Hi,
we have this nice history of offering web hosting on Linux boxes. Always been happy with them (we would set up the servers ourselves), and so far so good.

But now, everything is changed ;)
We are responsible for the health of one of these tiny blue doohickeys.
And we see things we never suspected could be. Such as 30%+ CPU load, constantly.
Today it was even more interesting: the pizza box decided to waste something like 100% of its CPU, so that we weren't even able to log in.
After 30 mns, we could access it again.
What an odd adventure.

Anyway, 30%? Really?

A %30 CPU load is pretty gnarley. A healthy server runs at something like 0.12. We like to keep our servers bellow 2.0 - 5.0 load average. 5.0 being the MAX.

Do you see any processes that have been running for a long time? What type of RAQ is it and how many sites are hosted on it?

if you're running mysql and php, and have heavy load dynamic sites, tweak the watoosie out of mysql, apache, and php.

i have seen on cobalt listservs acceptable ranges below 4, but, i prefer to try and keep mine in the 1.5 range for peak. but, we're only moving 40gb per month with a heavily loaded php/mysql driven site.

Yeah, just what I feared.
We've always maintained our servers load below 2% (except som rare occasions...) but I was starting to think that, "maybe", a Raq is supposed to be always overloaded.

It's a RAQ4i, 256 MB memory.

Something odd: when I look at 'top' result, I see that 'top' itself uses between 4 and 5% CPU.

Apache uses about 15%,
mySQL 25-30%,
these darn ASPs...well, not much, actually.

These are average values, the CPU may go down as low as 0.7% (I'm more used to that kind of values!) or as high as...well...sky's the limit.

Plus is seems that some clients run very time-consuming CGIs, now and then.

here's some links i have handy for some apache & mysql tweaking. they might help you out a little. i don't know anything about ASP. in terms of if it's possible to tweak up some of it's settings..


http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20454&highlight=tweak+mysql

http://www.mysql.com/doc/T/i/Tips.html

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23930&highlight=tweak+mysql

http://i4net.tv/marticle/get.php?action=getarticle&articleid=3

http://thingy.kcilink.com/modperlguide/performance/Performance_Tuning_by_Tweaking_A.html


there's alot more, those were just the few i had handy.

I had my RaQ running under a load of 11 for over half an hour, then it went down. You should really keep an eye on that f*cking ASP, if the ASP engine crashes, your load will go up and up..

be on the lookout for any ASP related 'caspeng' processes that have been running for a long time. I've seen that process crash RAQ's a few times. It will jsut sit there and consume memory untill it brings down the box.

Is'nt chilisoft ASP great!

Originally posted by jucebro
be on the lookout for any ASP related 'caspeng' processes that have been running for a long time. I've seen that process crash RAQ's a few times. It will jsut sit there and consume memory untill it brings down the box.

Is'nt chilisoft ASP great!

Yeah, I feared that.

Here's a geeky rant:
don't forget, ASP = Microsoft, even when implemented by Chilisoft.
Stupid Microsoft.

<- "But Sun owns Chilisoft!"
-> "awww....crap"