Load Test the New Slashdot Setup

As many of you have noticed, Slashdot has been pretty bogged as of late, but the end of that is at hand. The new setup has a dedicated SQL box and 3 load balanced http servers. We've been spending the last few months getting everything ready, and now its time for the final check. I'd like to ask you help testing the load balancing stuff: You can access the new system at this address. Its a slightly out of date mirror of Slashdot, but it should be more than enough for us to determine if the new setup can cleanly handle the load. Thanks for you help: If this all goes well, we'll transition to the new setup in the next few days. (And just in time, Slashdot was kicking out like a thousand pages (pages, not hits) a minute earlier today and stuff was really bogging down)

Comments

Mindcraft

[miracle69]

And just in time, Slashdot was kicking out like a thousand pages (pages, not hits) a minute earlier today and stuff was really bogging down

Good thing /. is using Microsoft's IIS. We all know linux can't handle a load like that. I guess the Mindcraft study was valid after all.

Now excuse me whilst I wipe my tears of laughter.

Re:Mindcraft

[toolj23]

hmm... SARCASM MAYBE???? I just might think so. damn!

CommentLimits?

[Trepidity]

So will this new setup mean we can finally get rid of those annoying CommentLimits of 25 comments per page?

Re:Put "10.1.1.1 adfu.blockstackers.com"in /etc/ho

[Signal 11]

Depending on your router tables, this may be a bad idea. If you use a default route and are on a ppp link (or forward it to another machine that does the same thing), it'll forward your query to 10.1.1.1 to your ISP, which may bounce all the way out to a major backbone before getting icmp unreach'd. In which case, it will spend another 4-5 hops getting back to you.. for a round trip of around 300ms.

The correct solution would be to set it to 127.0.0.*, which is guaranteed to have a fast turnaround. Depending on your setup, you can spit back a conn refused right away, or 404 when it accesses your local webserver.

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Why not make slashdot better cacheable?

[Holger]

I was always wondering why slashdot is so heavily depending on dynamically generated pages. Even if just the main page had proper caching information, you could already hand off all the anonymous users (people not logged in) to the worldwide caching hierarchy out there.

See what the cacheability engine on ircache.net has to say about slashdot.org. At least the gifs are cacheable, but why is that "Expires"-Tag set? Do you expect the gifs to change every week?

what about blockstackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that my browser pauses the longest when waiting for adfu.blockstackers.com...

Why is it...

[John Fulmer]

That Slashdot is immune from the 'Slashdot Effect'. Slow yes. Dead no..

Nice to see the new server(s?) are still breathing.... :)

jf

Re:Why is it...

[MindStalker]

Well its more than what you would think. Slashdot is tuned to the number of users it gets in a day. Latly even slashdot has been going down on rare occasions thats why they are getting new servers. The reason the slashdot effect is so much more hardhitting is the fact that if you take a site that say gets the same number of hits per day as slashdot. Then link to that site from slashdot, assuming you have no crossover (eg persons who would have visited the site anyhow) you have instantly nearly doubled the amount of visits to that site for a short amount of time. This sudden doubling effect generally leads to a very buggy site which causes people to hit the reload button. This increases the page hits by several percent more. Finally bringing the server to its preverbral knees

Re:It's a bit hard to tell, really

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Um. There's only one each of Australian, African, and North Ameican continents, and one each of the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Interesting (and cute) way of putting it, whether you meant to or not. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Flooding moderation (re: LIme aNd c0c0 nutz!!!!)

[mcc]

perhaps this is just another way of "testing" slashdot? although he's testing the wrong server, dagnabbit. He's supposed to be flooding the _test_ server, to see how it stands up. Ha.

A note to Taco-san or other /. admin type people: maybe you should consider adding a special "flood" category to the Moderator list, along with Offtopic and Troll.. then set up the servers in such a way that anything with a "flood" rating would immediately be given a much much shorter amount of space to run before the cutoff for "Read the rest of this comment.." happens. That might help to cut down on scroll times when floods like this one happen, without hurting posts that just happen to be really long.

and God dammit, what the hell IS the name of that "put the lime in the coconut, drink a bowl up" song? that's a cool song but nobody seems to know where i can find it. :P

-mcc-baka
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS THEFT

Re:dA LimE! dA c0c0nUt!!

[BadM0j0]

do i have to tell you were to put that cocnut? uP dA bUtt0ck5

Re:Will you please explain...

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Check my user info and read the various other threads I've been engaged in recently regarding quines. Failing that, read "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid," which is, as far as I'm concerned, gospel.
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Re:Will you please explain...

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

Oops... didn't realize those threads had expired already. Um. Look it up on Everything. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Smash it!!!

[Ledge Kindred]

Step 1) Go to java.apache.org

Step 2) Download ApacheJMeter

Step 3) Point ApacheJMeter at the new slashdot.

Step 4) Watch fun and hijinks ensue

(Ensue, ensue... I don't think that's a real word.)

-=-=-=-=-

Bring back cachedot.slashdot.org for static pages!

[BrianS]

I liked it when cachedot.slashdot.org was available for reading slashdot via slightly out of date static pages. It was much faster. Please bring it back!