From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon May 8 00:19:01 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id AAA20907 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 8 May 1995 00:19:01 -0700 Received: from relay.philips.nl (relay.philips.nl [130.144.65.1]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id AAA20901 for ; Mon, 8 May 1995 00:18:59 -0700 Received: from cnps.lss.cp.philips.com ([130.144.198.1]) by relay.philips.nl (8.6.9/8.6.9-950414) with SMTP id JAA17329 for ; Mon, 8 May 1995 09:18:21 +0200 Received: from kitty.lss.cp.philips.com by cnps.lss.cp.philips.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8O9D-00021lC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:26 MET Received: from kitty by kitty.lss.cp.philips.com with uucp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8N3n-0001ytC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:16 MET DST Received: from osiris.lss.cp.philips.com by kitty.lss.cp.philips.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8N1S-0001ytC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:14 MET DST Received: from smtp.nl.cis.philips.com by osiris.lss.cp.philips.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8N1R-0001yfC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:14 MET DST Received: from relay.philips.nl (relay.philips.nl [130.144.65.1]) by smtp.nl.cis.philips.com (8.6.10/8.6.10-0.9z-02May95) with ESMTP id JAA22025 for ; Mon, 8 May 1995 09:16:17 +0200 Received: from cnps.lss.cp.philips.com ([130.144.198.1]) by relay.philips.nl (8.6.9/8.6.9-950414) with SMTP id JAA17236 for ; Mon, 8 May 1995 09:15:51 +0200 Received: from spooky.lss.cp.philips.com by cnps.lss.cp.philips.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8O6n-00021lC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:24 MET Received: by spooky.lss.cp.philips.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0s8N1O-0000zzC; Mon, 8 May 95 09:14 MET DST Message-Id: Date: Mon, 8 May 95 09:14 MET DST From: devet@spooky.lss.cp.philips.com (Arjan de Vet) To: Guido.VanRooij@nl.cis.philips.com Subject: Apache + FreeBSD 2.0 benchmark results (fwd) Reply-To: Arjan.deVet@nl.cis.philips.com Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc In-Reply-To: <3o8dp8$t3e@gate.sinica.edu.tw> Organization: Philips Corporate Internet Services, Eindhoven Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk ------- start of forwarded message ------- Path: phcoms4.seri.philips.nl!sun4nl!news.nic.surfnet.nl!howland.reston.ans.net!nctuccca.edu.tw!news.cc.nctu.edu.tw!news.sinica!taob From: taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw (Brian Tao) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Apache + FreeBSD 2.0 benchmark results Date: 3 May 1995 17:16:24 GMT Organization: Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica Lines: 138 Message-ID: <3o8dp8$t3e@gate.sinica.edu.tw> NNTP-Posting-Host: @140.109.40.248 Xref: phcoms4.seri.philips.nl comp.infosystems.www.providers:22910 comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix:147 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:1432 I grabbed the Apache 0.6.2 server code and compiled it on my FreeBSD 2.0-950412 machine at work. No problems getting it up and running, and being near closing time 'round these parts, I decided to hijack a few machines around the local net to pound on my server for a few hours. Having seen a single 90-MHz Pentium handle 180,000+ hits a day, 60+ client connections on its IRC server and serve as an anonymous FTP server at the same time, I wanted to know how far I could push a dedicated 486 for Web service. A summary of my informal testing is posted below. The real thing is at http://140.109.40.248/~taob/fbsd-apache.html (sorry, no DNS entry for my machine yet). As I point out in the document, I'm no expert at evaluating hardware or software performance, so comments and advice will be appreciated. ------------ METHODS Hardware configuration: * ASUS PVI-486AP4 motherboard, 256K cache, PCI/VLB/ISA bus * AMD 486DX4/100 CPU * 16 megabytes RAM (1x16Mb SIMM) * PCI-SC200 NCR-53c810 SCSI-2 controller * Quantum Empire 1080S 1-gigabyte SCSI-2 hard drive * D-Link 16-bit Ethernet interface (NE-2000 clone?) Software configuration: * FreeBSD 2.0 (950412 snapshot), 64 megabytes swap * Apache 0.6.2 beta httpd server * Lynx 2.3.x on client machines Client configuration: * Local network: 10base-T Ethernet * 1 Sun SPARCStation 20 (Solaris 2.3) * 1 Sun SPARCStation 10 (SunOS 4.1.3) * 1 66-MHz i486DX2 (FreeBSD 2.0) * 1 90-MHz Pentium (FreeBSD 2.0) No special modifications were made to the operating system or to the httpd server for this test. All results seen here are indicative of a standard release of FreeBSD 2.0-950412 and Apache 0.6.2. The URL's used in the test consist of 190 files for a total of about 5 megabytes. 150 files are HTML documents, ranging in size from under 1K to 144K. Average HTML size is 9K. 50 files are GIF graphics, ranging in size from 700 bytes to 288K. Average GIF size is 81K. All files are located in the httpd root directory. The files used in the test were provided by a client of Internex Online (http://www.io.org/) and were chosen simply because of their number and range of sizes. The Lynx text-mode Web browser from the University of Kansas was used to establish HTTP connections to the server and to request URL's. A script was written to repeatedly call Lynx with a random URL. RESULTS Total running time: 345 minutes Number of requests: 201,254 Byte traffic: 3.65 Gbytes Number of requests in 24 hours (est.): 840,000 Byte traffic in 24 hours (est.): over 15 Gbytes Average network throughput: 1.8 Mbps The following is an excerpt of wwwstat output on the log file after the conclusion of the test: Totals for Summary Period: May 3 1995 to May 3 1995 Files Transmitted During Summary Period 201254 Bytes Transmitted During Summary Period 3926224150 Average Files Transmitted Daily 201254 Average Bytes Transmitted Daily 3926224150 Daily Transmission Statistics %Reqs %Byte Bytes Sent Requests Date ----- ----- ------------ -------- |------------ 100.0 100.0 -368743146 201254 | May 3 1995 Hourly Transmission Statistics %Reqs %Byte Bytes Sent Requests Time ----- ----- ------------ -------- |----- 12.39 12.36 485435696 24929 | 02 16.90 16.86 662136016 34020 | 03 17.62 17.60 691000295 35453 | 04 17.61 17.69 694388543 35440 | 05 17.64 17.65 693043522 35493 | 06 17.62 17.61 691353315 35455 | 07 0.23 0.23 8866763 464 | 08 Price vs. performance My particular machine carries a retail price tag of about US$3000 (including a 4-megabyte ATI Graphics Pro Turbo PCI card and KFC 17" monitor). With a more modest monitor and SVGA card, the above hardware should not set you back more than about US$2000. The operating system, server software and related utilities are, of course, freely available. A setup in the US$1500 range would be possible, but at risk of compromising on certain key components (mass storage subsystem, motherboard bus type). The components listed earlier have proven to be very reliable and responsive even under adverse load conditions. The operating system, FreeBSD 2.0, also performed admirably under pressure. It showed no indication of instability or excessive performance degradation (e.g.: it was able to sustain better than T1 data throughput, 1.5 Mbps, for the entire test) and was able to cope with an interactive X11 session at the same time. www.io.org runs FreeBSD's commercial cousin, BSD/OS 2.0 from BSDI. Both are truly marvelous operating systems and I would not hesitate to recommend either to a PC-based installation that desires a UNIX environment. CONCLUSION If you are an information services provider who is in the market for an inexpensive Web server configuration, do not dismiss PC-based solutions simply because a "real" UNIX workstation costs more, and therefore "must be better". A 486- or Pentium-based machine, as a dedicated server, can realistically handle 200,000 to 500,000 requests per day, based on my results. For installations that require heavy CGI processing (e.g., as a search engine to a large database, or for on-the-fly graphics rendering), a cluster of $3000 PC's may prove to be an inexpensive, high-performance alternative to traditional heavyweights like Sun, SGI and HP, without giving up the advantages of a UNIX-based operating system. (see http://140.109.40.248/~taob/fbsd-apache.html) -- Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw <-- work ........ play --> taob@io.org ------- end of forwarded message -------