Slow web-site response - resource limits?

[Ross K]

Good afternoon,

We run a large web-site with a complex CMS on our Plesk 9.2 Fedora 5 server. We have recently upgraded the server because of the database requirements of our web-site. The server has the following specs:

HP DL180
2x Quad Core Xeon L5410
8GB DDR2 RAM
4x 300GB SAS HD
HW RAID controller (Configured to RAID 5)
100Mbps Unmetered Bandwidth
1000Mbps (GE) uplink port
CentOS 5 64 bit
Plesk 9.2

So it's quite a beefy server to run our main web-site yet it takes a few seconds for the site to load (rather than instant on the screen). vBulletin forums under a different domain on the same box always load instantanously. Yet our main site takes up to between 3-5 seconds to fully load.

The load on the server appears to be fine, 'top' shows:

1:07pm up 5 days, 3:28, 3 users, load average: 0.50, 0.61, 0.67
224 processes: 222 sleeping, 2 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 2.8% user, 1.2% system, 0.0% nice, 95.9% idle
Mem: 8166160K av, 6271136K used, 1895024K free, 0K shrd, 309444K buff
Swap: 2096472K av, 1144K used, 2095328K free 2912872K cached

So, given the CPU usage, I can't understand why the site isn't being loaded quicker. I've even installed eAccelerator to try and speed things up, but it only made a minor difference. This is the php -v output:

PHP 5.1.6 (cli) (built: Apr 7 2009 08:00:18)
Copyright (c) 1997-2006 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.1.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2006 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader v3.1.34, Copyright (c) 2002-2009, by ionCube Ltd., and
with eAccelerator v0.9.5.3, Copyright (c) 2004-2006 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator

Is it possible, Plesk (or some other config somewhere) is perhaps limiting the amount of resources the domain/subdomain can use on the server? The resource usage options in the control panel are all set to unlimited but it doesn't imply it limits cpu/memory usage.

Grateful for any advice.

 

[onsightdata]

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[onsightdata]

I don't think it has anything to do with your server hardware. I find sites that I host that are Joomla ( CMS ) always take a few seconds to load. Not sure what CMS you use but I would assume its something similar.

Although I have seen exceptions. Have you tried to upload say a template website into a sub directory and see how fast that loads? Something that is not CMS based but straight html and see if there is any latency in that loading.

Just some ideas

 

[Ross K]

Have you tried to upload say a template website into a sub directory and see how fast that loads? Something that is not CMS based but straight html and see if there is any latency in that loading.
Just some ideas

Thank you for your reply.

Yes we have vbulletin forums that, whilst not plain html, still load instantly (like you were browsing them on localhost). They are installed on another domain on the same box. It is a Joomla based CMS we are using, and clearly there is a bottleneck somewhere, but I can't figure out where or what's causing it. If the server has so much resource free, why isn't it loading instantly?

 

[onsightdata]

Try this one http://demo.rockettheme.com/free/afterburner/ supposed to be the fastest joomla template right now loads right away for me.

But

http://demo.rockettheme.com/sep09/

Doesn't load fast as at all has that pause that I find with alot of Joomla websites.

I think you need to look at your joomla site in ways to optimize it. Like there is a ton of stuff out there that can help you make it load faster. Enable cache, site optimization etc.