h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"How can the powers at be keep saying it's down to volume of traffic when at 2am the other day there were 58 people actually logged on for the WHOLE BBC site and yet I still got the same server errors?"

That's down to a completely separate problem. The SSO database which DNA uses to verify identity is switched to read-only at 2am in order to back it up. If you've been using the site recently, you'll be OK, but if it's been a couple of hours since you looked at the site, then we make a request to SSO to log you in, which waits until the backup is finished. This is currently taking over 30 minutes.

In addition, last night, there was other maintenance going on which would have led to large delays and server too busy errors for a couple of hours. This was a one-off piece of maintenance.

So that's why you would have seen them last night.

Would it be anti-social of you to visit the Powers Above, and tell them that they're YOUR servers and that you want them for h2g2?

B

knock a few reality shows into touch and buy a supercomputer from the U.S.A.(second hand one)

"Would it be anti-social of you to visit the Powers Above, and tell them that they're YOUR servers and that you want them for h2g2?"

I don't think that would work. They're not *that* scared of me.

Ah-ha! I'd wondered about the 2am thing, and how it is impossible to switch between accounts for a bit. And now I know the answer. Cheers

Hi Jim.....appreciate you responding.
As a trainee pc software writer and into web design things as well I know little about servers and there capabilities, hope to learn more as time goes on.
I don't understand this business of capacity re. the BBC's servers.
Considering the amount of plugging that BBC online get from all it's broadcast channels, whether TV or radio, surely someone must have realised that access to the sites was going to grow at an amazing rate, not just hootoo but all parts.
Wouldn't it have been better for the BBC, in terms of costs and customer satisfaction, to have invested in more advanced servers such as the IBM blade servers, where you literally just install additional 'blades' to meet the demand without having to replace complete systems.?
Or am I being too simplistic?

*bends over and waits for kick up backside*

i've a sinclear ZX,in a box unused unmadeand unloved, could it help out!

i've a sinclear ZX,in a box unused unmade and unloved, could it help out!

Jet Set Willy!

Would an ancient 'Newbrain' be of any use too?

....or Deep Thought...?

I doubt there was ever that much deep thought at old trafford

opps, didn't mean old trafford, ment the BBC, watching the FA cup at the moment

*tempory Burton fan*

wooohooooooo itsonice to be back at hootoo "TRYING TO POST" something

As MoFlo points out it all comes free. Does the BBC need to provide world wide internet service. Why did they salvage h2g2 ?
F55683?thread=130228

"I don't think that would work. They're not *that* scared of me."

Christ. They clearly haven't seen your turn in the Hitchhikers' film DVD extras. Scared the crap out of me.

B

"surely someone must have realised that access to the sites was going to grow at an amazing rate, not just hootoo but all parts."

Yes they did. Last year, the infrastructure was upgraded at fairly considerable cost to cope with the projected increase in traffic which the messageboards would bring, plus some overhead for growth.

It now turns out that, for whatever reason, the traffic we're seeing now is something approaching three times the projected traffic. So it's not surprising they're being stretched during our busiest time.

Adding more webservers won't help with the underlying problem we're currently experiencing, which is the amount of posting traffic from the messageboards causing bottlenecks in the database. We could upgrade to a bigger database server, but there's no budget for a new server at the moment, coming so close to a previous upgrade. And a bigger database would only give us a certain amount of headroom. The likely outcome of that would be the really busy boards simply getting busier to consume the spare space.

We're working on a number of solutions right now. We're analyzing the behaviour of the system under the kinds of load we get, to see where the bottlenecks are, and to try to remove the bottlenecks. We're also working with the messageboard owners to try to come up with ways of reducing the amount of traffic, possibly by changing the way the boards work, or by encouraging more quality in postings.

could it help, by wiping certain threads after a length of time, loads on loads are only 2/3/4 posts long and are not used again, but still have to be loaded up etc??

In a bust forum, it could be helpful to move old threads if there are a lot of them. A sane archiving policy is one of the things we're trying to institute on the busier boards.

er, that should have read 'in a busy forum'...