New server

So it turned out that the original server of Da Button Factory, which was one of the cheapest solution with root access and unlimited traffic that I could find (less than 15 USD/month), was really inadequate for a real-world activity.

The main bottleneck was in the I/O. The server didn't have a local hard drive, but instead used a remote storage device via iSCSI.
Consider that for now, the factory has to create ~ 15 new buttons/second at rush hour. And the buttons are all cached on the disk, to be served (much) faster if they are queried again. So, that's a reasonable amount of I/O work, and here it is be done on a remote server (and moreover a cheap one!)... Plus, it seemed the remote iSCSI host was really particularly bad.

Anyway, Da Button Factory is now run on a new server, with a local storage facility (a classic SATA hard drive) this time. It also has 1 gb of RAM (vs 512 mb) and a much bigger storage space (250 vs 10 gb).
It's up since nearly 2 days now, and the average load is far less than on the old old!


Also, the app has got a little update today, introducing a small "information panel" on the bottom of the page. For now, you can just navigate between some tips in it, but I plan to add more different sources of contents.



P.S: curious people can have a look at the total number of generated buttons, counting since the deployment on the new server.