Traffic from Reddit Crashed my Server

[51463]

I have some questions about my VPS server and traffic.

Last night i starting recieveing a lot of traffic from a website called Reddit. I checked the alexa rating on that website and it's really high. Around 48 in the world. I guess someone put a link in one of their posts linking to one of my threads on my forum. I saw in my Statcounter account exactly where they were coming from.

Within 1 hour i went from 5000 pages views to 11,000 pageviews and also within that 1 hour my forum was super slow and then my server crashed. And my forum was no longer running. I had to go on that website and ask them to delete the link. After the link was deleted my forum eventually was up and running again.

Overall i run a small forum. My traffic is only about 5000 pageviews a day. And i only have about 40 users online at the same time. I am on hostgator VPS. I've never had any problem until today.

Could someone tell me why this happened? I checked my server error logs and this is what i found:





My VPS



From what i understand is that the problem was due to not having enough ram. My VPS account has only 2GB of ram. Is this true?

I've been thinking of upgrading my VPS to the next level up.It has the same CPU 2 Cores the only difference is that it has 4GB of ram. Would upgrading be a wise decision?
I figured my current VPS would be able to handle this amount of traffic. Last night i didn't even think 11,000 pageviews was alot. But i was surprised my server crashed.

Normally my forum is a bit slow. But it's never crashed. I've been thinking of upgrading for a while now to the 4 GB VPS.

Would this make a big difference? Or should i hire someone to tweak settings to improve my current VPS?

Advice , please, thanks

Here is a report i got from GTmetrix

 

[Slavik]

You don't know what reddit is?

Long story short, your site simply got hammered by more users than your resources could handle. Not much more to say than that, you just need to decide if you'd like more leeway if it happens again.

 

[dawg]

You don't know what reddit is?

Long story short, your site simply got hammered by more users than your resources could handle. Not much more to say than that, you just need to decide if you'd like more leeway if it happens again.

I wonder if the link had anything to with celebrities?

 

[SneakyDave]

Reddit can kill a site pretty quickly, but the traffic usually disperses after a week or so.

If you can increase CPU and memory on the fly, relatively, that's probably a better bet than just upgrading in case you ever have another reddit 'event'.

It's kind of a good problem to have.

 

[rainmotorsports]

For the amount of money you are spending you could afford a much better unmanaged server. Would require doing everything yourself. Your name is serverguy after all

 

[JulianD]

For the amount of money you are spending you could afford a much better unmanaged server. Would require doing everything yourself. Your name is serverguy after all

Yeah, around a 6 core, 8GB VPS on DO or Linode.

 

[WSWD]

Your specs are just fine for your normal forum use. The problem is that when you get a huge influx of traffic, those specs are most definitely not fine. If this is something that happens regularly, you should definitely upgrade, or perhaps even go with a cloud solution, where you can scale the resources immediately on the fly.

 

[51463]

You don't know what reddit is?

This is the first time i've heard about it. I checked it out yesterday but i found it confusing.

For the amount of money you are spending you could afford a much better unmanaged server. Would require doing everything yourself. Your name is serverguy after all

Unfortunately I am uncapable of manging the server myself. I have been learning servers for the past 6 years as a hobby. I can semi-mange it but i still need help.

Your specs are just fine for your normal forum use. The problem is that when you get a huge influx of traffic, those specs are most definitely not fine. If this is something that happens regularly, you should definitely upgrade, or perhaps even go with a cloud solution, where you can scale the resources immediately on the fly.

This is the first time it's happened on my VPS. I'm not sure what cloud solution is but i will check it out


I recently upgraded from Plesk Panel to Cpanel because I am preparing to move hosts in the new year. HostGator's wait times are now about 30 min - 1 hour.

I just thought my VPS 2000 could handle a lot more. It seems pretty weak to crash from that many hits. 10,000 extra pageviews doesn't even seem like alot.

I have been keeping my eye open for a new hosts. I'm just confused about which host to go to. But Support is what is the most important to me.

Thank you for the new host suggestions.

 

[rainmotorsports]

I just thought my VPS 2000 could handle a lot more. It seems pretty weak to crash from that many hits. 10,000 extra pageviews doesn't even seem like alot.

Problem is your 5000 page views are over day. 10,000 extra doesn't seem like much until you realize 3,000 of them were probably in the first 5 minutes. Something interesting gets posted on reddit it's either interesting now or its not even interesting at all. Hot stuff generates traffic quickly, anything else dies quickly unless its in a slow sub reddit.

The server would handle 15,000 page views a day, but not lets say over a half hour?

 

[Jake B.]

The fact that you're paying almost $90/mo for a server with 2GB of ram, at a company that has went to hell ever since it was bought out is a bit shocking. (IE moving to a datacenter, and then going down for 48+ hours 3 times in a single month for "planned server upgrades" that they failed to tell anyone about, and then changing their story that it was unplanned emergency maintenence -- sorry, rant over now). If you're looking for a managed server I HIGHLY recommend Servint, their prices are similar to HostGator, but provide much better support, plus they use SSD. If you want something unmanaged go with Hetzner I used them for a while for a few old projects and was paying around $50/month for:

32GB Ram
2x 2TB HDD
Intel Core i7-4770 Quadcore processor

Also, with them if you live outside the EU they will take the 19% VAT off. Their support is great, however they are a German company, so you might come across a person that doesn't speak English (I only had this happen once, and they transferred me to someone who did).

Also, you can get additional IPv4 subnets, HDD, or SSD for very reasonable prices.

 

[WSWD]

This is the first time it's happened on my VPS. I'm not sure what cloud solution is but i will check it out

There are a lot of companies out there who claim to offer cloud hosting (Digital Ocean is the biggest non-cloud scams of them all, claiming to be a cloud host). Ideally, a real cloud host will give you a control panel that allows you to alter your resources (RAM/CPU/etc.) in real time, and pay only for the amount of time (usually in minutes or hours) that you use the extra resources. That way, you can keep 2GB of RAM normally, but when you get large spikes in traffic, you can instantly bump it up to 8GB or 16GB or 500GB of RAM or whatever you need.

I don't normally recommend cloud hosting as most "cloud" providers aren't really offering a cloud service, and real clouds are very expensive, so most folks don't need them. But for sites that see spikes in their routine traffic regularly, it's a very good solution.[/QUOTE]

 

[dawg]

@WSWD

Do you have some test IP's and a speed test download? thanks.

 

[BoostN]

If you're looking for a managed server I HIGHLY recommend Servint, their prices are similar to HostGator, but provide much better support, plus they use SSD.

Agreed, I have a few sites on a managed ServInt VPS.. they've always had great support. They are a little expensive though..

 

[Jake B.]

Agreed, I have a few sites on a managed ServInt VPS.. they've always had great support. They are a little expensive though..

Their prices really aren't that bad, a bit cheaper than HostGator's. For $5 more than he is paying he can get double the RAM, and 4 IPv4 addresses. I would still Recommend going with Hetzner as long as you know what you're doing.