I run a busy VBulletin site and until a few weeks ago ran it on a Ev1 Pentium 4 server. The server had grown a bit tired and was having problems coping with the mysql connections. I then purchased another server from Ev1 , a Dual Xeon.

The database was moved on to the Xeon with the forum staying on the P4 , effectively running off 2 servers. The P4 has a bandwidth limit of 700 gig , the Xeon 1100. My site generally uses between 220-250 gig of bandwidth a month.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from EV1 stating that I am about to go over my limit on the P4 ! And that I have used over half of the Xeon's bandwidth as well !

There is no way my site has suddenly started using that much bandwidth , and the charts show that this excess happened the day the database was moved. Attempts to get Ev1 to investigate this are getting me no where. I am currently being billed $100 a day in excess bandwidth.

Can anyone suggest why they would claim a jump in bandwidth on that scale ? Or a contact at EV1 that might actually listen to what I have to say ?

Help appreciated.

Run your own mrtg monitoring and check what they claim.

Any chance there are some processes looping between the two boxes? ie email, or some other scripts (dbase etc)

How many database queries are going on when your site is accessed - it may be you are being charged for the bandwidth involved in sending these queries between the two servers - especially if they are measuring your bandwidth usage from your switch ports.

Alex Brett
alex.brett@loho.co.uk

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Originally posted by rebuke
it may be you are being charged for the bandwidth involved in sending these queries between the two servers - especially if they are measuring your bandwidth usage from your switch ports


This is what I think is happening. Surely this should not be counted as Bandwidth ??

700 /2 350 in 350 out.

that explains why, and if you do not corectly setup the servers together you will use twice the bandwidth then just on one server.

I suggest just put it all on one server (the dual xeon).

It happened to us in the past. Contact their support. For us, it was the user before us that had our server IP and used up all the bandwidth. When the IP was assigned to our server, the bandwidth started from where it had ended before. It took them 4 days to resolve it.

Well to me it sounds like if you have a database server you are connecting to then that will be counted as transfer

Rus

FatalSw1tch , so you are saying they are correct ?

VapoRub , I have contacted support. They run you round in circles and dont give you an answer. By the time they think about looking at it , I will owe a lot of money.

This is what I think is happening. Surely this should not be counted as Bandwidth ??

Of course...why would it be otherwise. You need to have your own Switch to have local unmeasured transfers...otherwise the datacenter will measure at both ports...what other option does it have !!

On this note...I'm wondering does EV1 allow customer switches...I know SM does.

Out of all the DC's we work with not one will give free machine -> machine transfer by default and this is understanble. As such you will at least need a switch or a cross over cable

Rus

Originally posted by Austech
FatalSw1tch , so you are saying they are correct ?

VapoRub , I have contacted support. They run you round in circles and dont give you an answer. By the time they think about looking at it , I will owe a lot of money.

99.94% they are correct. Like I said just move all your stuff to the dual xeon box.

Ok , well if thats the case I will be dumping the P4...and promptly.

good idea, otherwise colocate your own hardware.

They do use in network usage between machines as transfer because they monitor the outgoing and incoming at each machine.

However, as mentioned before, it could be previous usage or an error. Patrick at EV1 has helped people in these situations before. I would see if you can get in touch with him directly and see if it can be taken care of. If there is a problem, he'll get it taken care of for you.

Still it would be advised to just use the dual xeons for they have enough resrouces to take on your load.

Originally posted by Austech
Ok , well if thats the case I will be dumping the P4...and promptly.

On your forum, make sure to use a zend or MMcache optimizer and cache your index page, to help deal with your load, and make sure you optimize your my.conf with caching and enough memory to make it a happy camper

Ok , I have had to shut down my site till I get this issue sorted one way or another.

Can someone explain to me how 250 gig of bandwidth a month can turn in to 1400 gig in 3 weeks ?

While I understand what people are saying in regard to transfer between the 2 boxes , how can the amount used end up as high as 5 times the opriginal amount if it is being transferred between 2 boxes only ?

And turn off Persistent Connections. That'll KILL any bandwidth that you have going on...

Because if that is the case on a single box you are only processing queries internally and traffic itself is coming from the visitors. Thus only one stream of outgoing traffic.

If you are using multiple servers, you have traffic from multiple areas.

Traffic from a visitor.
Traffic from one machine to the other asking for a query.
Traffic from another machine sending the query.
Outgoing traffic returning the completed results.
Etc...

The only way to know for sure though is to get the information from EV1 or run MRTG yourself.

http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/

You could try putting the database on the p4 and the forums in the xeon since the xeon has more allowed transfer.

Originally posted by Austech
Ok , I have had to shut down my site till I get this issue sorted one way or another.

Can someone explain to me how 250 gig of bandwidth a month can turn in to 1400 gig in 3 weeks ?

While I understand what people are saying in regard to transfer between the 2 boxes , how can the amount used end up as high as 5 times the opriginal amount if it is being transferred between 2 boxes only ?

You should make sure the mod shop is not attacking you Andrew ;) Would not surprise me at all :eek:

dump the p4. its the cross server transfer that ev1 will report.

ROFL @ MN-Robert , you obviously are a member on my site :D The thought did cross my mind , along with a few others.

Santiago , I reckon I would still run out of bandwidth doing it that way. The P4 gets the arse.

Thanks for all replies , very helpfull.

Ev1 has always charged for bandwidth between boxes on thier network, have to go with someone like servermatrix with vlan if you don't want inter-network traffic to count.