HOG server goes down during FedEx Cup weekend, of course

Written by: Tony Korologos | Monday, September 28th, 2009
Categories: Site News

It never seems to fail. Some bug, hacker, spambot or odd event will occur either when I’m out of town or during major golf events. This weekend was no exception.

My dedicated server suddenly had a traffic increase of as much as 15x normal, starting at 12:00 a.m. Saturday morning. My server eventually just gagged on the thousands of “requests” and crapped out. I think this was a “dos” attack, or denial of service attack but my provider tells me it was regular traffic. I still don’t believe them, because traffic doesn’t just increase to 15x normal at 12:00 a.m. when everyone is asleep, unless CNN or some gigantic web site put a direct link to HOG on their main page.

The way we got it back online was to triple the RAM memory for the server so it has more room to process all the requests. I’ll be checking my settings and traffic logs to determine where all the hits were coming from and hopefully figure out how to avoid nearly two days of two time in the future.

Regardless of what the cause was, the added ram should help speed the site up and make it a bit more responsive or quicker. I’d like to hear from you if you notice a speed increase.

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