Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 25 Mar 2001 10:27:57 -0500
From:      Bill Moran <wmoran@iowna.com>
To:        Ali Niknam <ali@iephosting.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Alpha vs. Intel vs. Sun Sparc
Message-ID:  <3ABE0E7D.8D2E46BD@iowna.com>
References:  <001c01c0b528$953fce80$0100a8c0@cow>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>Hi Guys,

>I'm in the process of buying a new server and I wanted to know which of these platforms are best for me? (Intel, Alpha or Sun system?)

>The server will be a webserver running high-traffic sites with lots of CGI scripts..

That's a loaded question. I'm surprised you haven't got attacked with
zealous replies.
First off, you're asking on a FreeBSD list, which works primarily with
Intel and some Alpha, so replies are going to be somewhat biased. You're
also not going to get any really useful answers with how little
information you provided. Are the CGI scripts pulling from a database?
Are they math intensive? Do they produce a lot of disk access? What
exactly do you mean by "high-traffic"? That's a pretty arbitrary
statement.

My personal experience: Modern Intelish hardware can handle just about
anything you'd need. With FreeBSD, multiprocessors work well if your
scripts are math-intensive, but aren't as effecient if you're doing a
lot of memory access or disk access.
My understanding is that Alpha is about top of the heap for floating
point math, so if you're doing a lot of that you'll probably want to
look at Alpha. (additional comments welcome)
Suns are expensive. But where else are you going to get 64 processors in
a single computer? If you really need that level of processing power,
you'll probably want a Sun. (again ... additional comments welcome)

Beyond that, there are many other options for optimizing a web server.
If the CGI load is heavy, consider using a second server to serve out
images and static pages. Most modern web sites are painfully heavy with
graphics, so segregating these can take a considerable load off the CGI
machine. This can be done with two seperate servers and good web page
design, or by using a reverse proxy. I prefer the first method, but many
people aren't skilled enough, or don't have enough control over the site
to implement it.
If you're using a database, consider putting the db server on a second
server to allow the CGI scripts to use one processor while the db uses a
second.
If you've got heavy disk access, look into RAID and lots of RAM (I mean
multiple gigs if you're REALLY busy)

-Bill

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3ABE0E7D.8D2E46BD>