On Thu, Jun 26, 2003 at 03:24:12PM +0100, ian wrote:
We'll build you one. Contact chris@irlcomputers.com. Strictly speaking dual CPUs don't make that much difference when compared with their cost. We did some tests on a Linux thin client which with 16 concurrent users all on OpenOffice.org Draw you would think would make a big difference. In practice even with a 1 gig P3 the processor was never saturated, but RAM makes a lot of difference particularly if the machine starts swapping. Also the thing that makes servers expensive is the disc
You do not want a thin client application server to start swapping. Since it is more likely to thrash than swap neatly.
subsystems and backup. SCSI, RAID etc put the price up a lot. If you have plenty of RAM, and RAM is cheap, better to put money into RAM than disc drives because delivering files from solid state is always going to be faster than from a mechanical disc. Windows tends to be more disc
Even expensive drives tend to have only a few meg of cache on the drive itself.
intensive so SCSI, RAID etc will make more of a difference. A good reason for using Linux is that it saves you in hardware costs as well as software licenses. Probably cheaper to have 2 lowish spec servers and make one redundant but benefit from two in parallel than buy one all singing and dancing machine which in practice gives little real performance advantage. Actually probably two servers will out perform one anyway. Another reason people tend to buy one mega server with Windows is again licensing costs. Doesn't matter how many Linux servers you have the licensing cost is still zero.
Or however much you paid for your distribution :) -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763