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Supermule
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2003 9:50 pm    Post subject: load-balanced forums? Reply with quote

Hi,

Is this forum running some sort of load-balancing? I ask because:

1. I often have difficulties reaching the forums.
2. Netcraft report an avarage uptime for this forum of 10.33 days :(

I wonder why uptime is sooo low. Another interesting issue is that looking at the top-40 sites delivering the higest uptime on the net, ALL 40 is BSD/FreeBSD...all of them :) - no Linux'es...?

Why is that? (Should be odd if those running BSD is the only ones running Load-balancing).
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ebrostig
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2003 10:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The load on the server that runs the Forums is very high.
You also have to consider the route the traffic needs to travel from Denmark to the server location in the USA.

uptime means nothing.

If you follow the announcments on the top of the forums, you will see that a downtime was schedule at June 5th for maintainance, hence the low uptime.

For the rest, I cant answer, but the reasons can be many.

Erik
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Supermule
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 19, 2003 10:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ebrostig wrote:
The load on the server that runs the Forums is very high.
You also have to consider the route the traffic needs to travel from Denmark to the server location in the USA.

uptime means nothing.

If you follow the announcments on the top of the forums, you will see that a downtime was schedule at June 5th for maintainance, hence the low uptime.

For the rest, I cant answer, but the reasons can be many.

Erik


Yep, I know...especially the jump from uk.above.net to us.above.net seems very slow at times, so I guess 50% of the problems lies in the atlantic route...

However I was merely wondering why BSD's has all 40 top places and no Linux'es is represented. Surely the same scheduled maintainance applies for BSD's aswell? - My point being that somehow no Linux'es are represented in the top 40 - though probably more Linux-boxes are hosting sites than BSD's....

So getting a clue as to why this forum is so low in uptime might give an idea as to why Linux'es doesnt stand for higher uptimes...I know BSD's probably are more stable than linux'es, but from my Linux experience that can't make up that huge difference...(eg. my Linux-Firewall has now had an uptime of 403 days...)
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Naughtyus
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 12:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

About the uptime on netcraft:

Quote:
Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days.

From: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html#whichos
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Supermule
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naughtyus wrote:
About the uptime on netcraft:

Quote:
Additionally HP-UX, Linux, Solaris and recent releases of FreeBSD cycle back to zero after 497 days, exactly as if the machine had been rebooted at that precise point. Thus it is not possible to see a HP-UX, Linux or Solaris system with an uptime measurement above 497 days.

From: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/accuracy.html#whichos


Nice...thanks for clearing it out :)
I actually read that too, but didnt notice "linux" :)
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Naughtyus
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hehe.. I was posting to some of my friends a while ago about how much better BSD is for servers than Linux, and showing them the uptimes page as evidence.. (doh!) so really, I was showing them worthless evidence. :P Oh well.

I'm surprised at how few people know about the uptime rollback though.
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ebrostig
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Naughtyus wrote:
Hehe.. I was posting to some of my friends a while ago about how much better BSD is for servers than Linux, and showing them the uptimes page as evidence.. (doh!) so really, I was showing them worthless evidence. :P Oh well.

I'm surprised at how few people know about the uptime rollback though.


And why is uptime important?
It's really not saying anything about the quality of the system. Some systems does not require frequent changes, hence the uptime might be high, others are in constant development and may go up and down more frequently.

I know it's '1337' to have a high uptime, but I couldn't really care less.

Erik
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idl
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 9:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ebrostig wrote:
Naughtyus wrote:
Hehe.. I was posting to some of my friends a while ago about how much better BSD is for servers than Linux, and showing them the uptimes page as evidence.. (doh!) so really, I was showing them worthless evidence. :P Oh well.

I'm surprised at how few people know about the uptime rollback though.


And why is uptime important?
It's really not saying anything about the quality of the system. Some systems does not require frequent changes, hence the uptime might be high, others are in constant development and may go up and down more frequently.

I know it's '1337' to have a high uptime, but I couldn't really care less.

Erik


I think it is important for some sites. If you were IBM or someone and a potential customer tried to visit the site while the server was being rebooted. IBM could have just lost out on a sale.
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darktux
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 9:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ebrostig wrote:
Naughtyus wrote:
Hehe.. I was posting to some of my friends a while ago about how much better BSD is for servers than Linux, and showing them the uptimes page as evidence.. (doh!) so really, I was showing them worthless evidence. :P Oh well.

I'm surprised at how few people know about the uptime rollback though.


And why is uptime important?
It's really not saying anything about the quality of the system. Some systems does not require frequent changes, hence the uptime might be high, others are in constant development and may go up and down more frequently.

I know it's '1337' to have a high uptime, but I couldn't really care less.

Erik


When you're rebooting, you're having downtime. There ya have a very good reason. And in some systems, that's some rather what critical.
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kashani
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

port001 wrote:


I think it is important for some sites. If you were IBM or someone and a potential customer tried to visit the site while the server was being rebooted. IBM could have just lost out on a sale.


If you're IBM you run a cluster of servers behind a set of hardware load balancers and no one notices when you have a third of the cluster down for maintenance.

Single box hosting is for sissies. :-)

kashani
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ebrostig
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 10:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Again, you people are incorrect. :)

Any site that needs a high uptime/availability, is running a redudant server farm using virtual IP's. It is not a problem to shut down one or more servers for maitenance, hence uptime says nothing and in many cases are misleading as they are not referring to the individual machines but rather the uptime of the virtual domain.

Erik
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idl
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 11:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kashani wrote:
port001 wrote:


I think it is important for some sites. If you were IBM or someone and a potential customer tried to visit the site while the server was being rebooted. IBM could have just lost out on a sale.


If you're IBM you run a cluster of servers behind a set of hardware load balancers and no one notices when you have a third of the cluster down for maintenance.

Single box hosting is for sissies. :-)

kashani


I had no idea 8O
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kashani
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PostPosted: Fri Jun 20, 2003 11:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

port001 wrote:


I had no idea 8O


My latest project has been to explain that to "adult content providers".

"Right now you have 15 of these Celeron/128mb/IDE/20Gb desktops you call servers, each running slightly different software than the others you have your sites split across. We'd like you you to move to 4 real servers, dual proc/4GB/SCSI/150GB behind a load balancer. This way when a machine fails your customers aren't waking you up in the middle of the night. And we'll charge you slightly less for all this"

The repsonse was of course.... "But it's only 4 servers? That won't work. That's less than we have now! You guys keep saying you provide great hosting, but now you want to give us fewer servers... what kind of scam is this?" :roll:

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