Admin CPU issues

Does anyone have thoughts as to why navigating my admin has gone to an utter crawl, and uses 10%+ of my VPS's CPU? Like, I'm trying to update my PO payment module and the page spikes to use 10.65%. The rewards points module has always been the worst, but lately it's all been AWFUL.

I've got like a 100 modules installed, so I'll list them only if need be. I'm REALLY trying to not have to rebuild my website from the base again, at least not until 1.5.5 is released (please be soon!)

Related, it's taking over 2 minutes to update a field in the configs, such as our fax #.

I've got like a 100 modules installed
Are you really using all of these???

How many are related to your admin side & what are they?

How many products and categories do you have?

When you say 'Navigating admin' does this mean any and all admin functions or only certain aspects of it?

If SSL enabled, have you tried with it disabled?

You've only mentioned the admin being a problem, but what about the store front, is this working at full speed, or does it also show similar signs of sluggishness and/or excessive CPU usage?

How long has the site been running and when did the problem start?

What changed?

Basically, I'm trying to get a look at the 'bigger picture', and also trying to get further clues.

100 modules seems to be a heckofalot, and depending on what they are or what they do there could be some sort of conflict going on - however, if these same modules have been working nicely together prior to this problem this potential conflict probably wouldn't apply.

More info needed.

Cheers
RodG

Also what kind of logging is enabled on admin->configuration->logging (I think that's the title).

How many files are in your cache directory? (Have had admin crawl occur if that directory is filled with numerous files.)

SSL -- I can't disable, as it affects the authorize.net payment system

Front vs back -- front instances have been using 5-7% of CPU, which still seems high, but with a recent server switch, this is the first time I've . Front goes faster, but it could go a lot faster. That should be easier to optimize, though -- need to double check images and js/css file sizes.

Site running -- since 2013, but I've rebuilt it once or twice since then, with a full revamp of our home page design this august. I don't quite remember when it got so bad -- it seems to have been slowly running down and down.

Categories: 291
Products: 1784
Products-to-categories: 3344
Database Size: 110mb

Admin Modules.....
Homebrew Modules:
FAQ Manager
Blog
Misc Reports
quick updates (shipping info)
group description editor
easy track
add motor to rocket
rocketry tools manager
newsletter manager
marketing report cron
gift cert manager mod
+4 new product types
+a lot of little tweaks to things here and there.

ZC Released Modules:
Add New customer
Sitemap XML
Password update
Mailbeez
Add new order
quick updates
printable price list
testimonials manager
admin notes
wishlist
easy populate
ultimate cross sell
book x
backup mysql
search log
ceon uri
google analytics
reward points
FEC
css js loader
cowoa
ty package tracker
edit orders
super orders
shipping box manager
zen lightbox
who’s online mod
group pricing
image handler
combo discounts

Not related to an admin slowdown, but zen lightbox is no longer supported to be replaced by zen colorbox... (Backbone of the software is no longer supported and has difficulty under newer javascript).

*first time I've had access to see the CPU usages for instances

mc12345678:

Not related to an admin slowdown, but zen lightbox is no longer supported to be replaced by zen colorbox... (Backbone of the software is no longer supported and has difficulty under newer javascript).

Noted! I didn't like the lightbox system my original frontend template provided, so I went back to lightbox from my 1.5.1 install and didn't check support on it. I'll update that at some point.

How many customers and orders do you have? If there there are a lot (like over 1000), it can slow down the admin significantly due to the large query results

SSL -- I can't disable, as it affects
No - - If you have your admin running under SSL then what about when it is not?
Your admin configure.php is where this is set

Design75:

How many customers and orders do you have? If there there are a lot (like over 1000), it can slow down the admin significantly due to the large query results

Ha! Yeah, we're at over 15,000 customer accounts and 28,000 orders since 2013. I can see that slowing down some pages, but I'm not understanding how that would affect page load time on configuration settings.

mc12345678:

Also what kind of logging is enabled on admin->configuration->logging (I think that's the title).

How many files are in your cache directory? (Have had admin crawl occur if that directory is filled with numerous files.)

apogeerockets:

Ha! Yeah, we're at over 15,000 customer accounts and 28,000 orders since 2013. I can see that slowing down some pages, [B]but I'm not understanding how that would affect page load time on configuration settings.[B]

Might have overlooked the above, but it has an impact if it's an issue.

kobra:

No - - If you have your admin running under SSL then what about when it is not?
Your admin configure.php is where this is set

I know where and how to turn it off. But access to the CC processor configs is cutoff when it's off. I don't recall offhand if the admin being off SSL affects the frontend checkout functionality of authorize.net, but either way I will need to wait to test this until later because turning SSL off forces all my admins to reset their passwords.

mc12345678:

Might have overlooked the above, but it has an impact if it's an issue.

Logging -- all set to false.
Cache -- 3 (indexes and htaccess and minify folder)

apogeerockets:

I know where and how to turn it off. But access to the CC processor configs is cutoff when it's off. I don't recall offhand if the admin being off SSL affects the frontend checkout functionality of authorize.net, but either way I will need to wait to test this until later because turning SSL off forces all my admins to reset their passwords.

Feel free to kick me later, but technically it's when SSL is turned back on that the passwords need to be reset. :)

Have you gone through the FAQs about performance tuning?

apogeerockets:

Noted! I didn't like the lightbox system my original frontend template provided, so I went back to lightbox from my 1.5.1 install and didn't check support on it. I'll update that at some point.

Along the same lines, I see you also have both FEC and Cowoa listed among your add-ons. I think these were integrated into a single module way back in 2009?

Although this won't be the cause of your problem either, this is probably going to be a good time to suggest that you clean up (remove) any modules that you aren't actually using (and update those that you are).

Having unused/outdated modules hanging around is a significant security risk, and frankly speaking, it makes a mockery of the SSL that you (and many others) feel can't be without. (IOW, us hackers are laughing at you ;-)

Dare I even mention that each module has the potential to cause problems and conflicts, and upgrades can be a nightmare.

apogeerockets:

we're at over 15,000 customer accounts and 28,000 orders since 2013

Wow, that's quite a busy site you have there.

This, and the fact that you stated 'it seems to have been slowly running down and down' (as opposed to something that happened overnight) is suggesting to me that you could simply be overloading the server. (Either the webserver, but more likely, the SQL server).

Activating the "page parse time" could be useful here.

Shared server or VPS?
How much RAM?

Cheers
RodG

Merge of FEC and COWOA: yes and no. There is still a version of COWOA available that is independent of FEC, but FEC also recognizes some aspect of COWOA (meaning the code has the acronym in it somewhere...) Not sure if they are designed to work together or possibly together, but I know each can be installed individually and yes, the more installed, the more opportunities to infiltrate. Just trying to explain what little I know about each of the two plugins. :)

RodG:

Along the same lines, I see you also have both FEC and Cowoa listed among your add-ons. I think these were integrated into a single module way back in 2009?

FEC is installed, but isn't actually used -- just COWOA. Stuck around on the upgrade from 1.5.1 to 1.5.4, I guess.

RodG:

Wow, that's quite a busy site you have there.

This, and the fact that you stated 'it seems to have been slowly running down and down' (as opposed to something that happened overnight) is suggesting to me that you could simply be overloading the server. (Either the webserver, but more likely, the SQL server).

Activating the "page parse time" could be useful here.

Shared server or VPS?
How much RAM?

Yeah, we're now averaging 30-40 orders a day through the site.

We kept overreaching our resource limit (80% of our alloted resources on the shared server were going to IMAP accounts in the office), so we literally just upgraded to a VPS (1gb RAM, looks like) this last week and honestly the admin seems to be running more painfully slow than ever (no change on the front end speed, fortunately and unfortunately). I'll activate parse times (i think my front end template removed the placeholder for it, so I'll have to add it back in), and see if I can locate a slow query log activation on the server. If I'm overloading the SQL server, do you have suggestions on how to track that, and possibly fix it?

I might have to bring an outside consultant into look at our stuff directly and see where things are getting overloaded. I'm all self-taught in web development, so I'm sure there are things I'm missing that would seem obvious to a learned or veteran developer. I'm also getting increasingly paranoid that we're outgrowing zencart, but I picked this software because it's easy to customize and seemed scalable.