Re: VAR System Specs

[Lenz Grimmer <grimmer@suse.de>]

Hi,

On Tue, 3 Nov 1998, Aaron D. Turner wrote:

> Well Chris had to cancel on me for lunch today.  He did tell me though
> that it was basically a done deal.  All we need to do now is spec the
> box. Apparently they've got a number of machines that they used at the
> Atlanta Linux Showcase, which of course they can't sell now... :-)

Cool :)

> Figure we will get a single processor 400-450Mhz P2, which will be
> upgradeable to dual processors (SMP still isn't rock solid remember).

Well, it's getting better. We had an IBM Netfinity (quad-PPro) running
with Kernel 2.1.125. We did some Adabas Performance Tests, this box was
rock solid, even with 300 simulated concurrent users. IBM even presented
it on a trade show. I've some pics on my homepage.

> I suspect we could use: 
> 
> 256MB RAM (How memory intensive is mySQL or PosgreSQL?  Should we ask for
> 		512MB?  The more memory, the more we can cache the DB's!)

More memory is alway useful :) BTW, I am just building an mySQL RPM for
our distribution...

> 1.5 GB for OS/tools/swap/system logs
> 5 GB for web server logs
> 1 GB for "content" like the LDP & the SQL DB backend for it
> 4 GB for the ht://dig database (rule of thumb is 4x indexed content)
> 1 GB for message boards & database (we can probably use SWISH or Glimpse
> 	for this which has much lower disk requirements for it's DB)
> 10 GB for RPM Repository Mirror http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/
> 2 GB "play area" for compiling stuff, etc.
> - ------
> 20GB Disk (wow!)
> 
> Obviously if we don't do the RPM Repsotory mirror, we can reduce our disk
> space requirements in half, so that would be the first thing we cut if VAR
> can't give us that much. 
> 
> And what about RAID?  We will get daily incrementals and weekly fulls
> thanks to NaviSite.  Probably the best thing to do is ask for a spare disk
> that we can restore data to in the event of a failure.  Also, if we need
> 512MB of RAM, the lowest end server that supports that also comes with
> RAID. 

I'd go for RAID. It takes quite a while to rebuild 20 GB from a backup, if
the disk crashes. Imagine the downtime :)

> Anyways to give you an idea what we're talking about I checked out their
> site:
> 
> A 1000 server, with 1 450Mhz processor, 256MB RAM, and 22GB via 5 4.5GB
> disks (Seagate Cheetah's) is about $7,195 list
> 
> A 3000 server, with 1 450Mhz, 512MB RAM, and 45/36GB disk (straight/RAID5)
> via Quantum Atlas III 9.1 GB disks is about $9,895 list
> 
> (both disk systems are ultra-wide)
> 
> It looks like to me that we ask for a 3000.  If we get a 1000 we're
> limited to 18GB of usable space (assuming one disk is a spare) and there's
> no upgrade path to 512MB of RAM should we need it.  If we end up getting a
> 1000, then we just don't do the RPM Repository which isn't critical, but
> would be a *nice* feature, especially since there aren't any mirrors on
> the west coast of the US.
> 
> Comments??  Am I asking for too much?

Wow, nice options. Well, if they would just donate it to us, grab what you
can get ;)

Bye,
	LenZ

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 Lenz Grimmer                                           SuSE GmbH
 mailto:grimmer@suse.de                       Schanzaeckerstr. 10
 http://www.suse.de/~grimmer             90443 Nuernberg, Germany