Hello Don
I agree with Chris's comments, there are no issues running Evergreen on
virtual servers. We have been running a production system of Evergreen
for a library on a VMWARE cluster. This might be similar/same option
that your IT folks are planning on setting up.
The Evergreen system runs on one virtual machine (Ubuntu) and connects
to another which acts as the database server, it's a pretty
straightforward setup. The library has over 200,000 bibs, about 400,000
items and around 61,000 patrons.
Hope this helps.
On 02/17/2011 01:28 PM, Sharp, Chris wrote:
Hi Don,
At my library, I've been pushing for many months to get an Evergreen
installation up and running, so that we can give it a test drive. At
one point we were told that a dedicated server would become available
this month, but a new use has been found for it. Now the proposal from
our IT department is to "use an Ubuntu (or TKL) virtual server" which
apparently cannot be put in place until the Summer or Fall of this
year. As a cataloger, I interpret the phrase "use an Ubuntu (or TKL)
virtual server" as "wawa wawa wa wa wa wawa".
So here are my questions. Does the use of a virtual server make sense?
Are there problems we need to know about before moving this direction?
Others can speak to the details better than I, but there are no problems running
Evergreen on a virtual server as long as it is configured correctly. Since you're just
testing at this point, I would think setting it up on a virtual machine would be ideal.
Ubuntu is a popular Linux distribution and would work fine as an OS platform (I would
recommend Ubuntu server 10.04 LTS). I'm not sure what "TKL" means in this
context.
How much time would it take for an IT professional to create this
installation?
For someone familiar with Linux, it would probably just take part of a day to install the
OS and build the Evergreen server. There are also pre-configured virtual images of
Evergreen at: http://evergreen-ils.org/downloads.php (under "Other versions of
Evergreen software") which should just work once installed.
How much IT time would be involved in maintaining the
system?
What alternate methods are available that might minimize IT
involvement so we can start testing in a more timely manner with our
own settings, parameters and live data? Please don't get the wrong
impression. Our IT group is terrific. They are just under tremendous
pressure and a lot of their time has to be spent putting out fires.
A test system or a production system? In either case it would depend largely
on the Linux/SQL database/system administration skills of your IT team. If you
end of running Evergreen in a production environment, you would almost
certainly need a full-time system administrator to address everyday problems
with Linux/IT support in the wings for more serious issues.
Will this give a realistic test of Evergreen's capabilities?
This is a tricky question to answer. Evergreen is a scalable solution that
will work in a virtual machine on a laptop or in the 40-server-large PINES
production cluster. You're really only limited by your hardware (and if you're
willing to virtualize servers, that even reduces the hardware requirements).
Even though this might start out as a test, if it is successful, I am
hoping to move the technical services components directly into full
production. So if it is possible, it would be good to start out with a
testing environment that can become a permanent environment. But that
is not a deal breaker. Depending on the cost, at some point we might
be interested in a cloud solution. The bib records we have on our
server now is probably in the 700,000 range. Any insights you might
have would be very much appreciated. If the answers are too technical
for me, I do have access to some interpreters. Besides, I did once
stay at a Holiday Inn Express.
I think the biggest factor on what sorts of hardware (real or virtual) you
would need is transaction load. If you run Evergreen over a couple of servers
(for redundancy's sake if nothing else) and the system load is too high and
response is slow, that would tell you that you need more. You might chat with
your IT folks about how to perform actual load testing. You wouldn't want to
take a system that worked fine in test with just a few users and put it into
production where lines of patrons at the desk plus others searching the
catalog from outside locations might bring the whole thing down. (This
actually happened in PINES the day Evergreen debuted, so this is not just
conjecture ;-)).
The other thing I'll say is that you would want someone with technical skill to
"own" this project. It sounds like you have the interest in getting it going,
so what you'll need to find is someone who can work closely with you on implementing and
supporting it. I mentioned a full-time sys admin, but even a part-time person (or you
might even see if some of your seminary students would want to help?) would work okay
with a sane hardware setup IMHO.
Feel free to come back with more questions.
Don
Don Butterworth
Faculty Associate / Librarian III
B.L. Fisher Library
Asbury Theological Seminary
(859) 858-2227
don.butterwo...@asburyseminary.edu
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IS Developer & Integrator, MnPALS
PH: 507.389.5060
OF: 3022 Memorial Library (Office-ML 3022)
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