RE: [squid-users] Bigger Squid setup recommendations

>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.

Spec sounds fine.

>
>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),

Unless you have major reasons to go for Suse you may wish to consider a more
minimal distro. If you're happy with turning off/disabling stuff you don't
need (including a GUI!) then fine but Suse will likely install loads of
stuff you don't need which can possibly end up using CPU/RAM and hence slow
your system down. With that type of max-load you want to keep it as lean as
possible.

>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)

Hmm, maybe RAID the OS drive but you should consider having multiple
cache_dir's one for each drive you can have as a single drive. I think I'm
right in saying that having a cache_dir per drive will give a better
increase in performance compared with mirror RAIDing a 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?

Bear in mind Squid won't benefit from multiple CPU's, though you can bind
apps to specific CPU's and maybe give Squid it's own CPU and let everything
else run on the other one?

hth

Regards,

nry

_________________________________________________________________
It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today!
http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger
Received on Mon Dec 15 2003 - 13:39:33 MST