The Question and Answer Board

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Unlikely.

I do have a consultant here for a couple of weeks, though, and one of his projects was to close down each and every unneccesary port on all machines, which he finished today.

He also helped with changing the layout of how we do adserving.

His next project is to configure the load balancer and install it. If memory serves, that'll be his last project this go-round.

I'll have him come back in when we get another webserver (probably in 2 months) and configure it to share webserving duties behind the load balancer.

That might beg the question "Why not install the load-balancer and another webserver now to solve the problem of the site crashing unexpectedly?"

The answer is that not only do we not know for sure that that'd fix the problem, it shouldn't be necessary on a webserver that's not even close to being over-worked. A webserver crashing at 35% utilization isn't a problem you throw a load-balancer and more webservers at. You throw them at a problem of a webserver being over-utilized and slowing down or crashing as a result.