Server Outage

[Mike Boeh]

Gametunnel on G4 TV brought the server to its knees. These are the only 2 sites on this physical server, so something will be done to get each on their own box soon. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[arcadetown]

I nominate Russel to a new name... "The Server Crusher!" :D Anyone second that?

[PoV]

I think we need more "server crushers". They're probably good for business.

[Mike Boeh]

The show attacked again. I am ordering a brand new server for indiegamer.com and only indiegamer.com today :)

[soniCron]

For what it's worth, I think that's the last airing of that episode, unless they deem it worthy of a weekend spot.

[Mike Boeh]

We have also set up jpcache today, which makes a huge difference, and we're hoping not to be taken down again....

[cyrus_zuo]

For what it's worth, I think that's the last airing of that episode, unless they deem it worthy of a weekend spot.

Sadly I think you are right...looking at the schedule I should have done the Friday session! That one plays like 8 times...compared to 2...

Next time...I'm gonna be a contender!

The caching seems to have taken care of problems in the mean time, apologies all for the downtime :(

[soniCron]

Curious about the caching: how does this affect tracking stats? Specifically, user statistics and ad statistics? I'd like to impliment caching to my upcoming site, but it's really important I don't lose any of my extensive tracking, so I just figured it was impossible.

[revve]

Wow - JPCache is amazing. I had some performance issues with the new IndieWiki (http://www.indiewiki.net/), and after I saw you mention it, I naturally investigated it. I've installed it on IndieWiki last night (only for anonymous users), and it's amazing. My server load dropped like a stone!

soniCron: Your statistics won't be affected. You must configure JPCache and add a few lines to the top of your PHP files, and everything will be automatic. What happens is that the visitor requests web page (PHP, etc). Apache logs the request and calls the dynamically generated PHP file. BEFORE the page gets generated, JPCache is called (it's at the top). It then checks to see if a statically rendered version of the page is available, and if it hasn't timed out yet. If the static HTML version of the page is good, it'll send the contents of it to the visitor instead of regenerating the page. All that happens is that your server's load will decrease. Another advantage of JPCache is that it will GZIP compress the web data before sending it to the browser (assuming the browser supports it - most do), which will save a ton of bandwidth as well. This can be disabled, and should be if you are already using this compression natively, or if your CMS/Forum/Tiki/Whatever is doing it for you.

If you do want to install it, you need to add something like this to the top of your PHP page

<? if ($not_logged_in) { require ("/path/to/jpcache/jpcache.php"); } ?>

The problem is if you DO allow logged in users to be cached, EVERYBODY will receive the output of a page that looks like whichever user visited the page first. Since all anonymous pages are the same, caching them is a no-brainer.

[lakibuk]

Who is paying for the Indiegamer server?

[James C. Smith]

I believe it is Retro64 Computer Games – Twilight Game Downloads which are listed at the bottom of every page.

[Mike Boeh]

I pay for the server, it's no big deal....

Yeah JPCache really improved the performance of GT too. I can easily tell the pages are loading much faster, and the CPU load fell too.... Although during normal times, the load created by GameTunnel is next to nothing anyway.

Indiegamer.com takes most of the server's resources.That's why I am going to move it to its own dedicated box.

[revve]

I'm actually in the process of upgrading my existing server - the load is still a little bit higher than I'd like. I'm also doing this to accomodate a new service I'm starting soon.

If you are looking for a mirror for indiegamer or something (assuming you're expecting something that would require it), I'd be more than happy to assist once I've upgraded. I'll have plenty of spare capacity.