Re: Your suggestions about this Dell configuration?

Hello Frank

Really good points. I am really glad to have your thoughts. Regarding your
questions and comments, I have given some answers and a couple of questions
in *RED* colour. Please comment if you happen to manage some time during
weekend, Thanks!

*Please continue...*

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Frank Shute <frank@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 08:49:51AM +0200, VeeJay wrote:

Hello friends,

My employer is buying this Dell server and I would like to have your
opinion
about the configuration.

Requirements are:
2 Websites with 3-4 million hits per month with video ads.

If it's "3-4 million hits per month" as you've stated twice now, then
your hardware is complete overkill.

So I'll assume you mean 3-4 million hits a day for each site.


*No, its 3-4 million each site per month and we are having problem. Because,
either Apache or MySQL stops responding. I have following settings as
Performance:*
**
*# =================================================
# Performance settings
# =================================================
Timeout 300
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 15
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
StartServers 5
MaxClients 256
MaxRequestsPerChild 0*




Operating System:
*FreeBSD AMD64 7-STABBLE*

I'd use 7.0-RELEASE.


Database:
*PHP+MySQL with Apache*

No problem. You should use Apache 2.*.


*We will use Apache 2.**




Server Configuration:
*PowerEdge? 6850 SCSI*

Dual Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 7130M, 3.2GHz, 8MB L3 Cache, 800Mhz
FSB
1x Additional Dual Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor 7130M, 3.2GHz, 8MB L3
Cache,
800MHz FSB

Slow FSB. I suppose they hope you hit the cache. Shouldn't matter
because your server is more likely to be disk bound rather than bus
bound.


Changed Processor to:

*PE 2950 III Quad Core Xeon X5450 (3.0GHz, 2x6MB, 1333MHz FSB)*

*what do you think about E5450?*



16GB 400MHz Dual Rank DDR2 Memory (8X2GB)

Slow memory, to match the slow FSB :) But you've got >250MB per hit.
So use the excess to cache frequently accessed content.



*We have changed it to:*

*16GB (8x2GB Dual Rank DIMMs) 667MHz FBD*


C5 Drives attached to embedded PERC4ei, RAID 10

PERC 4/DC RAID controller (128MB cache) (1 intern and 1 extern Channel)
(Should I use controller with Both Internal or Both External Channel?
What
they do?)

Supported according to a quick Google search.


5 x 146GB SCSI Ultra320 (15000rpm) 1'' 80 pin harddrives

"No name" or a brand?

*We have changed the disks to :*

*6 x 450GB SAS 15k 3.5" HD Hot Plug, (Hitachi Japan)*




Chassis with support for 3.5'' SCSI Hard Drives

Dell Remote Access Card 4 SERVER MANAGEMENT CARD

Don't know if this will work. Most guys use a serial console/ssh for
management.


(I will have hot swappable drives & chassis)

Thank you in advance.

The performance of this hardware will depend on what *sort* of hits
you get. Are a lot of them just for the homepage? Then just cache it.

Is it static content?


*No, its dynamic contents, data is coming form Database.*



If you're getting lots of ad-hoc database queries and fetches/writes
from/to disk, then your disks could get a thrashing.

How big's your database? Being read from more than written to? How
precious is the data?

*More than 20 million records and more than 1000 Tables.*
*And of course, data is always preciouse. :)*


How many of these hits are reading video ads? All of them? How many
KBs are these awful ads?

*50% of users are going to see the Video Ads.*
**
*Size would vary between 100KB to 2MB. *

What bandwidth do you have to these servers?
*100 Mbps*

How you are going to get the best out of your hardware depends on
questions like these, so you have to analyse your Apache logs and tune
appropriately.

Tuning Apache, mysql and PHP are all subjects in their own right.

For FreeBSD, read tuning(7).

Are you running FreeBSD ATM? Then some numbers from iostat, top etc.
would be useful in analysing how your new server is going to cope and
how much spare capacity you'll have, but the numbers are dependent on
how you've tuned it (if at all).

Hope I've given you something to think about.

Regards,


--

Frank


Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html




--
Thanks!

BR / vj
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