Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Colocation and Data Centers : Server configuration for file sharing website

[ishan]

Hello,
We are building a server for a file sharing website. It has nearly 2000 visitors at a time.

Currently it is on a core2quad 9650 , 8 GB DDR2 and 1 TB SATA.

The server loads are around 50-120 when the traffic is at 1000 visitors (we have limited it to 1000) iowait is over 45% at such times.

What configuration would you suggest for such type of website ?

Thanks in advance,
Ishan

[linuxissues]

A dual cpu, and split the files over couple of drives, so that io is not too high.

[ishan]

Originally Posted by linuxissues

A dual cpu, and split the files over couple of drives, so that io is not too high.

I was looking at this config -

Intel Xeon X3440
8 GB DDR3
4x500 GB WD RE3 in RAID 10

What do you think ? Is it really that CPU intensive to use a Dual cpu server ?

[iTom]

You need to split the IO load away from a single drive.
Also caching popular content would be a great help.

[dubdub]

One suggestion could be a decent storagre controller with Raid-XX and if you use Apache, enable SendFile.

[bhavicp]

Not really sure about the CPU, but if your load is that high during peak times it looks like you will need a duel CPU.

Although the 4x500 GB WD RE3 in RAID 10 is the main thing to reduce slow loading times caused by IO wait.

[tim2718281]

Originally Posted by ishan

Hello,
We are building a server for a file sharing website. It has nearly 2000 visitors at a time.

Currently it is on a core2quad 9650 , 8 GB DDR2 and 1 TB SATA.

The server loads are around 50-120 when the traffic is at 1000 visitors (we have limited it to 1000) iowait is over 45% at such times.

What configuration would you suggest for such type of website ?

Thanks in advance,
Ishan

Is that a single SATA drive?

What is the network port speed?

What download rates are the users getting?

How much data is stored altogether?

What size range are the files?

How much network traffic is there?

[ishan]

Is that a single SATA drive? Yes

What is the network port speed? 1000 mbit

What download rates are the users getting? I am not the owner, but with 1000 concurrent visitors, I would say <10 mbit.

How much data is stored altogether? Over 200 GB and increasing

What size range are the files? <100 MB each

How much network traffic is there? 8-12 TB per month.

Thanks for helping,
Ishan

[iTom]

You say 8TB per month, but under 10mbps as the data rate.
10Mbps 24/7 for a month is 3.3TB transfer. You might be getting the data rate wrong...

[ishan]

Originally Posted by ZanyHost

You say 8TB per month, but under 10mbps as the data rate.
10Mbps 24/7 for a month is 3.3TB transfer. You might be getting the data rate wrong...

<10 mbps was per user , not overall. Please see my above post again.

[tim2718281]

Originally Posted by ishan

Is that a single SATA drive? Yes

What is the network port speed? 1000 mbit

What download rates are the users getting? I am not the owner, but with 1000 concurrent visitors, I would say <10 mbit.

How much data is stored altogether? Over 200 GB and increasing

What size range are the files? <100 MB each

How much network traffic is there? 8-12 TB per month.

Thanks for helping,
Ishan

OK, traffic of 8-12TB per month means the average data transmission rate is 25 to 40mbps, so a maximum network speed of 1000 mbps is probably adequate.

A single SATA drive might be adequate. You should check the IO rate though. The average I/O rate for the downloading should be 10 I/Os per second or less, with peaks of maybe 60 I/Os per second, Writes should lower than that.

The key performance parameter is the download rates the users are actually getting. Users typically have network connections of 10mbps or less; so if you're delivering data to each user at that kind of speed, there's really no way to make it faster.

However, I suspect from the figures you've given that you may have a lot of activity going on besides the file downloading, pushing up your disk IO rates and slowing things down.

If that's the case, adding a second disk, or even a third and fourth disk, will help for a while. But it would be better to tune the site to reduce the disk I/O first, as that can sometimes make big differences at no cost.

Can you give the URL of the site and the pages that the viewers access most?

[iTom]

Originally Posted by ishan

<10 mbps was per user , not overall. Please see my above post again.

Sorry been one of them days!

[ishan]

Originally Posted by tim2718281

OK, traffic of 8-12TB per month means the average data transmission rate is 25 to 40mbps, so a maximum network speed of 1000 mbps is probably adequate.

A single SATA drive might be adequate. You should check the IO rate though. The average I/O rate for the downloading should be 10 I/Os per second or less, with peaks of maybe 60 I/Os per second, Writes should lower than that.

The key performance parameter is the download rates the users are actually getting. Users typically have network connections of 10mbps or less; so if you're delivering data to each user at that kind of speed, there's really no way to make it faster.

However, I suspect from the figures you've given that you may have a lot of activity going on besides the file downloading, pushing up your disk IO rates and slowing things down.

If that's the case, adding a second disk, or even a third and fourth disk, will help for a while. But it would be better to tune the site to reduce the disk I/O first, as that can sometimes make big differences at no cost.

Can you give the URL of the site and the pages that the viewers access most?

I cannot provide the URL due to client confidentiality. Thank you very much for your advice.

Currently, iostat shows that the CPU is in use <10% of the time and is waiting for IO or idle for the remaining time. I guess the X3440 seems to be enough.

As all of you have indicated, spreading out the data over more drives is the way to go, so the RAID10 configuration with 4 SATA drives should be enough for a while.

Originally Posted by ZanyHost

Sorry been one of them days!

It happens to the best of us

[CH-Shaun]

For serving static files i recommend using another web server like Nginx or Lighttpd. This will bring your server load down.

[tulix]

Originally Posted by CH-Shaun

For serving static files i recommend using another web server like Nginx or Lighttpd. This will bring your server load down.

this is a good suggestion, but without multiple drives that wouldn't help.

Although 25-40 Mb/s is not that much bandwidth, load depends on the traffic pattern, small files, big files, etc. More drives you'll put - easier will be to handle any type of traffic (assuming that you are using server grade motherboard). 4 drives will let you to push 100 Mb/s, 8 drives even more. File system like XFS (on Linux) may help you out too.

After hitting some limit you may want to switch to multi server environment.