[Gllug] web server specs

[Kieran Barry]

On Mon, 1 Oct 2001, Paul Brazier wrote:

> I'm looking into co-located web servers on a fairly low budget.
> 
<Snip>

We don't know what your experience with messing about with PC hardware
is...

> What is usually the bottleneck - memory, processor, disk speed, network
> speed?

Regular web serving is a lightweight process cpu-wise: quite old
hardware can fill a 100Mbit connection, and I doubt you'll be paying
for that much.

If we ignore database-type issues, the key performance problem will
likely be going to swap. Disk is several thousand times slower than main
memory. After that, "Regular web serving" is essentially a bandwidth
thing: how much disk bandwidth to get pages from disk, how much
bandwidth to chuck them onto the network. So, if possible, you should
keep the system and the "data" on separate disks. You should also keep
logging to a minimum, and definitely not reverse resolve.

The database stuff muddies the waters, and if you intend to run https,
then that is very cpu-intensive. (So all you need for a good https
server is a fast cpu, fast disks, lots of (fast) memory, a good network
card. Oh, that's everything...)

If I were building a box (for performance) on a tightish budget, I'd be
sticking as much RAM as I could in there. Then I'd look at second disk,
and the disk performance (Maxtor now have an IDE drive which bursts to
160MB/sec. In context, this box's disks probably only manage 10MB/sec.)

Come back if you win the lottery :)

> Would a PIII with say 256M RAM and a 20GB HD be the sort of thing? Or
> overkill?
> With just a CD drive, floppy drive and an ethernet card?
> 
It comes back to what the load on the box is gonna be. The performance
of the disk is more important than the size: you'll want a trimmed down
system, and probably use that much space ever.

regards

Kieran


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