Here’s the response from Lunarpages – our current host - to my questions posed.

I need to be DEAD CERTAIN that IF we make a move, we’re not jumping from the frying pan into the fire if you know what I mean (that’s probably a U.S. saying, I suppose) Not trying to be nasty, but I need to make sure IF we move, we don’t kill a second host! I’m gun-shy now, killing a server after 3 days, barely even starting, no advertising or anything, we can’t move and then have more problems. No offense intended………

As for the memory usage issue we do not monitor application level events on the shared servers. In other words we do not monitor which script is using the memory, just the application pool total memory consumption.

I have checked your applications and it appears that you also have the gtchat and bbclone installed on your site as well as the forum you mentioned. As for the number of site visitors you are getting you may want to reveiw the statistics for the domain as it appears you have had more then a thousand visitors in just the past three days.

You can view the statistics here:

http://theamcforum.com/plesk-stat/webstat/usage_200707.html - http://theamcforum.com/plesk-stat/webstat/usage_200707.html

I can't speak to the number of members you have but your bandwidth usage is showing as 250MB of traffic in the same three days. So it appears this is more then jsut a "simple" and "small" forum. I would suggest doulbe checking your files and removing the gtchat as it is a known resource abuser.

We will continue to monitor your site and your memory usage, if the memory load does not drop and remain at or below acceptible levels for shared hosting then you will need to upgrade to a dedicated server. Acceptable levels of memory usage for shared hosting are 64MB of memory usage or less.

You can view more information about our dedicated servers at the following

url:

http://pluto3.lunarpages.com/dedicated-hosting/ - http://pluto3.lunarpages.com/dedicated-hosting/

I hope this helps.

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Monthly Statistics for July 2007
Total Hits	91202< ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 04 July 2007 at 8:39pm

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1000 visitors in 3 days is nothing, this site and many that we host have that amount in an hour! By my calculations 250MB in 3 days is 25Gig per month, which our Elite and Developers Plan would handle with ease. As we also use such powerful sparsely populated servers, we are one of the only Windows web hosts to offer GZip and Deflate compression, this compresses your web pages on the fly cutting your bandwidth consumption be 50% to 70% as well as making your pages download quicker to your visitors browsers. However, there could be an issue with your chat rooms. It will be these which would be consuming the servers resources and we do have a policy that doesn't allow such applications to be installed on the servers. The forum itself should be fine and 1,000 visitors in 3 days is very low. We also host forums and sites for some very large global companies and organisations. If you would like to know more or be shown some examples please email the site directly. Web Wiz is a Microsoft Hosting Partner, a licensed Microsoft Hosting Provider, a member of Microsoft ASP.NET Advantage Program, and registered in the Microsoft Partner Program, so we are very much kept up-to-date with all the latest offerings from Microsoft keeping all our servers constantly updated and secure. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 04 July 2007 at 8:53pm

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Please just keep in mind that those figures are only our first 3 days, so if that runs up to 25 gig/month, and we're just getting started, we'll probably blow that away pretty easily........ we aren't even 100 members, and when the other went down, it had 2600 members. These folks are active as heck.  I could see us hitting a couple hundred gig. The other forum changed hosts a couple times before it died, and there's another similar that's in the process of changing because it's killing their server. We are about 1 1/2 weeks into a 30 day "money-back guarantee" period, so we'll be watching really close, and gathering all the info we can.   I'll be emailing for more info, too! Thanks. I think all of us have sweating palms now, very nervous.... ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: pappu
Date Posted: 06 July 2007 at 3:43pm

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hi   I think chat is killing   I own asp imagehosting script which is very heavy then wwf & it handles 40000 Views Daily taking only 96 mb ram & 34% cpu thanks

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 1:49pm

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Well, for the last several days, the one and ONLY thing running on our host is WWF 8.06. I uninstalled everything else last week, and a few days ago, changed so that sessions are store in the database. We are still pegging the server and the application pool resets every 1 minute. There's nothing else running, and any mods have been small - colors in the style sheet, a paypal button, etc. I even removed the RSS from the home page (our intro or index page ahead of the forums) so there's NOTHING but the forums running, nothing at all. With sessions going to the SQL database, I still get logged out every few minutes, and a couple of times today, logged out at every screen change or refresh! A. With these forums being the ONLY thing on the host, why are we still pegging the application pool memory and causing it to reset or recycle every 1 minute. B. With the sessions now in the SQL database, why do I keep getting kicked off and have to constantly log back in? (on multiple computers, with different browsers, so it's not a single computer or browser issue - I use Firefox 2.x on one computer, IE7 on another and Vista with IE7 on yet another. Same results!) ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 3:55pm

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If there was such an issue don't you think lots of hosts would be kicking people off for using Web Wiz Forums? and you only have a couple 100 posts. You are using a cheap web host who is promising the earth for very little money which is not a sustainable business plan. There is no way they can offer you 400Gig of bandwidth per month for the price you are paying, so they introduce other underhand ways of placing very restrictive limits on you. Your host is placing your site in it's own application pool, on average database drivers, database connection pool, and other objects such as email components,  which are loaded into memory take up around 50Mb of memory in the application pool, each visitor to your sites adds a further 10KB to the application pools memory (more if you are running an ASP or ASP.NET application). This then means with 64MB of memory allocated to your site you are able to have around 100 visitors a day. This way your host can offer you 400Gig a month of bandwidth and unlimited server space as they know with these other restrictions you won't even get near any of these limits. Your best bet is look for a web host that gives more realistic limits for the money you are paying, and remember 'you get what you pay for'. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 3:59pm

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Sorry I forgot question B, yes if the application pool for your site is continually recycling then you won't be able to run the software and you will get the issues you are experiencing. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 4:05pm

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>>Your best bet is look for a web host that gives more realistic limits for the money you are paying, and remember 'you get what you pay for'.<< Such as yourself  Trust me, we are just THIS CLOSE to taking you up on your hosting services....... Partly because you deal with blokes like me who hound you with questions and don't get all POed by it. And partly because - who else knows ASP forums so intimately.......... Our success is growing daily, as is our membership, etc. 142 members, over 1,000 posts, in just over a week of being up. We expect to kill those numbers by winter. Bill http://theamcforum.com ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: javi712
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 4:40pm

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Definitely change web hosts. If you are having this much trouble with your forum, its due to your hosting company and not the forum itself. I pay a nice amount for hosting a month, but I have had very little trouble with my forum and any trouble I had, my hosting company worked with me to resolve it. They never asked me to kills certain apps or that I can't run certain apps, they were very proactive in helping me keep my forum running smoothly. A change of hosts will do you good and if you expect a huge growth of your forums, no one better than to host it with borg since this is probably the biggest wwg forum out there and if his servers can keep this forum running smoothly and fast, your's should experience no problems at all.

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 4:58pm

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Anyone here willing to share their WWF forum URLs so I can take a look and compare some stats? Not looking to "take" anything, just want to compare numbers. This will be a big leap, and again, this is a sort of saving face thing after the history of forums related to our hobby, we made a promise so we must be up, and must not let it appear that we're having any problems. If we move, it's gotta be seemless and FAST! But seeing some other forums with some real-world stats might help, at least to ease my mind if nothing else. They'll pretty well go along with my advice or suggestions, so I need to make certain of my convictions before suggesting anything. My reputation is at risk....... Thanks. In the meantime, I will watch the numbers here, this very forum, and do some figuring. ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 5:03pm

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This forum is tiny, we have forums on our systems that get over 1000 posts per day. I've also heard from quite a few people who run Web Wiz Forums and have between 200 and 500 active users and nearing a million posts. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: diaperpin
Date Posted: 10 July 2007 at 8:50pm

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BillD,   I switched to WWF a few months ago from Snitz Forums. Snitz Forums was taking up all my bandwidth usage. I have been very happy with the performance of WWF since we switched over.    I have a pretty different set up than you, however. We average 2000 posts a day. My forums are here http://www.diaperpin.com/forum08 - http://www.diaperpin.com/forum08 I have a dedicated server, mostly due to the popularity of our forums.   Hopefully this info helps. Jennifer

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 11 July 2007 at 2:31pm

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Wow, what a cool site! I've not had little ones for many years now (they are 22 and 25) but that's a neat design, and seems to be quite popular! OK, our current host removed the support for asp.net from our service and now things have really settled down. The forum is faster, we don't get bumped off (logged out) and the count of current users is accurate! He states it will not only not be a problem in the future should we need asp.net back, but that it is actually much better behaved, uses less memory and reduces server load, and that asp.net keeps session info in the database to further reduce load. In fact, he seemed to recommend that. He's stating that if the forums were asp.net based, we'd be better off performance and service-wise. So for now....... we've settled down and are much faster and stable and wow, are we growing! And heavily used. I still am somehow leaning toward switching hosts - and if so, would probably be to "here" - it just makes sense. I'd still, however, like to see examples of what others are running the wwf forums and how many members, posts, etc. so I'd get a feel for things. ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: Sumea
Date Posted: 29 July 2007 at 5:33pm

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billd3 wrote: We just got an emergency message from our host! Apparently, we're killing the server with the forums. Since this is ALL we run on the server, it's got to be something with the forums, our setup, or some functionality of the forums We're going to literally lose our account/host if we don't fix it ASAP. ARRRGG! And we were just getting going, and the responses were overwhelming! ......   Here's their message to us: Hello, Your account was found to be using 167MB or ram on the Indus Server.... Best Regards, Bill King System Admin Team - Windows and Linux Junior System Administrator I AH CRAP!!! :( :( :( I just got the same notice tonight from the same webhost, and from the same guy too. O_O .. I just checked out the message they sent you and  yeh, my site is on the same server as yours, the Indus server.. :/ Apparently I'm using 207mbs of ram, but I'm racking my brains at how I am taking up so much resources when I only run WWF 9, and a small rss feed script which grabs one feed every hour and writes it into an xml file (no database connections or sessions used, all variables destroyed properly etc). I get 12 visitors to my small forum at the most at any particular time, so uh... I'm at a total loss as to what I can do to reduce the load O_O. Just to compare your site stats to mine, this month you've averaged 1347 hits per hour, my site averages only 100 hits per hour. So yeh, I have a lot less traffic than you, but somehow I'm using up a lot more ram... o_O I've disabled my rss feed script, and I'm left with the forum :/ Hopefully they wont shut me down :(

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 30 July 2007 at 8:03am

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I would certainly say change web host ASAP. The web host in question offers 400Gig data transfer, unlimited SQL Server, etc. for very little money. This business model would be impossible to sustain. So they have to find other ways to limit that make these very generous levels impossible to ever reach. What this web host is doing is to give each sites it's own application pool, so the first time the database is connected to, an email sent from your site, an upoad takes places, etc. the driver for that needs to be loaded into memory. IIS then keeps this driver in memory incase it's needed again to speed up performance. Add to this another 10KB per user, the amount of memory your site uses soon gets very high. By doing it the way your web host is, it means that you would be lucky to run any ASP, or ASP.NET web site on their system and have more than 100 visitors per day using around 5,000Gig per month. No were near the unrealistic figures that they give in their advertising speel. When you signup to a web host that appears to be giving allot more for your money, check the small print as often this is just advertising spin to get you to bite and not what you are really getting. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 30 July 2007 at 1:44pm

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mr. boRg sir - please educate me/us! I know a bit about servers (I'm a network admin for the state of Iowa in the U.S.) but am not a professional web host and only dabble in IIS. How do others handle the application memory? For example, you state that they "give each sites it's own application pool,"  which is correct, I'm sure - but what are the alternatives and why is one way better?? I'd like to know how you, or others, handle that! I can make better decisions when I know the "why" of something, not just that it's so. Used to drive my teachers nuts - I'd ask them "why" or "prove it". Bill http://theamcforum.com http://antique-engines.com >>What this web host is doing is to give each sites it's own application pool, so the first time the database is connected to, an email sent from your site, an upoad takes places, etc. the driver for that needs to be loaded into memory. IIS then keeps this driver in memory incase it's needed again to speed up performance. Add to this another 10KB per user, the amount of memory your site uses soon gets very high.<< ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 30 July 2007 at 3:57pm

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Sticking a web site in it's own application is often better because it has it's own memory, so if another site has some really bad coding that crashes the application pool then often it won't effect the other sites running on the server. However, doing things this way uses allot more memory, with the average ASP, or ASP.NET site using around 80Mb to 200MB of server memory. As server memory costs around $250 USD for 1Gig you will only usually find this level of service with more expensive web hosts as it eats allot of server memory and so is not a cheap way of doing it. What most shared web hosts will do is lump web sites together so they share application pools, this lowers the overall costs as the drivers only need to be loaded into memory once for all the sites in that application pool, so you can have say 50 sites all using 1 application pool which is using 200MB. If you want this level of service with your site running in it's own application pool, then the costs is much higher, to cover the costs of all the extra memory needed on the server. The web host you are using is trying to give this service at a very cheap price, so what they are doing is limiting the amount of memory allocation you have on the server. This then allows them to advertise large bandwidth resources etc. as it gets the customers to bite, but then the low memory usage (probably mentioned in the small print) allows them to  kick off all those users who have more popular sites and using dynamic applications. This then allows them to keep the nice customers who use very little resources packing lots of them on the server. A web hosts dream, lost of low resource using sites with very little server problems = maximum profits and very happy customers (as long as you have a site which doesn't use many resources). If you have smaller sites with a few dynamic ASP, and ASP.NET pages then this host will be ideal for your needs and should not have many problems hosting with them. But if you have a popular site or want to run forum, shopping cart, CMS, etc. software, then this web host is not the one for you. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 30 July 2007 at 4:13pm

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To give you an idea of application pool memory usage, here are some current figures for sites on our servers, all with their own application pool:- www.webwiz.net - 186MB - only uses SQL Server db for searches forums.webwiz.net - 154MB www.webwiz.net/clientarea - 93MB - virtual directory own app pool demo.webwiz.net - 86MB support.webwiz.net - 108MB - support ticket system with 2 users today Hosting Control Panel - 164MB Webmail service - 238MB As you can see not one of our sites would be permitted on your web host servers with their 80MB application pool limit, yet all these sites together only use 40Gig of data transfer a month. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 22 August 2007 at 3:55pm

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Well, the SQL errors stopped after they rebooted the host server. We've seen our host boot the server we're on at least 3 times in the last month. Yesterday, I had to re-login at least 6 times and session info was lost a lot. so I contacted them again, and go this very nice detailed response! (BTW - what does the thread number mean in this case??) Hello Bill, I monitored you resource usage for about a half hour and in that time I only saw your worker process recycle twice due to hitting the memory limit in place. I also checked the number of threads for your worker process and your site by far had the most activity on the entire server for the time I was monitoring your resource usage. I will have to put some scripts in place to monitor the total thread count for the day but I suspect that your site is the most heavily visited on the server. At one point your worker process was handling over 115 threads, at which point your worker process recycled due to reaching the memory limit. Here are the recycle events from the system log: A worker process with process id of '9260' serving application pool 'theamcforum.com(domain)(pool)' has requested a recycle because it reached its private bytes memory limit. 12:52:53pm A worker process with process id of '3372' serving application pool 'theamcforum.com(domain)(pool)' has requested a recycle because it reached its private bytes memory limit. 12:40:52pm A worker process with process id of '7452' serving application pool 'theamcforum.com(domain)(pool)' has requested a recycle because it reached its private bytes memory limit. 11:51:47am As you can see from the log data the only times there is a reset is due to the memory limit in place. I checked for other heavy resource users on the server and there simply are not any that have a high enough resource usage to cause a problem as the current memory load on the server is only about 60% which is well within normal operations for a web server. Based off of my observations from monitoring your site resource usage and the number of threads your worker process is raising I would really suggest looking into a dedicated server, even the entry level one as it would provide you with the greatest flexibility for your site. -- Best Regards, Bill King System Admin Team - Windows and Linux Junior System Administrator I ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 23 August 2007 at 9:13am

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That because you use a cheap shared web host. This is quite standard from shared web hosts and the cheaper the hosting the lower the limits. The reason being is that web servers cost allot of money to maintain, the less money the company charges for hosting the more sites need to be placed on the server. 1 high resource site can often use as many resources as 50 small sites, therefore shared web hosts prefer lower usage sites. What you should do is look for either a dedicated server, or a more expensive shared web host. A more expensive shared web host can allow you to have more server resources as they don't need to place as many sites on the server to cover the costs. ------------- https://www.webwiz.net/web-wiz-forums/forum-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - Web Wiz Forums Hosting https://www.webwiz.net/web-hosting/windows-web-hosting.htm" rel="nofollow - ASP.NET Web Hosting

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Posted By: billd3
Date Posted: 23 August 2007 at 1:04pm

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Yeah, TWO recycles in half an hour! Wow. Looks like over a two hour time, it resets several times. We can't afford a dedicated server - being funded strictly by the 6 moderators and a few paltry donations, however, we ARE in the middle of discussions about a move - and your hosting business is on the top of our "to look at" list if we determine we can afford it. I wanted you to see exact stats and logs for comment, and to learn more, and to see if your server can support us - say, the middle-of-the-road service. I have to suspect that the SQL errors we got earlier were due to the server running out of resources, and the sessions constantly get reset (assuming that's what the logs pointed to) We can probably afford $16 US a month, and I'm comfortable with the bandwidth but if we allow members to post photos of their cars, I really fear we'll run short of storage - 800 meg is NOTHING at all to a site that allows pictures of member's cars and restoration projects. We'd blow that away after a few months. (Especially with scans of original factory documents, dealer letters, etc that are of museum quality and quite rare.) We're in the middle of talks, and depending on what we can afford - and if they'll let us out of our hosting deal (unfortunately, we signed up with them for TWO years to save money) ------------- BillD http://theamcpages.com http://theamcforum.com

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