Skip to content
TORNLIFE More

Performance differences between App servers

Started by Alexstrasza [1825532] on in Bugs & Issues.

39 replies · 984 views · thread synced · 4 days ago · View on torn.com
About this thread

Posts archived: 40 / 40 posts (100%) · the total is Torn's reply count + the opening post at the last fetch

Counted by TornLife from the archived posts.

Archived posts
40
Discussion span
→
Authority score
63 / 100
Historical score
47 / 100
Story score
63 / 100
Engagement score
77 / 100

People posting, likes and official posts are not counted for this thread yet: on threads longer than one page they come from a periodic pass over the archive, which has not covered it.

Most-liked replies

  • Chedburn [1] Admin · 15 likes ·
    We're actually in the process of ordering 5 new servers to replace all of the current web servers. The current fluctuations are caused by different hardware specs and difficulty with load balancing effectively. The new servers are very powerful - …
  • Chedburn [1] Admin · 14 likes ·
    It's the original deal. $60,000 worth of servers for $6,000. They're just over a year old (previously used in a super computer) and require fresh disks, but absolutely perfect for Torn's needs and will handle our front-end by 200% - …
  • someotheradmin [1748048] Tester · 13 likes ·
    Nine women can't make a baby in one month, Alexstrasza
Alexstrasza [1825532] · #1 · edited

Hi There,

I'd like to bug report this, as it's been frustrating me for a couple of weeks.

The performance difference between different App servers on Torn is too vast. If you are lucky enough to land on App2 or App3, doing attacks or loading pages is incredibly fast, and enjoyable. If you're unlucky enough to land on App6 or App7, then pages take 5,10,15 seconds sometimes to load; Faction pages are painful to load, everything is slow and laggy and unenjoyable, and feels like being back on dial-up.

You can see the performance bars on this page: https://www.torn.com/usersonline.php.

Could you please look into why the performance on 6 & 7 are always very poor, and 2 & 3 are always good. 5, 8, 9 & 10 are a mixed bag, and in-between, and still not very fun at most times to sit waiting between page loads.

Would love to see if something can be done.

Cheers.
Carl [1188181] · #2

while they're at it, they should change the "users connected" totals too.. its always wrong compared to the users online in the last minute.
Chedburn [1] Admin Developer · #3

We're actually in the process of ordering 5 new servers to replace all of the current web servers.

The current fluctuations are caused by different hardware specs and difficulty with load balancing effectively. The new servers are very powerful - they're 1 year old, second hand from a super computer, with fresh disks, all identical in spec, we got a crazy good deal. They should easily last us for 5+ years, be totally optimal for this time (no bottleneck) and have high redundancy.
Ihaven0taste [2001543] · #5

Ched are you guys capable of looking to migrate to AWS? I know you just bought that hardware, but might be something to plan long term.
Alexstrasza [1825532] · #6

Bumping this. You said you purchased new servers 2 months ago, Ched. Territories is awful if you can't land on app2 or app3. Needs fixing I think.
mug [553318] Committee Committee · #7

really stinks if you don't get server 2 or 3. really need to get this fixxed, basically if you're on server 2 or 3 you can buy mug someone before they even finish loading it into their bazaar.

you could hit a 25 times within a 15 second flashbang but only 1 time if you were on another server.

this just needs to be improved ASAP! a bit sarcastic but not far off - it's a huge game changer being on 2 or 3 vs the others and such a disadvantage not being on them.
Chedburn [1] Admin Developer · #8

We're still working on this, should have some news in the next couple of weeks. Otherwise we'll have to give up on this 'deal' and just order some others - twice as expensive through other means unfortunately.
Alexstrasza [1825532] · #9

Why not just move everything to AWS and get it properly hosted? And not have to worry about the up-front cost of new servers?
Chedburn [1] Admin Developer · #10

The entirety of Torn's front-end on cloud hosting? I'm not a server admin, but i'm sure there's very good reasons for why we haven't done that.
Multipass [1955315] · #11 · edited

As long as one of those reasons isn't "my current sys admins are not familiar with cloud based infrastructure" ...

EC2 is pretty impressive these days and the ability to scale on demand might be super useful for a site like Torn which I'm guessing has significant demand spikes.

My guess would be the thing that might prevent you migrating to the cloud would be some gotcha in your software stack, not inadequately performant cloud based compute power or data stores.

Regardless, that uptime is pretty baller : P
Chedburn [1] Admin Developer · #18

It's the original deal. $60,000 worth of servers for $6,000. They're just over a year old (previously used in a super computer) and require fresh disks, but absolutely perfect for Torn's needs and will handle our front-end by 200% - 300% more capacity than optimal and last us for at least 5 years.

As with any infrastructure change there might be some issues initially while they're optimised. But great for Torn's future and eliminates that bottleneck entirely.