Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 01:00:36 -0700 From: Graeme Tait <graeme@echidna.com> To: Ben Schumacher <bs@cyalchemy.com> Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Server Hardware Configuration Question. Message-ID: <3816B124.32D2@echidna.com> References: <4.2.0.58.19991026182732.00989a80@mail.cyalchemy.com>
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Ben Schumacher wrote: > > Hello- > > I am working on a project in my company where we will need to be able to > handle large amounts of traffic on a web server we are setting > up. Basically, we estimate about 75,000 visitors a day with roughly five > 20k page views each, which makes roughly 7.5GB of data a day. Most of the > pages we'll be offering on this site are static, but access to the site > will be need to be verified through a database of say 750,000 customers. Maybe isp or questions is a better forum for this? Leaving aside the database/access verification, I run a site with comparable access parameters (average of 10 hits/second, 7kB/hit, 6GB/day). A PII-400 with 256MB RAM running FreeBSD/Apache does this with both hands tied behind its back (well, at least one hand per daemon). In addition it supports a fair cgi load, runs Glimpse searches of a 130MB file, processes about 15% of hits as SSI, reverse-resolves all accessing IP's on the fly, and processes web logs. With our traffic patterns (worldwide accesses, but dominated by the US), Apache very rarely exceeds 200 children. Memory usage is such that the 130MB file mentioned above is normally cached in RAM - with a bit more RAM, I would expect this to always be the case. (BTW, web server benchmarks that fail to simulate slow client connections are virtually meaningless in relation to typical Internet conditions, especially regarding memory usage.) The network connection is 10Mb ethernet - it rarely saturates for any sustained interval (more than seconds). The web files occupy about 3GB and all reside on one 4.5GB SCSI disk (Seagate Cheetah). Most of the rest of the system, including log files is on a second 4.5GB disk. 85% of accesses involve a small number of images that would be therefore memory-cached. The remaining 15% are to a fairly random selection of files drawn from the 3GB repertoire, so will mostly have to be read from disk. Your disk load would depend a lot on what fraction of accesses could be to cached files. So I don't think your web serving requirements per se are very onerous. A Xeon/Raid for this would probably be overkill. You don't explain what the access verification entails. If it could be implemented by using db-based Apache access controls, I would imagine the above configuration could readily cope with that too. The DB files would probably end up memory-cached, greatly helping performance. > What I need is an idea of a good hardware configuration of (most likely) 2 > machines that would be able to handle this much potential traffic. I've > had a lot of experience with FreeBSD and think that it would be the best > solution for this, running a combination of Apace and MySQL, but I need to > know what I can do on the hardware side to support it. > > I guess what I really need is a good idea of what is necessary to make > these machines powerful and responsive. I think the best solution for the > web server would be a powerful P3 Xeon server, using a hardware RAID system > with at least 1GB of RAM. The database server, on the other hand, I'm a > little more unsure about. I haven't had enough experience with MySQL to > know what keeps to running fast and smooth. I figure that it probably > relies heavily on drive speed and RAM, but how important are issues like > having a large L2 cache on the processor? > > One last thing. We're looking at getting the server equipment from one of > the big vendors (Dell, Micron, etc), but while searching the archives that > Del''s PERC RAID controller is not support (or was not) by FreeBSD, any > world on when/if it will be? I know that Micron's is support (since Walnut > Creek uses it). What are some other hardware RAID solutions available and > from which vendors could I get them from? > > I would really appreciate any information you could provide me. > > - Ben Schumacher > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message -- Graeme Tait - Echidna To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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