[squid-users] Bigger Squid setup recommendations

Hi all,

I'm putting together a new caching box. Squid is high on the list, and
I've been charged with putting together a box for testing that, if the
test goes
well, will probably be put into production. I've been reading through
the FAQ and list archives, but still need to come to a few conclusions.

The hardware: HP ProLiant DL360, 3 GB RAM, dual 2.something gig Xeon
CPU's, dual
72 GB 10k SCSI drives. I can hardware RAID the disks, but I'm not sure
I want to
given the massive amount of disk activity this box is destined for. (Or
do I?) I only have this one box to work with at the moment.

The people: anywhere from 500 to 2,000 concurrent users, with the
potential for
up to 5,000+ in the event of a news event like 9/11.

I'm planning to use SuSE 9 with squid transparently. I think I can
handle setting up squid and the other little packages that we intend to
mix in with it (already tested
on a smaller scale), but I'm not sure about sizing the partitions. Is
one file
system better than another for caching? How many partitions? How big?
Should I
mirror the drives? I need the best performance with just a dash of
fault
tolerance. :) The config of the box will be backed up frequently in
case it
needs to be rebuilt. I'm thinking a partition scheme like this:

/boot 100MB reiser
/ 10 GB reiser
/var/log 20 GB reiser
/var/cache 30 GB aufs (or reiser? this is the cache_dir)

Are there any squid configuration parms that I should be aware for a
deployment
of this size? Any "gotchas" to look out for? Any on-going
administrative
bummers? Cool tools for administration? I'd like to run the package
that comes
with SuSE and can be updated with the provided tools, but I can compile
and
install from source if necessary. Any arguments in favor of one over
the other?

Any recommendations or pointers in the right direction are appreciated.
Thanks!

Tony Gettig
Kalamazoo Public Schools
Received on Mon Dec 15 2003 - 11:35:44 MST