making a lot of a little effecient

[LEFT]Currently, we’re using InterWorx as a free hosting platform. On one example server, we have a p4 3.0 w/ HT running aboutst 1100 tiny free hosting accounts which see very little overall usage (as is typical for free hosting). Watching TOP on this server at any given time, we see the top process at about any given time is iworx-db, using 80-85% CPU. The second process is PHP at around 10%, presumably executing some related iworx tasks for the former, and down the board from there, almost entirely other iworx-related stuff. What we almost never see, is httpd. Although overall those processes are highly necessary for DNS sync and such, at times it seems like we are really hosting InterWorx, rather than web pages.

Now I should say that this is not at all a plea for support from iWorx, or a complaint of any kind. On the contrary - the software works beautifully for what it’s built to do, and what we have been experimenting with really doesn’t fit into that category at all. We use it in our paid hosting and wouldn’t have it any other way. What I am interested in, however, is any advice that the brilliant minds of this forum might have in terms of what we might be able to attempt in order to increase effeciency with this unique setup.

We supply no stats of any kind or value-added features such as antivirus and spam blocking here. Just lots and lots of little, basic, web sites - a different universe from paid hosting entirely. As our site outranks Yahoo! Geocities and the other bigtime free hosts in masses of powerful searches, and more new members pounding at the door than it seems we’ll ever be able to possibly handle, we’re in a position where it makes sense only to do whatever is necessary to place our absolute focus on whatever it takes to make things effecient. Maybe we’ve done all we can - Mr. Wells did estimate ~1k accounts would be reasonable per server for us with DNS syncing in use (although we crammed 7k on one in the pre-DNS-syncing era :slight_smile: ), but whatever thoughts can be offered here are very much appreciated.
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I noticed when user were using webmail (horde) my CPU usage went up and was reported as Iworx usage I guess b/c horde runs through Iworx. If you have a bunch of small accounts all checking their email at the same time this could put a nice load on a server.

That is sound advice, but in this case, e-mail doesn’t seem to be a problem. We only allow webmail access, and e-mail use stays very low. After further investigation our net admin says bandwidth.pex seems to be the real killer sustaining that 85% CPU gobbling.

I believe that runs with the fively cron - outside of the obvious botched RRD graphs, and less frequent DNS syncing, I wonder if it might be worthwhile in ou scenario to stretch out the frequency at which the fively runs?

Webmail access is where I saw the higher load and I only have one account that really uses webmail vs doing POP3. So if you even had 100 users using webmail at the same time that could be an impact.

But if you are sure you tracked it down to the bandwidth.pex than I guess running it a little less often make work for you. Someone that knows what they are talking about should probably chime in, but I dont see much of a negative impact if you say run that every 10 mins instead of 5.

If you offer email of any kind you might restrict usage to POP3 and turn off IMAP. But then, in my opionion, you’d be eliminating one of IWorx’s strongest features.

Actually we already turn off pop3 and limit imap. It’s free hosting… we can’t put ads in people’s Outlook, unforuntately, so webmail seems to be the way to go for us. :slight_smile:

Anyhow, the input is much appreciated, but the problem doesn’t appear to be e-mail, it’s the routine iworx-db processes. At this point in time I don’t think there’s any documentation on the iWorx crons, though I believe it’s on the agenda, for now I suppose we’ll just have to wait for that before furthering our little project.

Interesting that you turned off POP. I’d like to do the same but all the lousy mail clients coughing up IMAP wouldn’t be worth it. :slight_smile:

I’ll be asking one of the devs to write something up detailing the cron processes some time after HC. It’s now on the “official” to do list, but right now there are a number of other things ahead of it and we’re all swamped with HostingCon stuff and testing the next version due out before HC :wink: