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From: dillon@best.com (Matthew Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.infosystems.www.misc
Subject: Re: Unix too slow for a Web server?
Date: 1 Oct 1996 13:54:03 -0700
Organization: Best Internet Communications, Inc. (info@best.com)
Lines: 54
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <52s0db$dau@flash.noc.best.net>
References: <323ED0BD.222CA97F@pobox.com> <$oVmqBAydTTyEw9t@senator.demon.co.uk> <52pd61$cfb@flash.noc.best.net> <52rkhe$d62@library.clarkson.edu>
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:In article <52rkhe$d62@library.clarkson.edu>,
:Mark Komarinski <komarimf@craft.clarkson.edu> wrote:
:>Matthew Dillon (dillon@best.com) wrote:
:>: :In article <$oVmqBAydTTyEw9t@senator.demon.co.uk>,
:>: :Gavin Estey <gavin@senator.demon.co.uk> wrote:
:>: :>In article <52am8g$fvs@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, Trent Piepho
:>: :><xyzzy@u.washington.edu> writes
:>: :>>But how would you share the data between them? Unless you buy a RAID array
:>: :>>for each machine, you'll have to use NFS or something. If you factor in
:>: :>>20 gigs of drive for each ppro, you'll have a hard time buying 10.
:>: :>
:>: :>Why would you want 20 gig on just one machine. You could have 10
:>: :>machines each with serving 2 gig.
:>:
:>: Not cost effective. What you could serve out of 10 2G boxes another
:>: person would be able to serve out of 2 10G boxes 400% cheaper. Reliability
:>: is an issue, but not one deserving a 4x increase in cost in a heavily
:>: competitive market!
:>
:>Ha ha ha ha ha ha bwah! bwah! ha ha ha. Oh sorry. This is just *way* too
:>funny.
:>
:>Try running something that hits the hard drive *a lot* and see your
:>performance go through the floor. (Hint: try running a news server)
Umm.. I think you missed the point big time. I was certainly NOT
recommending that you put a single 10G disk on a box. What I
was recommending was putting several 2G or 4G disks on a single box.
A standard fast-narrow SCSI bus as 10 MBytes/sec of bandwidth. A
fast-wide or a ultra-fast SCSI bus has 20 MBytes/sec of bandwidth.
A typical high speed disk.. take the new repackaged-as-quantum DEC's,
can do 8 MBytes/sec off the platter reading and 6 writing. If you
have two SCSI cards on the machine, this allows a single machine to
max out 40/8 = 5 physical disks in linear transfers. If you are seeking
a lot, you can throw 20 physical disks (10 per SCSI bus) before you
max out the SCSI bandwidth or potentially max out the CPU.
In fact, we run several news machines thank you very much... one has
ten 2G drives connected to two SCSI busses on a single machine, and
the other has two 4G and one 2G drive connected to a single SCSI bus on
a single machine. And lots of memory, of course.
The point was that that with only 2G of disk on a single machine,
it is highly unlikely that you could run enough *SERVICES* on the
machine to even come close to maxing out the cpu. This results
in a waste of the machine's resources.
-Matt
--
Matthew Dillon Engineering, BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
<dillon@best.net>
[always include a portion of the original email in any response!]