I believe I’ve tracked down the performance problem we’ve had since turning on some of the new features to an offending database query in the implementation of RSS feeds for vBulletin v3.0.7. That implementation can result in locking up the database anywhere from seconds to several minutes at a time. RSS feeds have therefore been turned off until I can determine what if any impact they are having on the performance problems since the move to the new server.
We’ll see…
Jerry
Keeping my fingers crossed! I do hope you find what makes the gerbils/hamsters/capybaras fall over so much; otherwise this really is worse than before.
It looks like Jerry turned off the RSS feeds about 3:41PM, and the server was up and running for a while (mighty swift and spiffy, I might add!). But around 5:30PM I couldn’t get any SDMB page to open at all.
I’ve found it very hit and miss this morning (Tuesday).
Thanks for trying, we’ll be patient. BUT, been browsing here with no problem until all of a sudden, massive slowness once again set in. 
Could not get to any other board nor could I open any thread. FYI, this happened at approximately 4:35 Mountain time.
I finally went to other websites and still could not even get back in here. I closed my browser and then tried again and now OK. Same old, same old.
Incidentally, for those who wondered about connection speed, I’m on cable broadband at speeds around 8 Mbps, so that sure ain’t the problem. As I noted in a previous post, I can access all other sites all the time at very fast rate, including other forums using same software.
Alas, alac and oh, shit!
I’m seeing periodic slowness, too. Especially around 6:30 Eastern; my connection timed out. I’ve also had a couple of slow patches in the past 20 minutes or so. I’ve got a cable connection and it’s moving much faster on other sites and in between slow-downs.
Good luck puzzling this one out! Let us know if there’s anything we can help test.
GT
Since disabling of RSS feeds the frequency of lockups looks to be declining at least from what I’m using to measure server performance. That doesn’t mean there won’t be other lockups caused by other functionality, such as a particularly long and intensive search, but in general I expect the recent performance problems to lessen. The frequency if not the severity although possibly both.
Jerry
…and apparently reducing the impact of RSS feeds on the SDMB was not as easy as just turning off the vBulletin options that had been turned on earlier. I made some additional modifications that I hope will completely remove the impact.
Jerry
Hysteresis! :eek:
Give it a whack!
I hate it when my users say that. As though I were some moronic twit…never mind.
It’s faster for me than it was, and my satellite connection or the 24k(!) dial up cause any delay problems I have.
The board was entirely dead about that time. Since that was long after the RSS feeds were disabled, there was something else going on. Maybe Jerry has tweaked it just right by now. I’m crossing my fingers.
When it works, it’s great.
How about a garland of garlic, a cross, a mallet, and a wooden stake? Die already…!!!
The last hour or so, it’s flying. I haven’t had a hang up since around 8:30 or so. Not keeping exact track.
Unfortunately, the RSS code even though disabled in the vBulletin control settings was STILL allowing RSS feeds to query the database even after the functionality was supposedly turned off. Have to hand it to that vBulletin design…it’s extremely fault-tolerant. :mad:
Jerry
Thanks for doing the legwork on this, Jerry. Everything seems to be rolling along quite nicely now, at least from this user’s perspective.
To a fault. 
What’s that version of Murphy’s Law and fool-proofing?
I just had another time out error at 11:18 pm and a variety of slow page loads since around 10pm this evening.
[gratuitous suckup] Jerry, thanks for all your great work! [/gs]
Seriously, I know you hear enough bitches from us to last you a lifetime but you should know that we really do appreciate all that you do. Does chocolate work for you like the mods?
Just to be clear I want to say it’s still the case that the server will both slow down and time out. What I believe I have done is reduce the frequency of slow down and time out by stopping one specific functionality, RSS feeds, that I know was impacting the performance of the new server.
We are still on the same version of vBulletin that we were running on the old server. I’d expect we’ll see the same issues we did on the old server but I also expect when the board is functioning well it will function faster than it did in the past.
Now that we’ve moved to a faster piece of hardware and I believe I’ve resolved the issue that was forcing us to delete posts (and I’ll know if this is true in about 2 days) the next step is to move us to a newer version of the vBulletin software. I actually will not be surprised if the upgrade in vBulletin software does little to improve the performance of the board. It’s never that easy. From what I can tell other large sites running vBulletin have had to make non-trivial customizations to the vBulletin software along with running much more extensive hardware than the SDMB does inorder to get vBulletin to perform better in a large database environment.
I guess what I’m saying is things are moving in a positive direction. Not that they are “fixed”.
Jerry
FWIW, I’ve not experienced any slowdowns tonight since I got home around 7:00 or so, and it’s nearly 1:00 AM now. I haven’t been on constantly, of course, but enough to notice a definite improvement. I think you’re on the right track. If you know what times the slowdowns have occurred, you’ll probably want to have a look at the activity logs for those times. Something might jump out at you. In any case, the boards are decidedly faster, otherwise.