Worried about CPU Quota

[ch33sehead]

I am running an ebay business, and I just set up Gallery2 (menalto) on my HM account a couple days ago. Right now, I have a measly 400 pictures in there, but in the next couple months, I expect to have about 5,000-10,000 items up on ebay, so I would have about 10,000-20,000 pictures on the gallery. Only the admin and guest accounts are set up, so other people can only see pictures via direct links (i.e. I would be the only person browsing the gallery). The average picture is 75kB, so at a high estimate, the pictures will take up about 1,500MB of space.

I am not worried about storage space or bandwidth, but I read that HostMonster has a 20% CPU quota that must never be reached.

I also plan to put up a MySQL database with PHP scripts that gather store information through the eBay API.

So my question is, with these two applications at this scale, what % of the server's CPU am I taking up, and at what point would I hit the quota? Also, which one (the gallery or the store database) would take up more CPU?

Note: I don't make Gallery2 do any image processing--all it does is download pre-processed images from my computer, archive, and retrieve the original file for the end user.

[webing]

what is CPU limit? sorry to ask in this thread but how do you reach it's limits etc?

[eskimoet]

@ Webing;

If your running demanding scripts or poorly written scripts, then you can expect a jump in CPU usage.. Which is why some people reach and exceed there limit..

I think.

[ch33sehead]

Well Gallery2 is open source and has been available and updated for a while now. Am I wrong to assume that its scripts are optimized and efficient enough for my usage?

For reference, I'm talking about this: http://gallery.menalto.com/

[eskimoet]

Yeah, generally the longer something has been around the less buggy and more optimized for space and efficiency it will be, so you should be fine.

I guess its just a case of checking every once and awhile

[webing]

thanks eskimoet!

[ch33sehead]

Thanks for your reply, eskimoet.

I was hoping to get some ballpark figures, if there is anyone out there knowledgeable about this. I'd rather not leave it up to trial and error and have something like this affect thousands of auctions, and I'm sure other people would like to know as well.

I guess it would help to provide some concrete numbers:

On my current photobucket account, I have about 900MB of photos, around 8000 photos, and 108,000 visitors monthly.

If I get about 2GB of photos on HM's servers, and 200K visitors monthly for the gallery, each downloading on average 100kB, then would Gallery2 ever be anywhere near the CPU quota?

[shadmego]

You are mostly talking about bandwidth and storage issues, neither of which should cause you any problems with HM as they recently went unlimited, but creating a largely image-based site can prove to be process intensive, if you don't do a lot of prior planning.

Most gallery software will take a full-sized image and use server resources to reduce it down, creating thumbnails to use on the webpages created by the program. This can prove to be a huge resource hog if you don't reduce the images BEFORE uploading them to the server.

I would also not suggest you upload all your images at the same time, as 8000 files will cause the server to choke, again, especially if you are using the server to create thumbnails.

Unfortunately, I've never had the pleasure of seeing what that size site looks like from a management perspective, and I'm not as familiar with Gallery2 as I probably should be, but I don't know if anyone other than Support will be able to give you a respectable answer.

The only one I can offer to your question on CPU quotas is "maybe, but it would depend on how you set the site up, and how you are dealing with the automatic thumbnails".

~regards, and welcome to the Community!

[ch33sehead]

Hi shadmego,

I use Gallery's official "remote" program, Gallery Remote, to create thumbnails from my end, so the server does no processing in that respect.

I am strictly using gallery for me to navigate. I did not put up the gallery for others to browse; rather, it is just there as an easy way for me to organize and manage my auction pictures. The images will be directly linked to from my ebay auctions. Other than that, it serves no purpose.

Yes, putting up an entire image management platform may be a bit overkill as a solution, but I think it works wonderfully... so far.

And no, I won't upload 8,000 images at a time. Usually I only do around 100-300 at a time. I am trying my best to keep server CPU usage to a minimum. What I want to know is, does Gallery2 as a barebones image linking application take up much cpu, or is it just the thumbnail creation and image processing features that eat up CPU?

I am guessing that it takes at least some cpu, because my auctions would not link directly to the jpg, but to something like:

http://img.mysite.com/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=360

Gallery2 would have to use some CPU to retrieve the correct file and link it, but I am hoping that this kind of cpu usage is negligible.

[shadmego]

What I am basically understanding is you are going to be hotlinking images from your Hostmonster account (Gallery2) to your Ebay product pages?

I don't think you will have any issues with processor usage, though it is always next to impossible to guess how 200+K users are going to act.

I can tell you I've not heard of accounts with that many users on them at Hostmonster. I have heard of sites that typically get 50 - 100+ K users per month running forums just fine though, which is why I say you should be ok.

Again, I'm not an official means of support and my opinions are not reflective of how HM will handle your account. If you want to get something official, I would suggest speaking with Support via Live Chat and asking them the same kinds of questions.

From what you have said, I would think you would be alright ... but what do I know?

~regards