Forum .LRN Q&A: Some Hardware Help

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1: Some Hardware Help
Posted by Ivan Gyulev on 03/17/04 10:40 AM
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 03/17/04 10:56 AM
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 03/17/04 01:51 PM
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 03/17/04 05:52 PM
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 03/31/04 08:23 PM
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