hi,

i asked a same question at webhostingtalk.com and vbulletin.com. I got totally different answer.

Question: how many users can be on my Vbulletin BBS at the same time, assuming normal reading and posting activities.

The Vbulletin is on my server which has dual amd athlon 1800 mp, 1Gb Ram, red hat).

The answer from Webhostingtalk.com, my server should have no problem to handle >1000 users on the vbulltin BBS at the same time.

but the Vbulletin.com people think the server can at most handle 500 vbulletin users. any larger than 500 needs claustered specialized server (such as mysql server) .

who is more likely to be correct? WebhostingTalk.com people are expert, so is Vbulletin. My question is directed toward VBulletin BBS users.

of course, ultimately it depends the experience. But it may take a while for the server to reach that capacity. I want to know now and prepare before hand.

charlie.

Well, a few things.

I'd tend to trust the vBulletin people over the WHT people (not saying I mistrust WHT or anything), just because it's about the specific product you're using, as opposed to webhosting in general.

Have you considered benchmarking the server? Apache comes with a tool called "ab" that can be used to request a file over and over, although I don't know how you'd go about benchmarking a forum -- there's more to it than simply requesting a single page. :(

I'm on a similar system (dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, 1 GB RAM), although it's my desktop system, so it's not exactly a lean-mean-webserving-machine. :)

Running ab on a 97.5 kB file, I got 40,664 static HTML requests served in 30 seconds. Using a PHP script (no MySQL connection), I got only 699 requests served over the same 30 second period; the file was about 4 kB. This was by no means scientific -- I ran it on localhost (not over any sort of network), and I made no attempts to "tweak" it as you might do on a real server. In addition, there was no MySQL backend.

Based on these, I'd tend to guess that the 500 limit was closer, but, of course, I haven't used vBulletin, and this is my desktop, so I had a ton of stuff that'd never be on a server.

It really depends on how you tweak MySQL/PHP/Apache.

asyui8

I'm a admin at a colo/dedicated server company and we had a question like this the other day. check your configs with everything (eg. apache, mysql, kernal, etc...) the person that asked us that question had aroud 2000 users on there vbullentin BBS and right now they are working on it and looks to be they found there mistake in a mysql config.

Dude, you're lucky if you can get 25 users on a redhat box.

You really should switch to FreeBSD it is MUCH more efficient with this sort of thing.

ha sup zerphyte

Redhat will do just fine. FreeBSD will not improve your server's performance or reliability if your Redhat box is properly configured.

500 users at the same time is quite a heavy load and I think that this is the absolute maximum for this server. If it has IDE drives I wouldn't push it too hard, so once it has reached about 3-400 users I would get a good, dedicated MySQL server with SCSI drives to share the load.

Regards,
Gernot

Originally posted by Gernot
Redhat will do just fine. FreeBSD will not improve your server's performance or reliability if your Redhat box is properly configured.


Right, if you setup a redhat box and properly configure it, your FreeBSD box won't improve. They're not on the same telekinetic level obviously.

I think slackware or debian have ESP and can communicate properly with the freebsd box and give it advice and such, so it will perform better.

WHT currently has about 250 users currently online. I think that their servers are doing fine and seem to handle the load pretty well. I don't know the exact specs of the server (HS probably gave them somewhere) but I would guess that they're pretty close to yours.

Having 500 users and 500 users online at the same time is 2 different things. You could build up a quite popular forum on that box, I would think. :)

if i remember correctly wht ran on a like ~700mhz box p3 actually maybe a 633 with a ton of users and they said the load was @ 1.00 i may be wrong but search back in the lounge a few months back
but now it has 2 servers one for http and one for mysql and thier loads are like 0.10 or somthing really low if my memory serves me correctly

hope that helps and dont quote me as i'm not 100% sure

a site on one of my Red Hat servers runs vbulletin and has an average of 215 users online at any given time and has went as high as 388.

For WHT, the server was often pushed with the past config you mentioned. It needed to be moved to something more stable, (multiple server set up). While it often hovered around the area you stated, it would be hit hard during peak times and wasn't able to take it (as many of you regulars know).

Currently:
Server Load Averages 0.74, 0.48, 0.45 194 users online (146 members & 48 guests).

This is the new set up.

Chicken,

Which server is this, the MySQL server or apache server load - I am thinking you have two servers at the moment for this setup?

Hmmm, yes, I posted without thinking. This is the apache one, far as I know. I forget that this info isn't as useful anymore. Sorry about that one...

Originally posted by Excal
asyui8

I'm a admin at a company ...kernal... Priority Colocation Inc.

I dont think Myles will be happy that youre taking credit for all his hard admin work. :D

I think it's called a "kernel" admin boy
it does not have very much to do with the setup of a forum.

Excuse me while I recompile source of the OS to add smilies to posts. :eek:

Actually Ryce, Excal (if that is him, i wasn't aware dj registered at WHT) is one of my admins.

I'd have to ask him to see if that is him though :D.

Im not takin credit for myles work but yes I am a Admin there as Myles said...and to your other response ever heard of a typo and your kernel has a lot to do with stuff specially when your talkin bout a high load of mysql process going on...where do you think most tweaks to *nix systems are :)