<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12pt"><div><span>I've been asked questions about a site that slows way down on occasion. This is a cloud-based server at Rackspace. Since Rackspace has a fairly good reputation, I am guessing they are not the real problem.</span></div><div><br><span></span></div><div><span>I looked at the database stats; it is using Qcache and the numbers look pretty decent.</span></div><div><br><span></span></div><div><span>What I do see that I question is that their notifications module (I forget which one):</span></div><div><span>A) Writes to dblog (Watchdog) on every cron interval, even if it has nothing to do (I hate that).</span></div><div><span>B) When there is a notification (pretty often), it writes a separate line for each one.</span></div><div><span>C) Some of those notifications result in many (100 or more) emails. During one page refresh when I
experienced the drastic slow down, this high volume email happened.</span></div><div><br><span></span></div><div><span>So I am wondering if these high-volume email sends can have a serious effect on performance? Since I assume the answer is yes, what can be done to lessen this impact? I see two main spots to work on: Watchdog usage and email load.<br></span></div><div> </div><div><font color="#ff007f" face="bookman old style, new york, times, serif" size="4"><i><strong>Nancy</strong></i></font></div> <div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.</font></div></div></body></html>