Yes and no :). It depends where the bottlenecks are and there could be many considerations. In a one-server-per-box, it's unlikely that you'll hit your max CPU utilization, LAN utilization, SAN utilization etc all at the same time. So it can make sense to bang more stuff on the machine.

Additionally, the software itself may have various limits independent of the hardware. So imagine a server setup where the bottleneck is, say, I/O because of software considerations. You're using 10% of your CPU and a few percent of your hardware's various I/O. Running multiple virtual servers makes better use of your CPU. Additionally, if you are hitting I/O limits, with some designs (blades, say) running multiple virtual servers reduces I/O across the network because much of the traffic remains within the backplane.

On very, very virtual systems, there are scaling benefits especially where I/O is not the limiting factor: if you buy the right kit from IBM, say, to get more power you phone 'em up, and some guy remotely turns the knob from 2 to 11 (and bills you more).

I've worked with systems where even the routers and SAN are virtual. Very hard to wrap a traditional little head around.

In the real world, there are other limitations: there are only so many cards you can bang in a machine for channel bundling, there is only so much power available per slot or rack, there is only so much thermal removal capacity across or up the racks, and of course there is only so much money.

looks like normal now

buttons work, site back to usual speed. well done

Buttons may work but I was not able to edit my earlier post.

But I was able to edit this post so it does look as if if is working OK on new posts.

Today has seen a very great improvement in the site access times. Credit to IB for sorting it out.

There are still some (hopefully minor) niggles to sort out, and some scheduled upgrades / updates over the next few days to resolve / improve these.

It's on the mend, folks!

Please continue to log any problems (hopefully not many) in this or the Problem Reporting Sticky.

Thanks

SD

pprune seems to be slow to change pages to me, but then. I am slow too......................................................... ...............dbee:bored:

Having been on holiday for a couple of weeks, I've been Ppruning on my Mac at home with the site looking normal. First day back at work(PC, IE 6) and login to PPrune and it's the minimalistic blue look. It changed back to normal, allowing me to post this, after about 15 page changes.

So it's still not fixed.

MightyGem,

I think it's your computer that's the problem! There's the PC cache, your work proxy and your ISP cache all to clear - have you tried ctrl-F5?

SD

Yes, tried Ctrl-F5, has no effect. It's also the same on other PCs in the office. It changes randomly as I change topics/pages. Pprune is the only forum that I use where it happens.

If your computer is office based are you on a microsoft network, like windows server 2003?

The server will cache webpages and give this exact symptom. Ask your IT people to clear the server cache for you. Sometimes IT people install internet 'accelerators' which speed up internet access by using a configurable cache.

Also (and something you could try first)
Go to each machine and (in your browser) click TOOLS / INTERNET OPTIONS on the general tab under browsing history click DELETE and remove FILES and HISTORY

Hope this helps

Discovered what the problem is. Our Force intranet has a Web Filter to stop us looking at sites like LadyBoys.com. However, some sites aren't so bad, so we are allowed to visit them for 15 minutes at a time. Normally this option comes up as soon as we click on a link, we click the 15 min button and the site loads.

For some reason, this doesn't happen with Pprune. Everything loads except things like the "Reply" and "New Topic" buttons. To get those, I have to visit a restricted site to get the 15 minutes and then go back to Pprune.