[forums-announce] Update on forums performance

[klieber]

Folks --

Quick update on the recent performance issues with the forums. The problems stem from the fact that our keyword table (which is used to facilitate searching) is over 1.5GB and searches on this table bring mysql to its knees. The database server is already a dual Xeon machine with 4GB of RAM, so unless someone out there has a spare 8-processor machine sitting around, we're going to have to find alternate solutions to this problem.

One solution that we've avoided at all costs up until this point is culling old posts from the database. One of the primary strengths of the forums has been its outstanding archive of information. However, we've reached a point where we simply cannot scale any more and keep the forums in a usable state.

So, we're going to look at implementing a "two forums" solution where one forum will contain "live" recent information and another forum will contain older (currently anticipated to be 6+ months) posts and be read-only.

This will allow us to keep older posts while maintaining a reasonable level of responsiveness for the rest of the forums.

This is not an ideal solution, but we do feel it is the best solution given our resources and circumstances. As always, users are welcome to post their feedback in the Gentoo Forums Feedback forum.

--kurt
_________________
The problem with political jokes is that they get elected

[klieber]

A minor update:

We tweaked a few things here and there and moved the apache part of the forums over to a new server. Things like "view posts in last 24 hours" should be working now. If you notice any other oddities or problems, please raise them in the feedback forum.

--kurt
_________________
The problem with political jokes is that they get elected