Ok to get started here are the specs of my server: Dual Intel 5620 Processors (8 cores - 16 threads) 24GB DDR3 RAM 2 X 1TB Western Digital BLACK edition Drives 1000Mbps public and private ports 20TB of Transfer per Month ------------------------------------------ With that said I expect my site and was always told that with a server like that, my site would be able to handle all kinds of traffic. There are times where about 4k-5k people come to my site at the same time and the site slows down terribly even becoming unresponsive to a lot of people and not loading. The site does not fully come back up until another 5-10 minutes. But by that time, the users that were trying to access my website in the beginning usually don't try to come back again since the first couple of times it did not work. My website is the only one on the server and no other things are being ran on the server other than apache/ cpanel/ whm. Is there any kind of further configuration that needs to be done in order to have my website to the point where if 10,000 people for example want to come to my site at the same time that they have no problem accessing the website? This sudden traffic increase only happens once in a while throught the day.... its not constant 24/7 3,000 people coming in at the same time... thanks so much for all the help in advance!
You could setup nginx and php-fpm What is your site running, nevermind the server specs... What really matters is the site, how it's built and what it's doing. There are many ways to setup caching for most sites so that all the users do not need to query the disks (the slowest part of the server) for the data being served. You want to keep as much of the main parts of your site in active memory. Another thing to note - cpanel and whm usually have settings set for php and mysql that will limit the amount of ram a user or process can use at once. It's possible your cpanel configuration is the problem. If 5,000 people are all calling the same script on the server, it could be shutting down that operation before it finishes thinking it's saving the other hosting accounts that aren't there. Do you have a server administrator or managed server?
As you run a WP based site, there are many pitfalls with it, with a non optimized server that you just purchased, you will first need to optimize the server, by default, there are no limitations set by WHM for mysql & php, there typically may be 1 rlimit set in Apache, but that depends on the hosts build of WHM. The issue with setting up nginx & php-fpm on a WHM system, you will break "easyapache", the better bet at this point is to just run nginx as a front end proxy and drop off all php needs to apache to process, let nginx do your main connections & caching for all static files.
Hmm... well I dont understand much of the terminology or how to set the parameters correctly on cpanel. My server is un-managed. Would you be willing to help me set up to achieve maximum performance? I would be more than happy to pay you for your time / help! Thanks
I assume, the service provider for your unmanaged dedicated server must have paid support available. If you are willing to pay then you may ask your service provider to solve this and pay them Handling 10000 visitors at the same time should be absolutely fine for a server with such specifications. There should be some messup with the settings. As suggested, check if there is some limitations given on each account in cPanel. There could be even more causes.
Setup nginx, use php-fpm and apply fastcgi-cache for your needs. For example, make your site cached 5 minutes for visitors and non-cached for your members, let me know if you want me to help you.
I think this is very common, you will face this problem with almost every web host as this is one of the most irritating problem a web master faces. But still you have to face this problem. I think upgrading is not a solution to this instead try a different host for a month.