Anyone else think it's about time to beat a WEB server to death?

[Rashid Karimov]

		Hi there folx,

> 
> I frequently get asked the question: "How many users can I run off a
> FreeBSD WEB server?" and I'm naturally tempted to ask in response
> "How long is a piece of string?"
> 
> However, I check myself with the knowledge that it's not an entirely
> unreasonable thing to want to know, and I merely wish that I had more
> data on this subject to provide in response.  It's obviously
> impossible to come up with one number that fits all situations, but
> various guesstimates can be derived from existing data so that given a
> link speed of x, a PC of macho-factor y and the "average" user doing
> z, you can come up with a performance projection of n users.
> 
> The only problem is that I don't *have* any existing data worth
> mentioning.
> 
> WEB servers what ftp.cdrom.com is to FTP servers, but I'll take whatever
> I can get! :-)

	OK , here is some quite impressive stuff:

	I have here a Web Server ( NCSA 142, slightly patched
	by me to work with multiple domains ... wasn't able to find
	the native implementation)  which runs about 50 different
	Web sites now ( on Ip aliases ) , including famous www.jumbo.com.

	The former gets about ~200.000 hits a day .. lemme see exactly
	how many hits I have basing on access_log file ( it is exactly
	1 day old now): 409059 strings !

	It is 2.1.Stable on P-90 PCI/SCSI ( Adaptec 2940) with 64 Mb
	of RAM.

	I have 100 httpd processes spawned at the start-up time and
	200 max - after that httpd will behave in the old fashioned
	way, spawing a child per request.

	The beast in incredibly fast - at least comparing to old
	NCSA httpd 1.3 . It serves about 2 Gb of html/text files

	The other data I have on FreeBSD as a server is:

	I run FreeBSD based PCs as the shell/POP/ftp servers
	here. Average is about 4000-5000 account per PC.
	There are usually 300+ processes running on the system
	at the peak time , about 40-60 users logged in. 
	Load averages range from 0.2 to 2.5
	Uptimes are around 50 days - usually I have to reboot
	server because of some kind of maintenance/HW upgrade
	before it dies on its own :).

	I also have a few PCs as news ( INND) and DNS servers.
	That is completely bullet proof - servers stay up forever :)


> Heck, if you need some additional incentive for signing up for such a
> mad scheme then might I suggest also putting up some adverts for
> whatever service you offer on the page as "live data" (grin) so all
> those hundreds (thousands?) of users will also see your advertising in
> the process of trying to see how much punishment a FreeBSD WEB server
> can take..  We could even make it more widely publicised challenge by
> posting details of the event in various non-FreeBSD newsgroups, like
> Linux's or BSDI's.  Given an open invite to see if they can bring a
> FreeBSD WEB server to its knees, I'm sure many of the "competing OS"
> advocates wouldn't be able to resist a challenge like that, especially
> if the testing authority promised in advance to be relatively
> impartial and post full results, be they good or bad.  I'm confident
> enough in this product that I think we'd come out looking pretty good!
> 
> Either way, it would also generate a lot of publicity for all
> concerned (us and the test machine providers) and furnish the FreeBSD
> Project with some very valuable data that it doesn't have now.

	Yes, I think it's possible to use www.jumbo.com with adv.
	purposes - and everybody is welcome to test how fast it is :)


	Rashid