Performance issues (My Zen Cart is Slow)

[jbaggs]

I'm having performance issues with ZC. I'm not sure if its a configuration issue, hardware issue or if ZC just can't handle the products.

The hardware I'm using is:

Dell PowerEdge 400SC (Dedicated)
- Site = http://www.thenetworkzinc.com/shop/
- OS = Windows 2003 Server
- IIS 6
- PHP = 5.2.4 (IIS ISAPI)
- MySQL = 5.0.45
- ZC = v1.3.7.1
- Products in ZC = 4000 +/-
- CPU = P4 2.4GHZ
- RAM = 2GB
Dell PowerEdge SC430 (Dedicated)
- Site = http://www.usa1com.com (Still in production)
- OS = Windows 2000 Server
- IIS 5
- MySQL = 5.0.45
- ZC = v1.3.7.1
- Products in ZC = 8000 +/-
- PHP = 5.2.4 (IIS ISAPI)
- CPU = Celron 2.8GHZ
- RAM - 2GB

Basically I'm having the same issue on both boxes. On the Windows 2000 Server box the DLLHOST.exe process runs at 100% and on the Windows 2003 Server the w3wp.exe process runs at 100% when products are being displayed. Navigating from catagory to sub-catagory is fine, however when a product is selected it's taking 8 seconds or more for the item to be displayed...

I've check the support board and found preformance issues relating to items being entered under catagories that have sub-catagories. I've check both sites and this is not what is causing the issue. None were found...

Since the usa1com.com cart system is in production and not live, I've tried wipping the box clean, installed the RackStar OS on it (OS based on the Sun Cobalt OS) installing ZC and there was no noticable preformance increase. The RackStar OS does not give me the ability to see exactly what is going on, however the Active Monitor is reporting "The CPU is being heavily used".

Since the Linux based OS did not seem to resolve my issue and I've already paid for Windows 2000 Server for the box, I reinstall the 2000 Server OS on the server and migrated ZC back to it. Same issue...

I guess my question(s) is/are...

1) Am I just hitting the limit of what ZC can handle?
2) Am I just doing something fundamentally wrong?
3) Do I require more RAM?
4) Do I require something like duel quad-core Zeon's or something?
5) Is there an OS that's going to give me resonable preformance?

Both servers are dedicated, so its not other sites bogging them down. I have clean installs of the OS's with all Windows updates and current versions of PHP, mySQL and ZC on each.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[jbaggs]

F.Y.I.

If this issue has already been addressed on another post please post the link. i just could not find it.

I tried to provide as detailed information as possible, however if any addition info is need please let me know and I'll provide it.

The www.usa1com.com is not in production, so I'm pritty much open to try anything on that box to resolve this issue.

Thank you in advance.

[yellow1912]

ZC does have an issue if your product has many attributes (this will be solved in 1.4)

Other that than, I have seen ZC sites with thousands of products running just fine.

PS: In the admin panel config, I think there is an option to turn on parse time and query time counter, turn it on to see which is the main cause that slows down your site.

Also, make use of eAccelerator(for apache only) and other caching modules to reduce the load and improve speed.

You may also want to check the up/down stream limit of your host.

[jbaggs]

Thank you for taking the time to provide some suggestions.

None of the items have any attributes. They are what they are. I turned on the parse time and query time counter as per your suggestion. My initial results on product pages were as follows:
Parse Time: 9.707
Number of Queries: 2011
Query Time: 0.1771518267084

I started turning off ZC options and got this down to the following:
Parse Time: 6.420
Number of Queries: 287
Query Time: 0.17629118643189

Also, as I stated in the original post, the issue is specific to the actual product pages only…
When I hit the home page I get the following:
Parse Time: 0.797
Number of Queries: 268
Query Time: 0.22698464047241

When I choose Categories or Sub-Categories I get: (Or Similar)
Parse Time: 0.815
Number of Queries: 324
Query Time: 0.2069182936554

The items don’t have large descriptions or anything like that. One example is:
http://www.usa1com.com/index.php?mai...roducts_id=104

The item is 3 levels deep. (Category, Sub1, Sub2, Item)
The item’s “Title” is 42 characters with spaces.
The item ‘s “Description” is 34 characters with spaces.
Parse Time: 6.071
Number of Queries: 252
Query Time: 0.15698023464966

As far a bandwidth goes... I'm behind a full T-1 of data (1.44MB/s), the sites have dedicated IP's and the servers are dedicatated.
Also I'm running the testing locally from the box, logged in as Administartor.

Anyone have any ideas?

[yellow1912]

I realize that the page loads quite slow when I have to access pages with image(s). As far as I remember, a T1 connection is great for downloading, not uploading though. There are lots of sites out there that can test your server up-speed, check it out.

Also, there is a mod called Image Handler 2 which can help you to reduce the image size while still keeping them in good quality. I use it on my site, and have images 3-4 times bigger than your thumbnail with even smaller size.

[jbaggs]

Thank you for the additional suggestions... I looked into the Image Handler 2 mod that you recommended. It works great, however it did not solve my issue.

I really appreciate the suggestions at this point I’m willing to try anything to resolve this issue. Please keep them coming…

I really don't think it’s a bandwidth issue. I'm testing the site while directly logged into it, from the local network (Gig) and from a residential class DSL from my house and getting the same results.

Also I really don't think it was something to do with image dpi, size and compression, (images being too large of a file size) I would expect to see the issue on the categories listing pages and do not. Those pages use the same files as the actual product pages and have 25 images, or so, displaying on them with a Parse time less than a second.

Also before I added the Image Handler 2 mod to the site I replaced some of the product images with the originals. These were 10 times the file size of the ones on the server and I did not observe any noticeable increases in the Parse time on the product pages.

What I did was:
- Burned all the product images to CD.
- Transferred them to a PC with Photoshop on it.
- Wrote an Action to resize all images to 72 dpi, make the maximum width or height 300 pixels, them exported them with ImageReady at jpg 60%.
- Burned all the resized images to CD.
- Replaced them on the server.
- It was still taking over 6 seconds to Parse the product pages.
- Installed the Image Handler 2 mod.
- It is still taking over 6 seconds to Parse the product pages.

It seems like something is getting stuck. It's like ether the PHP or MySQL handler doesn’t like something on the product pages.

Are there any characters that should be avoided in the product titles or descriptions? Things like "&'s", "_'s", "$"'s, "#'s". I'm an ASP developer and know that you can run into strange issues with "Special" characters.