Need some advice on Linux CentOS
 

Virtual Private Server with 1.1 gigs of memory
Server Type Linux CentOS 5X
Web Server Apache v2.0.63
PHP 5.2.8
PHP Max Post Size 32.00 MB
PHP Maximum Upload Size 32.00 MB
PHP Memory Limit 256.00 MB
MySQL Version 5.0.67-community
MySQL Packet Size 16.00 MB
Forum software - Vbulletin 3.8

Hits per 24 hours - 9,500 - 10,500
Page views per month - about 2.97 million

The server host 3 websites - 1 vbulletin forum and 2 wordpress blogs.

Apache is causing high CPU load. Even though the server has 600 - 700 megs of free memory, CPU usage is through the roof. Even more then the MYSQL usage.



If you were trouble shooting this, where would you start?

DOS-Deflate has been installed to stop DDOS attacks.
Apache has been recomplied with with multithreaded architecture (MPM support).
Hotlinking on images was disabled yesterday.

If I can not get this fixed, I'am going to have to lease a dedicated server. And that cost 2.5X more then what I am paying right now.

I'd start with the Apache mailing lists. Anytime I am troubleshooting a specific system I go to the source. I suspect you're going to be looking at the # of child processes being spawned and how many requests they're allowed to handle. You might also look to see if you're doing any url rewrites as they can soak up CPU pretty quickly. Frankly I think 1.1 GB in Ram is a little thin for what you're describing but then I tend to overbuild...so what do I know? :lol:

Could it be a bad VPS?
If the host(s) is overloaded, you could suffer from not having enough CPU.

Have you contacted the hosting company?

The hosting provider said that my forum is sending out a massive amount of emails through PHP. I am going to guess that those emails are the thread subscriptions. And then are the birthday emails, and reminder emails.

The host put a limit of 100 emails per hour on the server. But that has not fixed the problem.

I got a quote on a dedicated server yesterday. It looks like I will be combining the sites hosted on the two VPSs into one server.


The hosting provider has been notified several times about the problem. They keep saying its because of the traffic.

In the past 6 months, the traffic to my forum has doubled. So I have probably just out grown the VPS.

could you limit subscription emails to a digest?

Try disabling all outbound e-mail from your forums temporarily and make a post about it, wait a day or two, see what happens. Then you have your answer.