[limested]

Originally Posted by DaFace

MariaDB 10.0.38. Most of the tables are MyISAM. I've debated messing around and seeing what would happen if I changed the POST table (which is the problem) to InnoDB, but it would likely take hours to change it and hours to change back if it still sucks. Plus, it could also royally break stuff. So I've decided I'm probably not the best one to do it.

At some point, if we decide we're just going to live with this software forever, we may need to consider pruning the database down. I've mulled over something like cloning the site and DB, then putting it at a different URL as a pure archive (no new posts), then pruning the active CP site down to just threads/posts from the past 5 years or something. Constantly sorting a 13 GB table almost has to be the biggest issue. There are better ways of doing the query in newer versions of vBulletin, but the queries in this version suck donkey balls.

The one hardware upgrade that I wonder might help would be to move to a server where we could throw the entire database onto SSDs rather than HDDs. I could be wrong, but it seems like IO is probably the issue, so moving the DB onto a drive that would respond a lot faster might help. Maybe.

So for what it's worth, here are the options as I see them:

• Live with what we have. Possibly try a few things that probably won't help much. The end.
• Try a hardware upgrade (new server with SSDs for storage maybe). Might not really help much. Tough to say. But could work. Very time intensive for AC.
• Prune the database. Some loss of functionality (couldn't bump a 15-year old thread, which can be fun sometimes). Moderate amount of time for AC.
• Move to completely different software. We'd gain a lot of features in "modern" software, but we'd lose some functionality people are used to here for sure. Rep would work differently. Thumbs would work differently. Categories and prefixes would work differently. Mod options like thread bans might not work. It would almost certainly fix the lag issues, but there are plenty of sites out there that have gone under due to major functionality changes, so it's not a decision to make lightly. Would be an insane amount of work for AC and high amount of work for others like me and Bearcat to try and tweak all of the settings to make things as familiar as possible.

Moving DB to own server on SSD’s would help quite a bit. Moving to a small cluster on SSD’s more. Move to a cluster that also shards the tables across multiple instances even more so.