I'm afraid I don't have any solid figures handy, but it seems to me
that bandwidth to/from the Internet is fairly likely to limit how
many servers your users can actually keep busy at any given moment.
Adding more servers to a cluster, relatively late in the process, may
actually be much easier than adding more Internet bandwidth....

David Gillett


On 5 Jul 2001, at 18:36, Cesar Mendoza wrote:

> Yeah I now is a broad subject. Here are more facts.
>
> - The Web Application is not developed yet, so it's impossible to se how
> much time it takes to complete each transaction.
> - The Web Application will be DB intensive, few users entering the main data
> (about 100 total), multiple users using it (about 4000 total) to retrieve
> data and entering small amounts of data.
> - The Web Applicatino WILL NOT be graphics intensive. The ASPs will deliver
> just plain HTML with few graphics (JPG/GIF).
> - Maximum users expected to be online at the same time: 2000.
>
> What you think of this:
> - 3 Web Servers (PIIIx2 / 256MB RAM) using Win2KAS + IIS 5.0 load balancing
> the network traffic
> - 2 Database Servers (PIIIx2 / 512MB RAM)using Win2KAS + SQL Server 2000 ina
> cluster (active-to-pasive) with a SCSI disk array
>
> Is this enough? Should we add more servers or just add memory to the current
> ones?
>
> Do somebody knows where I can find real life cases that are similar to this
> one?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Cesar Mendoza
>
>
> -----Mensaje original-----
>
> Yesterday, The Esteemed Cesar Mendoza gathered electrons and wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I'm trying to determine the number of servers (Win2KAS/IIS5 so we can use
> > clusters and load balancing) needed to implement a web application that
> will
> > serve more or less 4000 clients (total). The aplication will need database
> > access all the time and use ASP. How many users a single server can
> handle?
>
>
> Wow, that is a pretty broad subject.  I was using 4 apache servers behind
> a Cisco Local Director just for the static web content.  The application
> servers were about 30 dual 550 machines with 1/2 gig memory.  The database
> was running on an HP machine (big sucker).  The apps were running W2K NT
> with Weblogic.  Since you are doing database and the apps need a
> connection to the database, you cannot put the apps on a Local Director as
> the app needs a sql connection and once you loose that, the connect is
> lost.  You can mirror the database if you like.  As for performance
> charts, I don't have them since that company is one of the 330 Internet
> company in the Silicon Valley this year to go toast.  Since you are
> talking 4K clients, are these clients accessing the servers at 1 time?
> Or 4K clients all together  That's a pretty big load.
>
> The answer really depends on the application that is running on the NT
> machines.  You will need to contact the application people that wrote it
> and tweak out their suggestions.  But there is really a  lot more to it.
> Like, are your clients accessing from the US, from Europe, from Asia?
> That will afffect all your performance.
>
> There is a lot more to this question because not only are you dealing with
> the machines, but the application, the network, the client (is it a web
> client or a windows client accessing), is it db intensive, network
> intensive, or web intensive..
>
> HTH
> ....and btw, we did test with Weblogic and it was fastest on W2K.  Linux
> crashes on Java, slow on Solaris.
>
> --
> Eric "emaq" Maquiling
>
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