Dear all, I'm planning to rebuild one of my commercial portal sites using Zope with more than 300,000 users. The portal has been running on APM( apache + php + mysql ) without a glitch for three years. I've been worried about Zope's scalibility since I already have too many users with as much data. I came to a conclusion that ZEO might help with a bit more hardware thrown in. Here's my plan. (OS: Linux) 1. Get a rock-solid machine for ZEO server: Intel XEON dual cpus (SR2300 if you want to know this Intel server model) with 2G mem + six 73G segate SCA scsi hard disks + RAID5 for fault-tolerance (intel srcu32 dual channel raid controller) 2. Throw in at least three less-powerful machines for ZEO clients: 1 P3 tualatin + 1G mem + 1 36G hard disk with NO RAID. I plan to buy one No.1 machine plus one No.2 machine since I already have two machines, candidates for the other two ZEO clients. I came under the impression using Zope for the past year ( and from python/zope docs ) that python uses only one CPU no matter how many I have. One of the two machines I already have has four Xeon cpus but Zope on that machine runs way slower than one on my single P3 desktop with a bit more horsepower. Suppose you have 300,000 users with tons of data and expect they'd start adding tons more data once you open this portal based on Zope + heavily customized CMF/Plone. Would this setup seem reasonable? Or better still, how would you set your portal up if you got extra dough for hardware? Specifically I want to know... 1. Would the above setup seem reasonable? 2. Some say P3 tualatin is better for Python than P4 or even Xeon processors. Is that true? 3. I'm looking towards the Directory Storage over File Storate for tons of reasons, the reasons you might easily guess. I'll have six 73G disks with RAID5, which means I'd have to let go 73G for storing parity information. That leaves me about 365G. At least 300G will be allocated for ZODB. Would FileStorage maintain its integrity if the db grows to 300G? What I'm worried about most is that I can't make it versionless. Directory Storage has that option. Comments? 4. Would I really get no benefits from running Python on SMP machines? That is, would I better off with two 1 cpu machines than one dual cpu machine? If true, do I really have to buy Dual XEON intel server for ZEO central storage server? Why don't I just settle for a single CPU machine for that with more RAM? 5. Can I run a ZEO client on ZEO server? To sum up, I'd get a total of four machines: one ZEO server and three ZEO clients. I want to make it four clients. I assume I can also run a ZEO client on the ZEO server but I hunch that some would probably say no to that... . May I ask why? 6. You have the following machines. How would you set up your ZEO server and clients? Remember, you have 300,000 users eager to add data :-) Machine No.1 - 2 Xeon 2.0GHZ CPUs + 2G mem + six 73G disks + Intel high-end RAID controller Machine No.2 - 1 P3 tualatin CPU + 1G mem + 1 36G disk Machine No.3 - 2 Xeon CPUs (older model) + 1G mem + 3 36G disks (disks old, will be recycled for backup storage or something) Machine No.4 - 4 Xeon CPUs (older model) + 2G mem + 4 36G disks (disks old, will be recycled for backup storage or something) I'd appreciate any comments. Thanks in advance. Regards, Wankyu Choi --------------------------------------------------------------- To the dedicated staff at NeoQuest, language is not a problem to be dealt with, but an art waiting to be performed. --------------------------------------------------------------- Wankyou Choi CEO/President NeoQuest Communications, Inc. 3rd Floor, HMC Bldg., 730-14, Yoksam-dong, Kangnam-gu Seoul, Korea Tel: 82-2 - 501 - 7124 Fax: 82-2-501-7058 Corporate Home: http://www.neoqst.com Personal Home: http://www.zoper.net, http://www.neoboard.net e-mail: wankyu@neoqst.com ---------------------------------------------------------------