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New Server - How Many Links Could It Hold?

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Re: New Server - How Many Links Could It Hold? In reply to
 
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Do you know a programm to simulate a high load? I would like to benchmark the system before putting it on the net.

See 'ab', stands for apache benchmark and is a utility that comes with apache. Try 'man ab' for more info..

Alex
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Re: New Server - How Many Links Could It Hold? In reply to
The only _real_ way to simiulate a high load in a real world situation (since you are not just trying to benchmark Apache, but Perl, MySQL and Disk I/O) is to get the machine an IP address, and hold a party.... ask everyone you know to try to access your machine at a certain time and to beat the heck out of it.... See what happens... you'll be able to watch your server-status if you set that option on, and your system load, and get an idea of what is going on.

I haven't found a test suite that will beat up Apache/MySQL in the Links situation.... That would be forms-based CGI calls accessing the Database in a Mostly-read sometimes-write situation.

For weeks I watched my load and my server-status, and followed my ISP's bandwidth utilization graph. I didn't do it continuously (or I'd be adding an artificial load) but I did it in 15 or 20 minute windows at peak and off peak times, and did some spot checks and 5 minute windows.

Let me ask this question -- If you did benchmark the machine off-line, and got some poor results, what would you do differently? You have a good high-end machine, and the only way to see what it will do is to actually put it into production use. So, get your software working and put it on-line.

The advantage is during the early days, as your use stays low, and starts to build, you get a chance to fix all the little things you didn't think of while only annoying a few people <G>

I'm not trying to be a nay-sayer here, but "server" capacity is usually determined with Apache serving pages and a small percentage of CGI programs. It's not usually calculated for a cgi-based site or SQL backed site on the same machine (it makes the stats look bad).

((Also -- for the record -- the base-line premise for this/these discussion(s) has/have been for VERY large sites with an anticipated high level of traffic (not 14,000 hits a month<G> ). A P3 or above machine running Unix and getting 50,000 hits a day on a 100,000 link database is not going to break a sweat!!))

If you bought your mache as a "server" from a company they probably have benchmarks for simultaneous connects, user sessions, file transfers and opens and such under Novell or something similar. That would give you an idea of it's "database" capacity.

Computer people use the word "Server" in two very distinct ways. One is a "file server" that runs a database and/or file system and handles requests from remote clients for information. The other is as a "Web Server" where the computer runs a daemon (apache) and handles requests and serves up files based on that. The first situation requires a lot of overhead and CPU relative to the second. Unless you are running on NT, web servers were designed to be very, very low resource ussage.

There _really_ isn't a lot of information out there. It's only been the last 6 to 8 months that MySQL has taken off as a back end for the average website. It's only the last 3 or 4 months that SQL based software has become more common place.

I guess I could set up a public site, with some interesting stuff, and let it be cgi-driven. That way every request is using the CGI/Perl process and making a call to the SQL engine. I could follow the stats on that for awhile, and see what difference it makes vs what I'm doing now. I might be able to extrapolate some valuable stuff from that.

If you just want benchmarks on MySQL, they offer quite a few different kinds on their site, and are adding more. They've got some good comparasons and interesting numbers.
http://www.mysql.org

BTW.... another way to reduce load on your server machine is to have your ISP handle your mailer. The mailer can put a drain on resources, depending on how much you do. On my site, the net result of almost any interaction is at least one Email. Additionally, I'm using the machine as my general mailer for a half dozen people and a couple of dozen emails on a couple of dozen "parked" domains. A machine that is tuned for sending mail is _much_ more efficient, and if you are generating a lot of mail throughout the day, you can make some gains there. If all you do is send out a mass mailing in the evening, during off-peak, you probably won't save much.



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