High load and 300+ users online

labrocca

labrocca

Verified User
Joined
Mar 12, 2006
Messages
151
I am now getting about 250-400 users on my server at a time and load is spiking to between 4-15 during this time. When this happens server takes forever to respond. I have been trying very unsuccessfully to tweak and optimize Apache.

Server is old and the basic specs are:
FreeBSD 6.4
Pentium 4 3.2ghz HT
2GB Ram

In httpd-default.conf I have this right now:
Timeout 60
MaxKeepAliveRequests 1000
KeepAliveTimeout 1

And inside httpd-mpm.conf:

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
StartServers 5
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
ServerLimit 100
MaxClients 100
MaxRequestsPerChild 1000
</IfModule>

I have really played with these settings a lot and so far...no great performance increases. Seriously it's been a couple months that this has been going on and I have finally decided it's time to ask straight out for help here.


Is it that my server hardware (processor) is just unable to handle 300+ connections with Apache 2.2? That just doesn't seem right to me.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.
 
Try setting KeepAlive off and increasing ServerLimit/MaxClients values.
 
RAM Upgrade

If it is in your budget an upgrade in RAM will be the best $$ value. I would get 2 more gigs. The server will be faster as it will not have to access slow HDs as often.
But the good news is... In this business outgrowing your server is a GOOD thing!
:)
 
I have a new server ready to be put online but I was hoping to squeeze more life out of this one before I move.
 
Be Careful...

Be Careful that in your attempt to squeeze life out of your existing server that your customers look for a faster alternative! losing a few good clients costs quite a bit over time.
You do know you can run many servers? DA supports multi servers, not in the same way as some other panels, but you can move 1/2 of your clients to the new box.
 
There are no clients except me on this server. I use DA just to control my colo servers.
 
This Confused me...

"I am now getting about 250-400 users on my server at a time and load is spiking to between 4-15 during this time"
 
Well when you say customers I considered that hosting clients. DA is often used by resellers. I purchased my license just to assist me in managing my own server.

The users are just people visiting the sites on my server. And just now...I rented a new server with some great specs.
 
Your server can indefinitely handle that kind of traffic.

Something is wrong with your site's settings...and are you being attacked by DDoS by any chance? Do you have a firewall in place? That could be why your site takes forever to load...

On a side note what are your PHP and MySQL memory settings set as?
 
I have new server and it's a quad-core. Load is now under .5 with 95% CPU idle. The old server is well..just old. Somewhere over 250 users is really where the problems began. For whatever reason it was screwed it's all good now. That server was about 5 years old.
 
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