I'm not sure where to post this so please move it to the correct area.

What's up with the RCU website slowdown and the search function? I've ran several searches tonite and nothing's coming back when I've ran these same searches before and the went fine, (albeit slowly). Do we plan to refine the search features on RCU and speed up the site? I'm not wanting to sound nitpicking but I'm a systems engineer and know these are rare problems in todays world and can be easily rectified and aren't challenging from a monetary standpoint. Over the past few weeks I've noticed the problem worsening. I'd love to help but I'm sure they have a fine IT staff at their disposal and just wondered when something would be done. Mainly in the search functions.

Not criticizing just observing.

Let us know your background. Maybe you can help us out here. Over the past few weeks though we have had periods of downtime or other issues. We had 4 hard drives fail on us in less than 2 months and 2 operating system failures. we are in a load balanced config so we stay up and running but depending how much we are down there could be bottlenecks at various times of day. right now we are at 100%.

the search engine repopulates around 6am and finishes around 10am est. during that time the results will be slow and either incomplete or blank (welcome to ms search). if you know work around to ms-sql search please advise. however we have some DBA's that are on the task to see if there is anything else to optimize the less than ideal ms search on sql

Hello Marc,

I'm sorry to hear about the problems. I own and operate a consulting firm that services the LA, MS, and AR areas. I've been in the IT field for 26 years and am hardware certified as well as an MCSE. I've supervised website development on many projects. However, I typically provide network and software support and focus on the small to medium sized business, (10 - 50 workstations). I consult and design networks for medical firms, small hospitals, petroleum and Law firms primarily. I also act as a consultant between IT and Corporate entities to unsure quality control and economy.

As for your database issues utilizing MSSQL. I'm sure your DBA's are on top of this as SQL optimization information and guidance is readily available on Microsoft's site, (albeit a pain) and other more user friendly sites on the net. I'm curious. Is the search engine on it's own machine and not in the web structure? Is it redundant if so? I know several MSDBA's that work for medical companies and contract with them often to optimize and support both their companies and others databases and would be happy to ask one to work with you on this if you like.

I'm concerned with your equipment/OS configuration and with the failures you've been experiencing. How many systems are involved. Do you have enough so that in case of failure, worst case senario is still optimal? What types of RAID's are you running and in what hardware configurations. Do these configurations mirror themselves on each machine involved? Do all the machines possess the same general characteristics? What about hardware and it's failure? What brand/speed/size HD's are you running? Is the OS configured optimally, (cache's on physically separate drives and are these drives RAIDs and if so what types?)?

I'd just like to say that RCU is an excellent website and an exceptional effort. I utilize it's many features "everyday" and there are many, many projects that I would not have completed, either in a timely fashion or even correctly had it not been for RCU's extensive resources.

I'd be happy to provide any assistance or advise either I or my associates can offer.

Thanks,

William (Chris) Couie, MCP, MCSE, A+
[email protected]
[email protected]
www.ccouieconsulting.com

Thanks for the offer to help out. You will be put at ease to know that RCU runs on over a dozen servers. The data critical machines are all RAID 0 or 5. I'll shoot you an email to give you more info so I don't bore the non tech types with this stuff

As mentioned we just had an enormous string of bad luck in the last 2 months of which I spent the better part rebuilding and reconfiguring new systems and drives. A hard drive MTBF (mean time between failure) is rated at around 12 years. Well these 2-4 year old drives went within a few weeks of each other! Just really bad luck.

Aside from search right now things should be a bit faster. The other slowdown could be the ad server system which can hang up pages a bit but we are working on expanding the hardware on that or using a larger commercial based system since we likely have outgrown our open source solution.

Will send you an e-mail. Thanks