hardware needs 1

[grnfvr]

Does anybody know of a good resource that provides any sort of guidelines as to how much server power you need for various levels of site traffic. I've read a few article at MSDN that talk about performance testing, but haven't found any hardware guidelines.

 

[ToddWW]

What kind of traffic are you talking about. And more importantly, will you be linking this site to a datbase and how large do you expect that database to get ??

ToddWW

 

[grnfvr]

Well, i guess my answer to all of your questions is yes. I am actually looking at a few web projects right now, all a little different. I'm trying to get a better understanding of general hardware requirements.

One project will be linked to an access database. This project, as of right now, will consist of simply reporting the contents of the database (one way street from db to client). The database, however, is linked to a number of other access databases. In terms of growth, the entire data contents of the linked databases may increase on the scale of 50 MB monthly. Generally the data being processed by the web application is constant, however. You could say the web site will be publishing the "current" data. We will be using NT4 Server. Initially, looking at maybe 5 concurrent users, in the future probably never more than 50.

I guess you can just tell me about that one for now.

 

[ToddWW]

Regarding hardware. An NT or Windows 2000 server with dual Pentiums (800 Mhz ea. min) with at least 512MB memory will be more than enough power. The amount of money you spend will be based on whether or not you want name brand servers or are willing to go with off brand server mfg that can essentially produce the equivalent equipment. I have purchased all of my servers and clients from one source in California for the past 10 years and have had no problems at all. The server that I use is described here.

http://www.vpccomputers.com/dualprocinpi.html

For $3K, it's a very well built and reliable unit. I can personally vouch for it.

Unfortunately, your weakest link won't be in your server, it will be in your decision to use Access as your database. I don't mean to discourage you with this, but MS Access is a file based database and is not designed for significant loads in a web application environment. I provided a small excerpt from an ASP reference that I have to another member of this forum and I invite you to read it at...

thread333-151853

Again, I don't mean to discourage you by this and many MS Access users will disagree with this, so evaluate it for yourself and just keep it in the back of your mind.

Hope this helps, somewhat ..

ToddWW

 

[grnfvr]

That helps a lot. I guess I'm just confused about some issues. I agree with you on the access issue. on another of the projects i will be using sql server because i need the additional speed and reliability. I am pretty good with general computer hardware. But the server that was recommended to me by my internal supplier was much more expensive.

Compaq DL380 1GHz processor - $3100
2nd processor - $800
2 Gig SDRAM - $4,500 or
1 Gig SDRAM - $2250
Smart Array 5304 SCSI Controller - $2,000
2 - 18 Gig (Mirror for OS) - $1,500
3 - 36 Gig (Raid 5 for File System) - $3,500
Redundant Power Supply - $300

With 1 Gig of Ram the minimum is $13,450
With 2 Gig of Ram the minimum is $15,700

I don't know much about what the $2,000 array controller does for me. It seems the RAM is excessive. And personally i don't know what OS needs 18 gig, much less a mirror. I also don't need 108 gig of costly raid 5 hard drive. What does raid 5 do for me?

Your thoughts on the capacity of this server and its relation to the project I outlined.

Also to elaborate on the guidelines you've already provided. At what capacity do you feel the performance of the server you reccomended begins to deteriorate when running, say, an ecommerce website.

 

[ToddWW]

Well, first of all, it's Compaq so you're going to pay a hefty price there. The price on the processors and memory is almost highway robbery.

The SCSI controller you are going to need and a mirror wouldn't be a half bad idea for the OS and ASP pages.

RAID is just another form of redundancy. It's up to you to determine if you need that or not. You can go back and visit that other website and get a quote on a RAID system for comparitive purposes only.

On the deterioration issue, I don't know from personal experience. The only thing I can say is that we have about 10-15 users at once on average, 40-50 at peak time. About 90% of all of our pages are accessing a FoxPro database via ADODB/SQL. (I know, I just gave that big lecture on Access and FoxPro is also a file-based database. We're working on it!!) We've written all of our HTML very efficiently using styles and things like that so the pages returned are small in size (which is good). I would say that our application is more taxing on the server than a standard E-Commerce site would be just due to the size of the Database. We have about 100 related tables in our database and an E-Commerce site should probably get away with less than 20.

Anyways, the server we have works wonderful.

You know, the very nice thing about servers is that they're upgradable.

Hope this helps.

ToddWW