[AuckLUG] LAMP Server requirements

[Nevyn]

PHP is usually used as a server end script. So each time a visitor
visits a site which does database queries (or any other sort of php
script), a process is created on the server thus having a footprint.
So yeah, essentially pre-processing.

I'm not sure how well this relates but back at unitec we had a Unix
server (it was running SCO) which would be used simply for us to learn
Unix on. At any one time it was being used by 3 classes of 30 people
each so was serving 90 people on nothing more than a 486.

Things have changed since then. My 486 running windows 98 was quite
happy running a web browser with no hassles whatsoever (except maybe
the connection speed was only a 14.4kbps). The introduction of more
technology changed this so that it struggled with sites with flash and
some javascript even caused problems. Of course this is on the client
side and things haven't changed all that much in terms of load for the
server except probably php being more and more used.

Where am I going with all of this? Well, to serve 90 people, your
server's probably not going to have to be blazingly fast. The
capabilities of a server can probably be extended if you start looking
at some alternatives. Eg. using Lighttp (http://www.lighttpd.net/)
instead of Apache.

The PHPUG list (http://www.phpug.org.nz/) might have more of an idea
on this sort of issue. Personally I've always just contracted the
hosting out (usually to freeparking) to make things alittle easier on
myself.

On 1/19/07, John Deverall <JohnD at ablazesoftware.co.nz> wrote:
> Hi Nevyn,
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
> I didn't think to consider pre processing? Is that what PHP does?
>
> The server will probably be hosting a number of Joomla sites, all of
> which will be small with possibly 3 users each during busy periods.
>
> In this way max simultaneous users should start to add up, to say 30
> users if we had 10 sites, 90 users if we had 30.
>
> This is assuming every website was having a busy period at once, the
> real number would be lower than this.
>
> Joomla is a CMS written in PHP (I expect you probably know it) and I
> don't know how it would scale.
>
> I've read that 1.5 is going to be better - but there is no notion of
> what that means apart from that they are aiming for the enterprise
> market.
>
> Does this give more of an idea?
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: aucklug-bounces at linux.net.nz [mailto:aucklug-bounces at linux.net.nz]
> On Behalf Of Nevyn
> Sent: Friday, 19 January 2007 2:18 a.m.
> To: Auckland Linux User Group mailing list
> Subject: Re: [AuckLUG] LAMP Server requirements
>
> I suppose the real question here is what's the purpose of the server?
> Is it going to be handling the occassional query, simply be a test
> machine or be serving up hundreds of pages a minute?
>
> The next question is, how efficient are the pages it's going to be
> serving up? How much information is likely to be returned from the
> database? Is the entire site going to be reliant on php or is the php
> going to be kept to a minimum.
>
> I'd suggest that the reason there's no meaningful information on the
> subject is because it's really up to the individual setup.
>
> On 1/18/07, John Deverall <JohnD at ablazesoftware.co.nz> wrote:
> > A quick question for those who know.
> >
> > Does anyone happen to know or have any experience with testing the
> > minimum requirements of a LAMP server under different loads?
> >
> > I've had a bit of a google and found nothing especially useful.
> >
> > The Apache project advises their hardware requirement to be a "fast
> > enough" server with plenty of RAM.
> >
> > My googling suggests that MySQL would give up before Apache would
> under
> > a large load but that's not actually what I want to know.
> >
> > I want more concrete stuff, like am I likely to get away with a cheap
> > IBM x330 from trademe? (Pentium 3 class machine)
> >
> > If I go for a cheapie server at what point will everything start to
> fall
> > apart on me (probably when a fan or SCSI drive fails out of warranty
> but
> > I know that already)
> >
> > I'm wondering if anyone knows the answer load wise.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > John