[Zope] Building a server for Zope

[Michel Pelletier]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jimmie Houchin [mailto:jhouchin@texoma.net]
> Sent: Friday, May 21, 1999 11:40 PM
> To: zope@zope.org
> Subject: [Zope] Building a server for Zope
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I am in the process of researching my options for building a 
> server to host
> my Zope website.
> 
> The server will be running RedHat Linux 6.x and either ZAP or 
> ZServer if
> it's ready. I know that Linux is SMP capable.
> 
> If I am running Zope and ZServer, will Zope 2.x benefit from a
> multiprocessor system?

Python has a global interpreter thread lock.  This means that all of
your python threads contend for this global lock while they are running.
Pyhton itself will nicely preempt your threads and they will flow
smoothly, and there are sections of Python where it is safe for two
threads to run conccurently, but you will not notice an Nfold increase
of speed for N processors.

I think this is being addressed in the Python community.  I have no
idea, but I've heard mention that python 2.0 will not have the global
lock.  Don't quote me though.

The threading in ZServer is still a big win, however, because the
internal Python thread switching is much more efficient then the
external OS process/thread context switching.  With Zope 2.0 and
ZServer, one request will not block all other requests because Pyhton
will nicely switch between Zope threads even in the middle of a request.
This model will give you even better performance than the Apache
multi-process model, which suffers a very expensive context switch for
each Apache process.

-Michel

> 
> I am working on a tight budget so for an example here are a 
> few options.
> 
> single PII 400 or 450 or K6-3 450
> 
> or
> 
> dual PII 300 or 333
> 
> or
> 
> dual PPro 200  (talking to a friend who might have one available)
> 
> 
> Jimmie Houchin
> 
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