Your suggestions about this Dell configuration?
Sten Daniel Soersdal
netslists at gmail.com
Sun May 25 20:27:02 UTC 2008
VeeJay wrote:
> 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 at shute.org.uk> 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)*
We have the PERC 4e/Di and that works wonderfully (256 MB battery backed
cache). One hint is that the PERC 4e/Di (and possibly the entire series)
does not do correct RAID 1 + 0 (mirrored then striped) but instead does
RAID 1 and concatenates those mirrors.
>
>>
>>> 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)
Get it if your server is going to be remote.
It lets you mount CD-ROM disks and ISOs, Floppy images and gives you
real keyboard/mouse/video display of the server. It also lets you power
up/down/reboot the server remotely. A necessity to do firmware/BIOS
upgrades. Serial console/ssh only lets you work with an already working
system. The DRAC lets you do remote installs/reinstall/upgrades.
>>>
>>> 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
>
>
>
>
--
Sten Daniel Soersdal
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