wondered what sort of performance hit using database client variables has under load. Would I get a noticable improvement switching to cookie client variables? Thanks for your thoughts. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Logware (www.logware.us): a new and convenient web-based time tracking application. Start tracking and documenting hours spent on a project or with a client with Logware today. Try it for free with a 15 day trial account. http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=67 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:205940 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
