[Zope] Zope in Portals

[Ethan Fremen]

Celso Martinho wrote:
> I'm new to this list, so escuse the dumb questions.

no problem. My first one was "zope says it doesn't have permissions to
the var directory! what's wrong?"
 
> I am responsable for the development team of SAPO, the most popular
> and visited Portuguese portal.

Hi, I am responsible for the (re)development of the web site for
Instituto Português de Arqueologia.

> 1. It is often mentioned that Zope is very scalable. But how does it scale?
> We currently have an architeture that consists in several backends with
> SQL databases and NFS servers and about 5 mirrored frontends with Apaches
> delivering static and dynamic web pages, load balanced by an Alteon Ace Director
> Switch. Would Zope fit in such an environment ? 

http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/SiteAccess
SiteAccess is a new product that might help you handle the
mirroring/backend management.  All pages from Zope are dynamic. Zope
fits fine behind Apache. I don't know the details of your load
balancing, but that should continue to work.
 
> 2. How well does Zope performs ? Are there any benchmarks ? I was not
> very impressed with the results of an "ab" (Apache Benchmark Program) I
> did to Zserver requesting 1000 pages with 200 concurrent requests.

What were the results?  Earlier posts suggest that ZServer is good for
about 45 requests/sec.

> And how bad is it to use PCGI/Apache instead of ZServer ?

It knocks it down to about 20 requests a sec.

(performance quotes are from memory)

> Is the future of Zope focused in developing Zserver or integrating Zope
> well with other Web Server such as Apache ?

They are working on a FastCGI implementation for Zope that should
eliminate the fork penalty for using Apache, as well as allowing use
with a wider variety of other web servers.  The integrated FTP and
WebDAV protocols will still require ZServer, and I don't imagine that
will change soon.
 
> Thank you very much for your time. I hope you can help and convince us
> to become Zopers. :)

I don't think it would be a bad decision at all. :-)

-- 
~mindlace
webworker