RE: [WEB400] What happened to rpgenerationx.com?

["Andrew Borts" <Andrewb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We actually worked with the IBM folks to try and resolve it, and set thread 
count accordingly to their suggestions - which varied greatly.  I even 
theorized that the AS/400's built in security could have thought the Firewall 
was starting a Denial of Service attack against the AS/400 so I either Disabled 
or enabled this functionality and tested this way.

Once we'd cover one hole, another one would appear.  It was VERY ugly.  There 
wasn't a single smooth E-mail blast the AS/400 [E-mails sent to between 200 
thousand customers and 1 million customers] could survive without going down.

Everyone gets all fired up when I state that the AS/400 IS a very reliable 
system - TRUE - and it IS a very robust operating system - TRUE - but the HTTP 
server isn't as reliable, and darn close to sub-par in it's reliability.

When they had days of "Big E-mails" I setup the Management Central to monitor 
the system, and BEEP if the performance level of the system would drop to about 
1% (the system was up 24x7 and we always had a steady stream of about 300 
people an hour hitting our systems between Midnight and seven am.)   When the 
HTTP server stopped responding, there was no message, no warning (other then 
the drop in performance) and no customers.  Only thing to do was end & re-start 
the damn thing - NOT the STRTCPSVR *HTTP RESTART(*HTTP) that would FAIL half 
the time.  I setup Brad Stones GETURI program to surf the site, and when the 
response dipped to about 2 minutes response time, I knew I was having a problem 
(since the norm was sub-second response) - I would get paged when these 
problems existed.  If I didn't do this, by the way - my partners would page me 
too - so there was ALWAYS a need to fix problems and prevent new ones from EVER 
happening.

The same pattern STILL exists Nathan - the GENX site dropped for NO REASON, and 
the ignite 400 site drops for no reason.  Is fiddling with the controls of the 
dang thing the option?  Is switching to Apache the option?

I'm going to make this statement now and forever more.  IBM doesn't WANT the 
AS/400 to become the next WEB anything.  It's a back end system.  There is NO 
rack mountable AS/400 nor will there ever be one (IBM please prove me wrong!).  
There is a rack mountable RS/6000 - remember the system made of roughly the 
same stuff as an AS/400?!?  So I can't cluster the systems in a rack, as people 
do with Dells, and RS/6000's and now Mac's.  I still need a kick butt Load 
Balancer in front of a bunch of TINY systems (which don't exist in the AS/400 
world!) so I can take the traffic, or have the redundancies that naturally 
exist in the smaller server world.   I can't save space unless I buy that HUGE 
MONSTER rack with a slider capability built in, which gives me a whopping total 
of 2 AS/400's where I can normally have about 20 Dells, or even 5 RS/6000's.  
So when I want to Co-locate (which I have done to get more communications) an 
AS/400 - I spend significantly more per month because I'm sitting in open floor 
space or sitting on a special shelf constructed for AN AS/400...

To play in this arena, Apache seems to be the answer - because of HIGHLY 
available HTTP serving support there, but HTTP classic server is being dropped 
like a hot potato soon (V5R4/5?) so I wonder exactly how much DE-bugging and 
support we're going to get as time draws end of it's lifecycle...

The AS/400 is a perfect communications box - great for B2B, but B2C is only for 
LIGHT shops only, and only if you HAD an AS/400 anyway.

Andrew Borts / Webmaster
Seta Corporation
6400 East Rogers Circle
Boca Raton, FL 33499

E-mail: Andrewb@setacorporation.com
Corporate web site http://www.setacorporation.com
E-Commerce web site http://www.palmbeachjewelry.com
                              http://www.myfreeitems.com
Voice: 561-994-2660 Ext. 2211 / Fax: 561-997-0774

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan M. Andelin [mailto:nandelin@RELATIONAL-DATA.COM]
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 6:22 PM
To: web400@midrange.com
Subject: Re: [WEB400] What happened to rpgenerationx.com?

Andrew,

This sounds like it may be related to the number of threads your HTTP Server
was running.  Normally an IE client requires two (2) threads, and a Netscape
client may require up to twelve (12) threads.  Do you recall the number of
concurrent users you were trying to support, and the threads you were
running?

Nathan M. Andelin
www.relational-data.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Borts" <Andrewb@setacorporation.com>
To: <web400@midrange.com>
Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 3:40 PM
Subject: RE: [WEB400] What happened to rpgenerationx.com?


This is a common problem with HTTP server classic (I don't know if it
happens on Apache) on an AS/400...

The 400 takes connections and then instead of answering, it starts failing,
and instead of answering slowly - it craps out...

The pattern is CPU usage is THROUGH the roof while the world creams us, then
CPU usage drops to almost nothing, while the system TCP/IP connections rise
un-answered.  It then (after about 2 minutes or so) comes back to life, but
it's not the same - you then END & restart the server and it works again.

This was something I noticed with a HIGH volume hitting fast and furious.

Andrew Borts / Webmaster
Seta Corporation
6400 East Rogers Circle
Boca Raton, FL 33499

E-mail: Andrewb@setacorporation.com
Corporate web site http://www.setacorporation.com
E-Commerce web site http://www.palmbeachjewelry.com
                              http://www.myfreeitems.com
Voice: 561-994-2660 Ext. 2211 / Fax: 561-997-0774



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