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We have migrated to new Dedicated Host (iweb.com). We are using Drupal as a CMS.

When I load a site from browser, the site loads in 40-50 seconds. We have no load on server (the site not yet published). While the site is loading I have checked that RAM is ok (1GB free).

Where I should start debugging? What might cause the problem like this?

Our server is with 4GB Ram. But we have constant 3GB used RAM. Is this normal? Command: free

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       4032752    2967016    1065736          0      59472    1658468
-/+ buffers/cache:    1249076    2783676
Swap:      2096472          0    2096472
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You have plenty of free RAM. See here for an explanation: linuxatemyram.com . You'll need to look elsewhere for bottlenecks - possible CPU usage or Disk I/O. – ErikA Oct 28 '10 at 23:53
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Your description doesn't narrow this down much. Is there a long 50 second delay and then the page appears? Does it start immediately then slowly load bit by bit for 50 seconds until it's finally done? Either way one thing you can do is load the page with your browser's development tools enabled so you can see the loading time graph. Chrome's tools will let you mouse over the loading bars and see how long each step took. – DerfK Oct 29 '10 at 1:30
how did this end up ? resolved i hope – Nick O'Neil Nov 1 '10 at 20:28
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5 Answers

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Drupal shouldn't need a load into memory, and you're right that this doesn't look like a memory-bound problem. It would be very interesting to see (a) some CPU load numbers while you're getting a slow page load and (b) a little more about your software stack.

I assume you're using Apache and MySQL; how were they installed? Did you do any tuning of their default configurations? Look at the Apache configuration first; the MPM configuration is a place where some "off" numbers can really slow you down. It would be good to see how the <IfModule mpm_prefork_module> block is configured, for example.

Once you've looked at the Apache configuration, MySQL config. (Nick O'Neil wisely suggested looking in to network latency if your database isn't on the same host as your Drupal.) I found this blog post helpful in database tuning for a site recently.

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up vote 2 down vote

is everything on the same server including the database for your drupal cms site too ? if the database is somewhere else that might be the culprit which is having problems.

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up vote 1 down vote

If this site was running normally on another server, and, we've identified you're not under heavy load. I'd suggest this is more likely to be DNS or firewall related; are you making any remote calls to another system to pull in feeds etc.

1) If you have an outbound firewall, any requests could be waiting 30 seconds before the timeout.

2) If you have incorrectly specified DNS on the server, or, you had additional local aliases on the previous machine, a DNS timeout could take 30 seconds. For example if you were calling something 'machine2' and machine2 was aliased in /etc/hosts on the old machine but not in normal DNS (ie available through resolv.conf).

Does any of this sound plausible for your situation?

Andrew

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up vote 0 down vote

Is this consistently slow? Many websites need to load into memory and will be slow the first few times they are accessed, especially if a database is involved.

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Except this we have bought server with 4GB Ram.

Dedicated machine? From ebay? This is REALLY low for a modern machine that is supposed to last 4-5 years and was just bought. A consumer board can pull in 16gb or RAM these days.

What is your IO load? Cpu load? 32 bit or 64 bit?

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4GB is not unusual for a dedicated server; it's possible to get a 2GB dedicated box (e.g. rimuhosting.com/order/startorder1.jsp?hom=t-ded shows a 2GB option). A light-traffic Drupal site should be able to run reasonably well on a 256-slice VPS (as long as it doesn't get Slashdotted, or whatever the kids do these days instead of Slashdotting), which has about 1/16 the RAM Toktik is using. – pjmorse Oct 28 '10 at 23:44
I consider it not smart. a 16gb server, esx or hyper-v on it an you have a lot more flexibility. DEDICATED means good for a couple of years (contract length), so plan for groth. – TomTom Oct 28 '10 at 23:47
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While 4GB may be low for a modern server, the fact that it's low has very little, if any, relevance on the OP's question. As his free output showed, he has plenty of free RAM. – ErikA Oct 28 '10 at 23:59
May or may not be. Unless you know it is a 64 bit system and there are multiple processes using up the memory it may be a memory limit, although one in software. – TomTom Oct 29 '10 at 5:35
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