Web server requirements

[Darrin Chandler]

On Sat, Aug 19, 2006 at 02:55:59PM -0400, Dearment, Alaric J wrote:
> I'm the on-line editor of expo, Ball State University's student-run magazine. We're reviving our Web site, and I've been thinking seriously about running it off a FreeBSD-based server. However, I'm not sure what kinds of system requirements I'll have.
> 
> The school has roughly 20,000 students and the magazine comes out once a semester. If I were to guess, I'd say we'll be having 100 people on the server at once on busy days, most of whom will be on campus. In addition to articles, the server will probably offer a 10- to 15-minute video and/or podcast to go with the cover story. Also, the server will also be used as a mail server and file server, though file services will likely only be needed for a couple of days each semester and E-mail accounts will only be for staff to do things such as receive feedback on articles and so forth.
> 
> What sorts of requirements would such a server need as far as processor, RAM and HD are concerned, assuming it would be running on FreeBSD? Would a machine with 512M of RAM, a 140G HD and 1.2GHz processor work?

A lot depends on how your web content will be served up. If you're going
to run a very dynamic CMS w/ database then requirements will go up. If
you're serving more or less static pages then the requirements won't be
nearly as high.

Spend money on RAM. Big payoff, and it's pretty cheap. Spend money on a
good disk (SCSI, SAS, High-End SATA) with a good controller and you'll
get your money in performance. Buy a decent network card! These things
will pay off more than processor speed for a web server, usually.

-- 
Darrin Chandler            |  Phoenix BSD Users Group
dwchandler at stilyagin.com   |  http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/
http://www.stilyagin.com/  |