Super popular?

[ddrueding]

I hate to flog this particular horse, but I just had an outage for about 2 minutes.

 

[Handruin]

No worries, I want the feedback. I noticed the outage also, thanks for confirming it. I'll let them know.

 

[timwhit]

The site was down again for about 3-5 minutes.

 

[LunarMist]

There are too many outages to count.

 

[Handruin]

I'm still in contact with the hosting company and they do seem to be working on this. I've asked them to give me updates during their progress. They are aware of the issue, but do not know exactly what is causing it or how to solve it. They need to contact CPanel to put in a support request. Some of the outages may have been from them restarting/reconfiguring Apache. I'm not making excuses for them, just trying to point out what may be causing some of this.

 

[LunarMist]

Thanks, Doug. We know that you are working on it. After all you are hosting this site for free and we appreciate it.

PS: There was another outage for ~5 minutes this afternoon.

 

[Handruin]

I'm hoping they'll update me today with some news even if it is nothing yet. I'll go bug them again for more details shortly. I'm sorry it has been unreliable these past few weeks/months and I don't mind when you tell me. I'd really like to see it fixed rather than have us move. But if they can't figure things out in the next couple weeks, I'm going to have to move us.

 

[Handruin]

I asked for an update. This is what got:

The issue with the swordfish server was checked with on a frequent basis after we had some issues with http service going down. We were able to locate some vulnerable files from the server which were removed immediately. Now the server service does not seems to go down suddenly as of before.

Also the server is running fine and we are not reported with any downtimes recently. Please let me know if ther are any issues still faced in the server.

Can you let me know if you continue to get the network error? Keep in mind that with this given server there may be tiny outages if people create new hosting packages. It requires a restart of apache which only takes 10 seconds or so. We've always had that and is nothing new. If you notice a couple minutes of outage, please let me know. I will continue to bug them if I notice it also. I haven't noticed as many issue in the last couple days, but I'm also not on the site every waking minute.

 

[P5-133XL]

I asked for an update. This is what got:



Keep in mind that with this given server there may be tiny outages if people create new hosting packages. It requires a restart of apache which only takes 10 seconds or so. We've always had that and is nothing new.

Well, that explains virtually all outages that I've noticed and they've existed from the very beginning.

 

[Handruin]

I've mentioned those small outages a few times in the past. I know it wasn't an announcement or anything so you may not have seen my comments. The only way around it is a dedicated environment (be it a dedicated host or VPS hosting package). The larger outages we've been seeing were from the other problems described.

 

[CougTek]

The hardware requirements to host a small web site like StorageForum.net should be quite low. What's the monthly(or annual) charge to have a fixed IP and the domain name?

Not that the outages really bother me these days. I ask mostly out of curiosity.

 

[Handruin]

I agree, we don't need a mega machine for just this site. What we need is adequate upload speed.

I'm not sure what you are asking about the fixed IP? Are you referring to my personal ISP at home for example or our current hosting company? The domain name is $14 a year and the hosting is $25/month or $300/year.

I've thought about hosting it on my own if I could get verizon's FIOS service but it isn't available here.

 

[CougTek]

What we need is adequate upload speed.

How much?

 

[Handruin]

I'd reckon at least 1 to 2 Mb in upload. We can transfer roughly 50-150MB of data in a given day. It isn't much, but I'd like to have extra to keep things running well. We'll generally transfer 2 to 5GB of data per month.

 

[LOST6200]

down, down downmagin, so annoying.

 

[timwhit]

The site was down for at least an hour this morning.

 

[Handruin]

The site was down for a while last night because they had to take it offline for an emergency fix. The hard drive had fsck errors that wouldn't resolve and they had to put it into single user mode to do a full fsck.

The server has been quirky the last few days because there have been ddos attacks on other site on our machine. They rebooted the machine a few times to try and solve the issue. That is why we've been having some problems the last few days.

 

[ddrueding]

Interesting. For at least a few hours last night DNS wouldn't even resolve. I figured you were changing providers.

 

[Handruin]

No I wasn't changing providers. The DNS issue was probably because the entire box was down and DNS is hosted on it (but that's just a guess).

 

[Handruin]

Despite the current problems we've been having, I have to admit the owner of the hosting company actually interacts with me when I voice my complaints. I get more information given back to me now with the new owner than I ever did with the old owner. They are also increase capacities for us customers. Damn it it makes it a tough call to move. :crap:

I mean, I know we had that router issue...but they kept working with me and with all the data you guys provided and the problem was fixed. I haven't seen any more of the network dropped issue. The only things lately have been down time and part of it has been a ddos attack and the fsck problem was likely causing some other issues. I'd like to give it a little more time to see what comes of things if you guys can stand it?

 

[ddrueding]

Handruin, I am perfectly content to stay where we are and do what we've been doing. This is great fun, and where I spend most of my free time, but to call it mission-critical would be a joke. The outages are not causing me great discomfort, or seriously impacting my experience here. I'm sure you have better things to do

 

[Bozo]

Handruin, I am perfectly content to stay where we are and do what we've been doing. This is great fun, and where I spend most of my free time, but to call it mission-critical would be a joke. The outages are not causing me great discomfort, or seriously impacting my experience here. I'm sure you have better things to do

Ditto

Bozo :joker:

 

[Handruin]

How have things been lately with the site's availability? I haven't had nearly as many (if any) issues in the past couple weeks. Anyone else notice any serious problems lately?

 

[ddrueding]

Things seem to have quieted down quite a bit, but I haven't been here as much in the last week or so.

 

[Tea]

I'm also not on the site every waking minute.

Slacker!

We want to see you try harder in futiure. Also, we have decided that because we have members from all around the world, in every time zone, you can no longer afford to sleep.

But because I am such a nice person, I have decided to grant you a nice long vacation every year. This year your holiday will be the 17th of June.

 

[LunarMist]

Site has been down occasionally, but briefly, as has always been the case. Status quo...

 

[LunarMist]

It was down again in the afternoon.

 

[Clocker]

Site has almost always been fine for me. I would not bother changing anything unless some $ can be saved...even if the downtime were to increase. I think the cost of the site should be minimized.

 

[GIANT]

Why are there so many peiple online' today? 48 useres this afternon is a new record...

That record was certainly shattered recently:

Most users ever online was 510, 06-27-2007 at 02:30 PM



Is a website crawling with (presumably benign) spiders such a good thing?

What is StorageForum's GB-per-month production numbers these days? Back in 2003, I believe it was around 3 GB/month.

 

[Handruin]

Most of the crawling comes from Yahoo...so it seems. Our transfer usage is roughly the following:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2007	2671	6534	89720	366320	[B]1.92 GB[/B]
Feb 2007	1791	4254	45649	200690	[B]871.32 MB[/B]
Mar 2007	3157	7361	76161	290328	[B]1.56 GB[/B]
Apr 2007	2694	7028	74105	281477	[B]1.65 GB[/B]
May 2007	3208	7736	76031	292665	[B]1.60 GB[/B]
Jun 2007	2661	5581	51987	218021	[B]994.25 MB[/B]
Jul 2007	1637	3236	39639	150030	[B]1.22 GB[/B]

 

[Handruin]

Here are the records from:

2002:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Feb 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Mar 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Apr 2002	0	0	0	0	0
May 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Jun 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Jul 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Aug 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Sep 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Oct 2002	0	0	0	0	0
Nov 2002	784	2619	43290	235183	536.57 MB
Dec 2002	1594	5379	75117	412183	960.12 MB
Total	2378	7998	118407	647366	1.46 GB

2003:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2003	1378	5027	72486	400732	1.11 GB
Feb 2003	1395	5661	84480	571407	1.48 GB
Mar 2003	1550	6381	85382	619182	1.31 GB
Apr 2003	1729	6189	80103	485492	1.04 GB
May 2003	2119	6153	64009	369010	859.92 MB
Jun 2003	1823	6076	74833	397477	1.08 GB
Jul 2003	1802	6168	92896	437181	1.33 GB
Aug 2003	1626	5409	85860	388966	1.29 GB
Sep 2003	1361	5030	92575	381572	1.10 GB
Oct 2003	1402	5263	67115	312155	774.49 MB
Nov 2003	1332	5002	74981	303719	855.74 MB
Dec 2003	1560	5608	79484	338221	904.20 MB
Total	19077	67967	954204	5005114	13.06 GB

2004:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2004	7336	12174	106910	473478	1.39 GB
Feb 2004	6739	10612	73692	342450	1.12 GB
Mar 2004	11507	17208	118017	609386	2.13 GB
Apr 2004	3826	8313	70026	294610	1.13 GB
May 2004	4071	8472	97509	310055	3.46 GB
Jun 2004	5219	9986	75451	356568	1.78 GB
Jul 2004	4622	9474	74531	320562	1.50 GB
Aug 2004	3592	7538	73124	257336	2.16 GB
Sep 2004	4295	8965	95490	326180	2.45 GB
Oct 2004	4999	9706	97970	336973	2.71 GB
Nov 2004	4995	9705	86805	312937	2.18 GB
Dec 2004	7019	12533	92090	288358	3.32 GB
Total	68220	124686	1061615	4228893	25.34 GB

2005:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2005	4906	8875	62897	245857	1.33 GB
Feb 2005	3868	7527	53195	212913	892.23 MB
Mar 2005	4064	8227	63135	233739	1.20 GB
Apr 2005	2635	6029	39611	180294	656.12 MB
May 2005	2820	6526	45577	190877	938.60 MB
Jun 2005	2706	6269	44099	185662	706.73 MB
Jul 2005	2624	7074	66131	261750	1006.09 MB
Aug 2005	3020	7657	69969	276077	1.05 GB
Sep 2005	3718	7930	59294	259311	961.16 MB
Oct 2005	3523	8405	62154	259601	1.03 GB
Nov 2005	3090	7920	62934	256675	1.01 GB
Dec 2005	3210	7650	137620	348371	2.09 GB
Total	40184	90089	766616	2911127	12.76 GB

2006:

Month	Unique visitors	Number of visits	Pages	Hits	Bandwidth
Jan 2006	3049	7419	131952	308339	3.54 GB
Feb 2006	3777	7608	133630	316344	2.14 GB
Mar 2006	3779	8184	147146	348981	2.25 GB
Apr 2006	3250	7045	128904	287213	1.89 GB
May 2006	2617	6354	126735	252135	1.80 GB
Jun 2006	3174	6893	121731	257352	1.74 GB
Jul 2006	1275	4368	139412	342324	2.48 GB
Aug 2006	1592	5010	144145	323698	2.59 GB
Sep 2006	1543	5308	86827	306931	1.36 GB
Oct 2006	1536	5001	64788	257530	1022.54 MB
Nov 2006	2044	5594	68437	256692	1.19 GB
Dec 2006	2656	6167	62012	256514	1.08 GB
Total	30292	74951	1355719	3514053	23.05 GB