[mod_python] need help solving some performance issues

On Apr 10, 2008, at 2:11 PM, Culley Harrelson wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Sean Allen wrote:
>
>>>
>>> The application is much more popular than it was when it was built  
>>> and I
>>> am
>>> now encountering some performance problems.  Specifically the CPU  
>>> seems to
>>> be
>>> the bottleneck.  The machine has 2 gigs of ram and a single  
>>> processor.
>>> Ram
>>> doesn't seem to be a problem.  When examining top output, I see  
>>> that every
>>> once in a while a process comes along and sucks down 10%-20% of  
>>> the cpu.
>>> A
>>> handful of these processes can (and regularly do) consume the  
>>> whole CPU.
>>
>> This could be a really dumb question but... are end users seeing  
>> these
>> performance problems?
>
> Yes definitely.  I certainly notice.  On the bad days the site  
> brings in less
> money.

Do you know what those processes are doing when they suck up the cpu?

Is it something that you could offload to another machine?

Obviously throwing more hardware at the problem can work but it sounds  
like
your setup right now doesnt allow for a ton of movement you can do in  
that area.

Re-working the entire thing is one option but you might try to skate by
before doing that by seeing if you can move just the problem areas.