#1
18th Jan 2007 at 8:33 PM
Last edited by Delphy : 24th Jan 2007 at
12:51 PM.
Regarding Downloads and MTS2
Hi All,
As a lot of you have noticed, the downloading situation on MTS2 has gotten... well, pretty annoying, of late. This post will explain the reasoning behind why and also what we are doing about it.
First off - a bit of history and explanation about websites. You may skip this part if you are not so technically inclined.
In all large sites, there is a balance between database usage, cpu usage and bandwidth. One of them will always be used up quicker, and depending on the site and the software that it runs, will be the failure point. This also applies to hardware - one machine that is less powerful can be the "weakest link".
In the past, this has primarily been either the database server, or the actual front end webservers (the
www.modthesims2.com ones). Optimisations to the backend code and upgrades have improved the database side. This year, some of you may remember that I implemented download caching, which essentially takes a huge load off the front end webservers and speeds up the site as a whole. Those of you who have been here a long time will probably remember times of slow refreshes and getting stuff. Given that the average amount of members online has increased, optimisations are always needed but here is the catch:
Since I optimised the webservers and implemented the caching, that means that the vast majority of people using the site are
actively using it. This is in contrast to, say, 6 months ago when those using the site experienced a lot of waiting for pages and generally just browsing about. What this translates into is simulatenous file downloads. Essentially, if the general getting to pages is slow, this limits the number of clicks on the actual download links, which in turn limits the number of concurrent users on the fileserver. By speeding up the
rest of the site, however, this means that the failure point then becomes the fileserver - and thus we see the connection timeouts, 503 errors and so on, and more and more as the people online increase.
Essentially, due to optimisations and other changes on the rest of the site, we have reached the limits of the hardware that we are running to serve files.
(End Technical Section)
To combat this, I have today placed an order for a secondary fileserver with unmetered bandwidth that I will be installing alongside the existing main fileserver, bringing the total up to 4 (files1, files2, thumbs and special). This will basically mean we can handle double the amount of people downloading at any one time, and thus less complaints and less grey hairs for me.
That is not to say that, at some point in the future, we wont encounter capacity issues again, or that all the 503 errors will go away - just that they will drop in number.
I will be updating this when the new fileserver is installed and configured - so please bear with us until that happens.
Short version:
- New fileserver ordered
- Will update when it's ready to go
- Mucho fastness yay
In other news, we've also changed the following:
- Added the capability to some forums to sort by age prior to sorting by gender (for example in BodyShop clothing)
- Added categories to the MakeUp section and sorted them
- Filtering by category now shows the category at the end of the breadcrumbs in the download details
Update! New fileserver is online!
Thanks
Delphy
Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.