Re: Server questions
I always say, buy the best you can afford. Then again, consider how many Linux PC you can have for the price of the Sun. Run those PCs in a web farm or cluster and that Sun can't match the processing power and speed. Michael Hyman wrote: Hi guys, I have a dilemma that I need input on. If you were to buy machines to be used as dedicated web servers, which would you go with? Option 1. A Sun SunFire 280R with 2 Ultra 3 processors and 4GB RAM. Run Solaris 9 Option 2. PC-server with 2 ~2.8GHZ Xeon processors and 8GB RAM. Run Linux The prices are worlds apart and I think I will get more bang for the buck with PC. The systems will connect to an Oracle server, via SQL*Net and server both dynamic and static content along with providing download files up to 1GB in size. The files will be stored locally. What I want to understand is which machine will be faster, be able to handle more peak loading, have a longer lifespan yet be upgradeable for a reasonable price. In the benchmarking we have done, we run out of Ram before CPU using Apache 1.3.27 and Mod_perl, so we will heavily load the machines with RAM. I have years of experience with Solaris and SunOS, and little with Linux, but the learning curve seems small and easily handled. It seems to me that Linux is more customizable than Solaris, but then Solaris comes pretty well tuned and does not always need much tweaking. Apache and all of our software components support both Solaris and Linux, so we can go either way as far as that goes. I think it comes down to a simple formula of which option gets us the most peak and sustained performance for the least amount of money. So, I am looking for some input as to which way you might go in my positions. Thanks in advance for the help!! Regards...Michael
Re: Server questions
I am not familiar with clustering Would you run a mod_perl based web site on a cluster? Isn't the point of a cluster to make a group of machines appear to be one? If so, how is that beneficial for web services? Thanks...Michael - Original Message - From: "Dzuy Nguyen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Modperl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 6:19 PM Subject: Re: Server questions > I always say, buy the best you can afford. > Then again, consider how many Linux PC you can have for the price of the Sun. > Run those PCs in a web farm or cluster and that Sun can't match the processing > power and speed. > > Michael Hyman wrote: > > Hi guys, > > > > I have a dilemma that I need input on. > > > > If you were to buy machines to be used as dedicated web servers, which would > > you go with? > > > > Option 1. A Sun SunFire 280R with 2 Ultra 3 processors and 4GB RAM. Run > > Solaris 9 > > > > Option 2. PC-server with 2 ~2.8GHZ Xeon processors and 8GB RAM. Run Linux > > > > The prices are worlds apart and I think I will get more bang for the buck > > with PC. > > > > The systems will connect to an Oracle server, via SQL*Net and server both > > dynamic and static content along with providing download files up to 1GB in > > size. The files will be stored locally. > > > > What I want to understand is which machine will be faster, be able to handle > > more peak loading, have a longer lifespan yet be upgradeable for a > > reasonable price. > > > > In the benchmarking we have done, we run out of Ram before CPU using Apache > > 1.3.27 and Mod_perl, so we will heavily load the machines with RAM. > > > > I have years of experience with Solaris and SunOS, and little with Linux, > > but the learning curve seems small and easily handled. It seems to me that > > Linux is more customizable than Solaris, but then Solaris comes pretty well > > tuned and does not always need much tweaking. > > > > Apache and all of our software components support both Solaris and Linux, so > > we can go either way as far as that goes. > > > > I think it comes down to a simple formula of which option gets us the most > > peak and sustained performance for the least amount of money. > > > > So, I am looking for some input as to which way you might go in my > > positions. > > > > Thanks in advance for the help!! > > > > Regards...Michael > > > > > > > > > > >
Re: Server questions
Absolutely. In this case, the cluster actually acts like a load balancing solution. Michael Hyman wrote: I am not familiar with clustering Would you run a mod_perl based web site on a cluster? Isn't the point of a cluster to make a group of machines appear to be one? If so, how is that beneficial for web services? Thanks...Michael - Original Message - From: "Dzuy Nguyen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Modperl" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 6:19 PM Subject: Re: Server questions I always say, buy the best you can afford. Then again, consider how many Linux PC you can have for the price of the Sun. Run those PCs in a web farm or cluster and that Sun can't match the processing power and speed. Michael Hyman wrote: Hi guys, I have a dilemma that I need input on. If you were to buy machines to be used as dedicated web servers, which would you go with? Option 1. A Sun SunFire 280R with 2 Ultra 3 processors and 4GB RAM. Run Solaris 9 Option 2. PC-server with 2 ~2.8GHZ Xeon processors and 8GB RAM. Run Linux The prices are worlds apart and I think I will get more bang for the buck with PC. The systems will connect to an Oracle server, via SQL*Net and server both dynamic and static content along with providing download files up to 1GB in size. The files will be stored locally. What I want to understand is which machine will be faster, be able to handle more peak loading, have a longer lifespan yet be upgradeable for a reasonable price. In the benchmarking we have done, we run out of Ram before CPU using Apache 1.3.27 and Mod_perl, so we will heavily load the machines with RAM. I have years of experience with Solaris and SunOS, and little with Linux, but the learning curve seems small and easily handled. It seems to me that Linux is more customizable than Solaris, but then Solaris comes pretty well tuned and does not always need much tweaking. Apache and all of our software components support both Solaris and Linux, so we can go either way as far as that goes. I think it comes down to a simple formula of which option gets us the most peak and sustained performance for the least amount of money. So, I am looking for some input as to which way you might go in my positions. Thanks in advance for the help!! Regards...Michael
Re: Server questions
Hi there, On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Michael Hyman wrote: > I am not familiar with clustering > > Would you run a mod_perl based web site on a cluster? If the performance and the money for the hardware are issues then perhaps before you buy you should spend some time looking into things like alternative system architectures, software packages, development methods, timescales and *those* costs... There's a lot more to it than "what's the fastest machine". Apache isn't the fastest Web server on the planet and coding it in Perl isn't the fastest way of implementing an algorithm. Asking for data from Oracle won't usually be the fastest way to get hold of it - especially if the machine running Oracle is remote. On the same hardware, you might get ten times the performance from a well-tuned proxy server setup than you can from a single mod_perl server. And you might not. Put all those things into a system and the difference between Solaris and Linux or between PC and Sparc may well be lost in the noise. And if you don't have a pretty good idea of where you're going with it all before you set out, then you might not get there. Have you any metrics for the kinds of loads you expect to meet, and the parts of the system which will use most resources to sustain them? Do you know what performance you can expect from the database under the expected load conditions? Is any of this under your control? 73, Ged.
Re: Server questions
Michael Hyman wrote: I am not familiar with clustering Would you run a mod_perl based web site on a cluster? Isn't the point of a cluster to make a group of machines appear to be one? If so, how is that beneficial for web services? All large web sites run on multiple servers, for redundancy and performance reasons. You put a load-balancer of some kind in front of them so that the group of machines has a single URL from the outside world. This is called clustering. I believe you'll be just fine with either Sun or PC hardware. Large sites -- including huge ones like Yahoo, Amazon, and AOL -- usually prefer PC hardware these days because of the value they get for their money. - Perrin