Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Dreamhost: server load causes slowdowns?

[ilves]

Hi all,

For the past month, month and a half, our PHP-driven sites have been pretty slow during day time. Straight-HTML pages are fairly fast, but any page that has PHP code in it slows down. I have noticed that the server load average seems to fluctuate quite a bit on our server, and that the speed of our site seems to correspond with the server load. I'm curious to know whether it is reasonable to think that our server's overloaded and that's why there are slowdowns? I have seen the 15 minute load average go over 20 at times in the last month or so, but I'm not sure if that's too high for a shared hosting server. In the nights the load average can go down to around 3, and during those hours the sites are fairly responsive though still not nearly as fast as with our previous host.

Right now our sites are being very slow, and this is what top tells me:

top - 09:41:08 up 11:27,  2 users,  load average: 17.26, 14.69, 16.03
Tasks:   2 total,   1 running,   1 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):   3.0% user,   1.8% system,   1.0% nice,  94.3% idle
Mem:   1549472k total,  1516284k used,    33188k free,     5440k buffers
Swap:  2096472k total,      112k used,  2096360k free,   605876k cached

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                      
27406 abcd       9   0  1232 1232 1004 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.02 bash                         
20618 abcd       9   0   948  948  776 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 top

This is on Dreamhost's zorg server, if you're curious. We have their Code Monster plan, without any silly $10/year promo deals

On the assumption that the server's overcrowded, Dreamhost offered to move us to a less crowded server; they said they've been moving sites off of our server in general. We gave them the go-ahead on the 24th of February, but obviously they're taking their time about it. How long should this kind of a server move take anyway? We're nearing 10 days of no sign of activity.

[colorteck]

Moving you to a new server should not take very long at all. all we do is just click one button and it will send your web site to the new server and you dont have to do nothing at all. usually takes less than 20 minutes for us.

[ilves]

Thanks for the heads-up

I wonder if the fact that Dreamhost doesn't use cPanel or the like might make the server move process a bit more complicated?

Our sites, by the way, got a little slower all of a sudden; our SMF forum's index page rendered in 8 seconds and top tells us....

top - 10:28:49 up 12:15,  2 users,  load average: 22.53, 20.47, 19.01
Tasks:   2 total,   1 running,   1 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):   0.6% user,   1.9% system,   1.1% nice,  96.4% idle
Mem:   1549472k total,  1503632k used,    45840k free,     5064k buffers
Swap:  2096472k total,      112k used,  2096360k free,   635400k cached

PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                   
16990 abcd      10   0  1228 1228 1004 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.02 bash                      
28653 abcd      10   0   952  952  776 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 top

The forums have about thirty posts and practically nil traffic (yes, it's intentional) so I'm curious on how our previous, cheaper, host managed to render that same index page from 0.05 to 0.1 seconds.

[Laws]

That load is 20* what it should be on average

At their prices with the amount of features they offer it's not surprising the issues they are suffering...

[ilves]

I can see that, unfortunately

We signed up with them before they tripled everything, actually, without any promo deals. For the brief while there in the beginning they were downright awesome, but then the triple-this-that-and-the-other deal came about and things started to go downhill. I'm still hoping things get better, personally. Not because of the uber-high disk and traffic quotas, mind you, but rather because of the freedom they give me.

[colorteck]

An average load would look like this?
14:57:38 up 69 days, 6:51, 1 user, load average: 0.66, 0.58, 0.49

A server load like the one you posted it is a wonder your website comes up in the next 10 minutes.

[Twista]

;( yep the mysql driven databases is slow as hell. There webserver is seperate from there sql server. Which is a good thing, but i guess its bad here (dh)

Other than that the service is good and was cheap!

[Twista]

it was pretty fast today *knocks o nwood*

[Website Rob]

Looks like you're going to have to choose between price or speed.

The info posted shows the Server is constantly being maxed out and the forecast is for the speed
to remain slow with the possibility of being even slower and continuing into the weeks ahead.

And now over to you, Peter, for what new in the Entertainment World.

[David]

*********,

What exactly do you use as servers if a load of 15 will make sites take 15-20 minutes to load?

Stop using Maytag, I tell ya.

[ilves]

Some of the VPS packages are starting to look mighty interesting. Both rapidvps.com and powervps.com have services that look like a pretty good match for DH's CM plan, although they're a bit pricier. But not much pricier: rapidvps's cheapest plan is only $10 more a month, and has more transfer and storage space. Powervps's cheapest plan at the moment seems to go for $5 more than our current DH plan, but offers less in every way. Not a huge deal, I suppose.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.. Anyone recommend either of these two VPS hosts?

BTW, Kenwood microwave > Maytag dryer. At least for mail server

[UH-Matt]

They need to get some sites off that server or increase the Ram if they can.

[Duport]

Yes, I have experienced slowness with Dreamhost, both site and CS

[Twista]

fast again today *knocks on wood* there doing something!

[ilves]

Seems to vary wildly for us. Forums went from 1.3 seconds in the early morning to 3.8 seconds at around 11-ish to 0.7 seconds right now. Right now this is the fastest things have been in over a month. Server load is around 2.9, which is one of the lowest it's been in a while.

It could be a fluke, this being Sunday and all. Not much traffic, I recon. Or maybe they're actually doing something about it. Monday morning will tell.