Where to start with determining where a performance issue exists?
If your site/server feels sluggish, the first thing to do is login as root via SSH (you will need an SSH key). Then run the “top” command or the “htop” command. Your load should be less than 1.00 X the number of CPU cores of your server. For example, if you have a two CPU […]
MySQL is consuming lots of CPU
If MySQL is consuming a lot of your CPU resources or is maxing out your server, the best thing to do is login and watch the queries in realtime. Login to the server as root, and run “gp mysql login root” and then run: show processlist; And you’ll see something like the following screen: This […]
MySQL is taking up a LOT of disk space. Why?
If you’re finding that your MySQL is taking up a large amount of disk space on your servers, and you’re not running any particularly large websites, it’s likely that this is due to how InnoDB works. What may be happening is your sites are storing a lot of temporary data inside the database. Each InnoDB table […]
How to optimize databases to reduce bloat
Here at vCanopy, we’ve opted to use InnoDB as the default storage engine for SQL. It’s typically more performant than other storage engines like MyISAM. However, it does have one flaw: As you add data, the InnoDB table file is allocated more space and the file physically grows in size on the server. The InnoDB table […]
Why does my site take X seconds to load?
We often get asked why a site take X amount of seconds to load. Here’s the steps we would recommend in finding the culprit: Step 1. Disable all caching so that you can get a real picture of performance. Use GTMetrix to take a scan of the site as it is now, and record those […]
Converting MyISAM to InnoDB
A lot of the times when we see a performance related issue on a website it’s related to the database not being optimized. MyISAM is often a primary culprit and is an older, less efficient, and less reliable database storage engine than the more modern InnoDB. Part of the reason for this is that MyISAM […]