Hello everybody,

I have just taken the responsibility of a webhosting project. It is about displaying results of a state level competitive examination.

Here are the vital stats :

Total no. of visitors expected : 250,000
Over a period of : 3 days

The day the results will be displayed, the server may experience very heavy traffic (i.e. 50% of 250,000 or even more). Afterall future of over 600,000 students depends upon this.

The client wants to use MySQL database. The databse size is coming around 40 MB.

I have a server : webhostindia.com (dedicated fromCatalog.com) with a specs as follows :

Celeron 500 Mhz, 256 MB SDRAM, 100 GIG of transfer with MySQL installed along with PHP3. I use this for shared hosting and host around 150 small websites (average server load is generally 0.01, 0.02, 0.01.

Now I have some questions and need some suggestions from you guys. Any tips will be most appriciated.

- Can my shared server handle this ? Or shall I hire a ded server for a month ? If i shall hire a dedicated server, from where shall i get it ? any suggestions ? Any offers can be send to me at talash@talash.net only.

- How can i prevent the server from crashing under extreme situation ? (is it good to limit the number of concurrent connections, so that the RAM or processor is not hogged up)

- What can i do to prevent any expected problems ? Your experiences ?

All feedbacks will be highly appriciated.

Thanx again.
Regards
Abhishek

Originally posted by talash
Celeron 500 Mhz, 256 MB SDRAM, 100 GIG of transfer with MySQL installed along with PHP3. I use this for shared hosting and host around 150 small websites (average server load is generally 0.01, 0.02, 0.01.

From what you wrote, it seems as if this server is more or less underused, and I don't see a need to get another server for this. As Tim mentioned in another post, it is hard to say whether the application is written well enough. I'd say that is going to be a factor more than anything else. The traffic and the server specs seem fine (to me).

An example of what I'm talking about would be two forums, both powered by php and mysql. The two forums might perform differently even if they had the same amount of traffic, and posts, etc.

So, in theory, it would do fine, though it could also be coded bad enough to do some damage. I'm not sure anyone could answer this for sure. I suppose if you want to be safe, and protect the other sites on the server, getting a second dedicated just for this might not be a bad idea, but it shouldn't be needed.

Anyone agree, disagree?

I would suggest that you build your application and get it tested - firstly, by yourself and a few friends all trying to access the site at the same time, and then trying one of the services which are available to simulate load - you can find something like that through Google - thus being able to recreate a load which is above what you expect - and therefore know how your server copes.

I agree though that it is important how your scripts are coded, so I would say think carefully as to how you handle concurrent connections to the database.

HTH,

James Cox

Hi,

Since the local council has a low budget, we are working in limited area.

I will notlike my other customers to suffer due to any server crash. In some sites i have seen that they say "Server too busy, check back later". How can i do the same on this site, if the number of concurrent connections exceeds say 100 or whatever.

I will first test with x number of connections and then finalise that x or y no. of connections can be handled at a time. Accordingly i will like to set this parameter.

I hope what i am saying makes some sense :(

Regards
Abhishek

Hey that $139 special is a nice entry level package. As long as you don't think you will go over the 65GB that is. Otherwise you are paying $5 per additional gig.

Talash,

I dealt with something similar about two weeks ago...

The company approached me and told me how much money they could spend and told me they needed something setup for a contest they were running. They needed everything for about 10 days and each day there would be some kind of competition of sorts and someone would submit and entry and be issued a "key code" then then next day they would use their key code to see the comments their entry received and also see the results of the previous day, etc. It was kind of complicated, but they already had their script ready. It was in PHP. I was lucky because they had a very nice budget and since they expected alot of traffic, we ended up setting up a load balancing solution with 3 servers and it worked out quite well. They did use much more bandwidth than they had anticiapted and so they were really hit with overage charges.

If they can afford it, I would suggest getting a dedicated server for them or if they can afford it, try load balancing two low-end servers.

MySQL/PHP combination has been very good IMHO.

Im too developing a site with some complexities and have found this combo robust and fast.

The celeron m/c could be inadequate for this kind of work. I dont know what kind of hard disk you're using. A good SCSI will make a big difference especially since you're using databases and also concurrent connections..

I you are looking for temporary measures, I suggest that you look at load balancing across servers or at the very least, add more RAM. Adding memory will also
take off some load off the h/d.

Last but not least, study the database schema and the queries/updates and find out how best you can make it efficient.
A good database design shows dramatic improvement in performance.

Cheers,

Matra.

As matra said SCSI could make it or kill it really. The Celeron should be ok as long as the code is ok.. I would say you should be safe..