[Zope] Server specs.

[Andreas Kostyrka]

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Alexander Staubo wrote:

> > Hi all,
> > 
> > Regarding the comments I received, we decided to use following
> > configuration for server.
> [snip]
> > 
> > Somebody any recommendations?
> > 
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Although you don't say what kind of environment this is --
> sales/journaling system? Intranet? Mail? Document management? Or what
> kind of load. "About 500-600 will ask less intensive requests" -- yes,
> but when? Distributed over a day? Concurrently? What about your data?
> Lots of rows, lots of data, or both? And so forth.
> 
> Based on the information you do give out:
> 
> Python is a real CPU sponge, and for this kind of load I'd definitely
> bump the horsepower up to a dual Pentium III Xeon 500MHz, 512KB L2
> cache. Around $1100 per CPU. That said, however, I don't know how well
> Linux scales to two CPUs; for web serving, recent benchmarks have
> pointed out that it doesn't scale well at all.
IMHO, I'd try to scale it clusterwise: So if you decide you are short
on CPU cycles, just put the PostgreSQL server on a seperate 100mbit
connected server.
> 
> Fast disks. Ultra SCSI at a minimum, preferably Wide and/or Ultra2 SCSI,
> preferably striped volumes. Zope may not be the real disk hog, but
> database servers are. I bet PostgreSQL isn't an exception; I know Sybase
> is.
Well, my experience, with a much smaller setup is, that IDE is fine as
long there aren't many par. accesses. So as long a single threaded ZOPE
is enough IDE is ok. With more than one access at a time, SCSI is a must.

(My experience was with a custom Python/Tkinter application working with
 a PostgreSQL server, with 5 concurrent users, where I replaced an old
 SCSI disc with a much faster and newer IDE disc. Well, the results had
 been, that I needed to replace within a week with SCSI discs ;) )

> RAM is crucial, but you'll probably survive on 256MB, although with your
> kind of environment I'd personally opt for 512MB at a minimum.
Well, yes and no. ZOPE does have an rather big (all is relative, I compare
it against a standard Apache site, which doesn't use any countable memory
at all) initial usage, but it rather stays on this level.

> Multiple-port or multiple network cards. Multiport NICs support port
> failover and typically come with load balancing. Coupled with one or
> more switches, these are real killers when it comes to bandwidth and
> responsiveness.
With the data he posted, I doubt that he will saturate even one 100mbit
segment (150 intensive queries in 5 minutes if I remember right. That's
one query every 2 seconds. So well, as long the query results are much
smaller than 20MB, it should be ok.)

But again, I'd rather consider going with a small server, and upgrading it
when needed. It's usually easier to get funds for upgrading a running
system than to come with a dual-PIIIX setup before the management did see
something of the solution.

Andreas
--
Andreas Kostyrka                     | andreas@mtg.co.at
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