Forum .LRN Q&A: Some Hardware Help

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Posted by Ivan Gyulev on
Hi all
I am a student in the American University in Bulgaria and am currently involved in the .LRN integration process. Our "server" or let’s call it test PC is a P4 at 1.3GHz with 256MB RAM. Currently there are somewhere between 180 and 200 active users and this number is expected to grow to 600 at least in a couple of months. Does anyone have recommendations on hardware upgrades so that the system is stable (I know it’s the RAM but anyways I need a confirmation). And also would you recommend some real server configuration that will allow this amount of users to safely and enjoyably use the DotLRN platform.
Thanks.
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2: Re: Some Hardware Help (response to 1)
Posted by xx xx on
Have you seen https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=156292 ?
Are you asking people's advice for a smaller system?
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3: Re: Some Hardware Help (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on
Hi Ivan,

I'd not worry at the moment. If you run into some performance peaks, you can easily upgrade by:

a) Increase the memory
b) Get a RAID system
c) Get a second PC for the database

If you are smart, you will install the database on the RAID system of your first PC (and nothing else, meaning: You mount the RAID at /usr/local/pgsql) and once you got your second PC, take the RAID out of PC 1 and plug it into PC2.

But as I said right in the beginning, if you don't see your load spike heavily, no need to upgrade.

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4: Re: Some Hardware Help (response to 1)
Posted by Don Baccus on
Well, I'd add more RAM right away actually if you're going to have more than a handful of users at a time.  Once you start caching permissions and the like and allowing for more AOLserver threads RAM usage will grow rapidly, and it is very important to have a sizable PG buffer cache.

Adding another 256MB shouldn't cost much at all ...

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5: Re: Some Hardware Help (response to 1)
Posted by Ivan Gyulev on
Thanks for the help guys. We have a new server now and I hope it will work fine. We were experiencing some bottlenecks but it was due to lack of RAM.
Once again - thank for the advices