🚀 go-pugleaf

:In article <36545154.5463665@nntp1.ba.best.com>,
:Eric Dauster <dauster@film-ink.com> wrote:
:>
:>Greetings:
:>
:>Getting close to maybe considering thinking about co-locating our own
:>server, and I'm looking for advice on hardware. 
:>
:>Cost is a very important consideration, and it is understood that
:>bulllet-proof reliability  and blinding speed will be compromised, but
:>looking for that happy medium somewhere in between..
:>
:>Any advice?
:>
:>Looking for a capacity of up to 200,000 hits per day, with expected
:>traffic at 2 GB a day. Would prefer to purchase rather than lease. Hot
:>swappable drives are nice, as is a tape drive backup, but may be a
:>luxury at this stage - underfunded is an understatement...
:>
:>What machine(s) will fill the bill? Reconditioned is a viable option
:>since this next step looks like a 1 year solution, and a year from now
:>we'll be rolling in dough :-)
:>
:>Any advice is appreciated.
:>
:>Many thanks,
:>Eric Dauster

    200K hits/day is only 2.6 hits/second.  Any off the shelf pentium-II
    or K6 based PC can do that.  You could probably get away with using the 
    internal IDE drive that comes with it, too.   For something this small,
    I wouldn't bother trying to get fancy.  Just load in a reasonable amount
    of ram (128MB), maybe splurge and get parity/ecc ram for better 
    reliability, and you should be fine.  

    (A 486 could do 2.6 hits/sec, but is not a good idea due to its lower
    reliability and inability to scale).

					    -Matt

-- 
    Matthew Dillon  Engineering, HiWay Technologies, Inc. & BEST Internet
                    Communications
    <dillon@best.net> (Please include original email in any response)

On 19 Nov 1998 10:48:13 -0800, dillon@best.net wrote:
>
>    200K hits/day is only 2.6 hits/second.

You should know better than that, Matt.

200Khits/day is really most likely 200K /10 hours
20K /hour
~333 hits/minute
 ~ 5 hits/sec, AVERAGE

So you really want something that can handle about 8 hits/sec, assuming you
want something that looks nice to customers.

But obviously, given best's usage, a decent pentium II sytem can handle that.


-- 
[trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
 --------------------------------------------------
"initiating.. 'getting the hell out of here' maneouver" - Lennier, babylon5

In article <slrn758t0h.t3k.phil.s2@shell3.ba.best.com>,
Philip Brown <phil.s2@bolthole.no-bots.com> wrote:
>200Khits/day is really most likely 200K /10 hours

It's certainly a good idea to think about "peak" performance, but
that sort of distribution is far far sharper than anything I see.
Maybe if the site is only of "local" interest, I could see it, but
otherwise, the world goes on....

:In article <slrn758t0h.t3k.phil.s2@shell3.ba.best.com>,
:Philip Brown <phil.s2@bolthole.no-bots.com> wrote:
:>On 19 Nov 1998 10:48:13 -0800, dillon@best.net wrote:
:>>
:>>    200K hits/day is only 2.6 hits/second.
:>
:>You should know better than that, Matt.
:>
:>200Khits/day is really most likely 200K /10 hours
:>20K /hour
:>~333 hits/minute
:> ~ 5 hits/sec, AVERAGE
:>
:>So you really want something that can handle about 8 hits/sec, assuming you
:>want something that looks nice to customers.
:>
:>But obviously, given best's usage, a decent pentium II sytem can handle that.

    Ah, true.  Not 8 hits/sec, though... only 5.  Peak bandwidth is typically 
    only 2x the average and peak bandwidth tends to be stable.

    A pentium-II or K6 can *easily* handle 20 hits/sec with 128MB using, say,
    Apache and assuming a reasonable mix of pages and CGI.  If you pushed it,
    you could probably do 40 hits/sec.  If you had a small data set that fit
    entirely in ram, and bumped the ram to 512MB, you could do 80 hits/sec 
    with Apache and even more using other more memory-efficient web servers.

    2-5 hits/sec is so low that I doubt the machine would even notice it.

					-Matt



-- 
    Matthew Dillon  Engineering, HiWay Technologies, Inc. & BEST Internet
                    Communications
    <dillon@best.net> (Please include original email in any response)

On 19 Nov 1998 12:39:33 -0800, mccomb@medieval.org wrote:
>In article <slrn758t0h.t3k.phil.s2@shell3.ba.best.com>,
>Philip Brown <phil.s2@bolthole.no-bots.com> wrote:
>>200Khits/day is really most likely 200K /10 hours
>
>It's certainly a good idea to think about "peak" performance, but
>that sort of distribution is far far sharper than anything I see.
>Maybe if the site is only of "local" interest, I could see it, but
>otherwise, the world goes on....

"world wide" web or not, I think a large chunk of businesses here are
targetted primarily for a US customer base.
Hence, the 10 hour window I gave.

Yes, "general interest" sites would have a more spread usage pattern. But the
original poster was a business user, I believe.

-- 
[trim the no-bots from my address to reply to me by email!]
 --------------------------------------------------
"initiating.. 'getting the hell out of here' maneouver" - Lennier, babylon5

In article <slrn759271.n0d.phil.s2@shell3.ba.best.com>,
Philip Brown <phil.s2@bolthole.no-bots.com> wrote:
>"world wide" web or not, I think a large chunk of businesses here
>are targetted primarily for a US customer base.

Even a US-only website would have a much wider base than 10hours....
A truly local site, perhaps.

>Yes, "general interest" sites would have a more spread usage
>pattern. But the original poster was a business user, I believe.

I suppose he knows what his usage footprint is like.  I go from a
peak centered around 11am local time to a low at around 1am local
time, with rarely more than a 2:1 or 3:1 margin between the highest
and lowest hour and a very flat curve connecting them.

dillon@best.net (Matt Dillon):
}    A pentium-II or K6 can *easily* handle 20 hits/sec with 128MB using, say,
}    Apache and assuming a reasonable mix of pages and CGI.  If you pushed it,
}    you could probably do 40 hits/sec.  If you had a small data set that fit
}    entirely in ram, and bumped the ram to 512MB, you could do 80 hits/sec 
}    with Apache and even more using other more memory-efficient web servers.

Yeah.  I routinely clock two or three hundred hits/second using thttpd
on my ancient 100MHz Pentium.  Any random $600 pee cee should be able to
handle the specified load.
---
Jef

         Jef Poskanzer  jef@acme.com  http://www.acme.com/jef/
                   %SYS-F-ACCVIO, Access violation

In article <732101$bq5$1@flea.best.net>, dillon@best.net (Matt Dillon) wrote:

>    A pentium-II or K6 can *easily* handle 20 hits/sec with 128MB using, say,
>    Apache and assuming a reasonable mix of pages and CGI.  If you pushed it,
>    you could probably do 40 hits/sec.  If you had a small data set that fit
>    entirely in ram, and bumped the ram to 512MB, you could do 80 hits/sec 
>    with Apache and even more using other more memory-efficient web servers.

Yeah, adding RAM could be a quick and reasonable solution to 
significant unanticipated increases in traffic. Investing in
a good quality motherboard that will handle up to, say, 512MB
of parity RAM would be very wise.

-- 
|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|
| Malcolm Hoar           "The more I practice, the luckier I get". |
| malch@malch.com                                     Gary Player. |
| http://www.malch.com/               Shpx gur PQN.                |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On 18-19 Nov 1998, in best.www everyone wrote very helpful advice!:

Thanks all!
I appreciate your help. 

It looks like we can comfortably triple our peak hours and still use a
moderate speed Pentium II and be safe.

I probably would have overspec'd the processor and under spec'd the
ram, so this has been extremely helpful and useful. Thanks much to all
for the good advice.

Eric Dauster