Server Sizing - 500 users

[dave755]

Please offer some advice on sizing a server.

I am working on an application to be run on a private network (100MBPS ethernet). The application is browser-based, the server must be running IIS on Win2K Server and MySQL.

The application involves lots of reading and thinking on the part of the user, so each user will be requesting new pages only a few times a minute (at most). There is a modest amount of database activity and VBScript computation involved with most page requests.

The client has requested that the server be able to support 500 simultaneous users.

What server hardware characteristics would anyone recommend?

Dave Gee

 

[snowboardr]

Well If you took all the performance techniques that you can do such as...

When doing loops make sure your output (things in the loop) is all ASP ie:

<%
Do while rs.eof

Response.Write ...

rs.movenext
loop
%>

instead of

<%
Do while rs.eof
%>

<%=sUserName%>

<%
rs.movenext
loop
%>

And there are a few other things that make ASP run faster.

For server I would go with at least 1 gig of ram if you can managage it or more, and 2 ghz + p4 at least.

Minimum
500mb ram
2 ghz

 

[ingresman]

What is usefull to to remember with browser apps is that 500 users probabbly translates to about 10 concurrent users. As you are on W2k look at either ODBC connection pooling or COM+ caching. If you use ODBC pooling the connect creditials must be the same for every client to get reused. this means that security/audit gets devolved to the application code.
Remember that you send the browser request and get a page back, once the page is back in the browser the web server (and so the database) forgets about you, so for a 5 hour session you might only actualy use mysql for 15 mins in total.

Regards

Kevin