On Tue, Nov 09, 1999 at 04:03:49PM -0800, Scott Unkefer wrote:
> I am the CTO for webfs, inc.
> We are a mod_perl/ Solaris house.
> I am going to do some buying of web servers for our web site.
> Since our web server + mod_perl=application server, What are the areas
> of intensity that are known as far as resources?
> Since ultra 5's cost around 2k a piece, they are attractive. But since
> they are EIDE and limited in cache and IO, I was wondering if they are
> good buys for a website that is strictly mod_perl.
> Bottom line, is mod_perl intensive on system IO or other areas where it
> would be in our interest in looking at ultra 1's or 2's instead of ultra
> 5's?
In this situation, I'd probably purchase Solaris systems based on
Sun's AXi motherboard. It has built-in 100BT, 2 UW SCSI channels,
and can be purchased in configurations as small as 2U, or in mid-towers
if you don't rackmount. They max out at 1GB of memory.
A good platform to load-balance, though more expensive than an
equivalent powered PC Unix platform.
I doubt that you can buy a high-memory configuration for under $2K,
but you're not going to spend $10K either. Probably pretty easy to
spend under $5K.
Vendors include Tatung, Rave, Telenet, and probably loads of others.
This is an ATX platform, so anyone can buy the parts from the
distributor and integrate it. You could even do it in-house, but
that's a pain.
Another alternative is the sun CompactPCI platform. That's a bit
more complex, and unless you're willing to put in some time to understand
the industry (mostle telco servers), I'd stay away. OTOH, if you're
looking to load-balance with high compute density...
John
