Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1999 01:15:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Nowlin <mike@argos.org> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Server Hardware Configuration Question. Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.05.9910280106460.31559-100000@jason.argos.org> In-Reply-To: <199910270604.XAA00634@dingo.cdrom.com>
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> > 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. > > This would be outrageous overkill. A mid-sized P-II system with a Agreed.... I have a P-II/400 with 256 megs of RAM handling more traffic than this, and it's doing both the HTTP and DB aspects of it. You aren't used to using NT, are you? :) > > 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? > > For this application; more or less irrelevant. A boatload of memory usually helps... It's amazing the performance increase you get by going from 64 to 96 megs even on a light-to-medium load DB server. I've played around with tweaking both Postgres and MySQL on -stable in different configurations, and (especially on Postgres) adding memory always made a significant improvement -- doing large table sorts and SELECT..WHERE commands can take up large chunks of RAM for very short periods of time -- without it, "may the swapping commence." Unless you're dealing with a 486/25, your best bet is to concentrate on the I/O bandwidth of the drives, and memory. Even a Pentium/200 can be a wonderful DB server if you set it up right. mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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