Re: [cobalt-users] MySQL Load Limits (especially on a RaQ2)

["Dave Small" <daves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steven Werby wrote:
>
> MySQL users, I am interested in knowing what MySQL's load limits are on a
> RaQ2 and on a more powerful server?  I know it "depends", but I'm just
> trying to get a feel for what others are getting it to do.  In particular,
> I'm interested in simple to complex queries of large tables (500,000 -
> 10,000,000+ records) in order to return matching records to a webpage
using
> PHP.
>
> I'm looking for responses like "I have a webpage on a RaQ2 that does a
> straight select on a 5 million record table through PHP and that page gets
> 400,000 hits per day, primarily over a 10 hour period with no problems".
>
> I'm trying to determine whether MySQL is a feasible solution for a project
I
> am developing and also whether a RaQ2 or RaQ3 are up to the task.

Hi Steven. It's not very often that I find an article that I can reasonably
respond to, but on this one, I may be able to help.

I'm running a standard RAQ2 that until yesterday was running with just 32MB
of RAM. On that I had the standard Apache that ships with RAQ2 (Apache/1.3.3
Cobalt), PHP3.0.7 and MySQL 3.22.21. To be honest, we had some problems to
start with (no surprise there) but after tightening the screws a little we
got a stable solution serving 30,000 pages a day, each of which performs a
connect, 5 or 6 SELECTS, a few LOCKS, an INSERT INTO, and a CREATE TABLE.
There are almost 8 million records in our datasets - a search across these 8
million records is done in 1-4 seconds under normal load.

The problem we had was with mysql locking if it was over-worked - reducing
the max_connections to just 10 eliminated the problem, causing failed
connections only at occasional peak times (at which time a tidy 'this server
is busy' note was displayed... a few seconds later the backlog would clear,
and all would be well again). 10 may seem very a very low maximum number of
connections, but for the 30,000 hits/day it is satisfactory 99% of the time.

As I said earlier, all of the above was achieved with 32MB of RAM. Having
upgraded to 128MB I can only assume we can allow a higher max_connections
setting - we are in the middle of experiments to prove such.

If you want more information, pls email me directly and I can send you the
PHP file, hit stats and more.

Hope this helps in making your mind up - we went for the RAQ2 originally
because of the dramatic cost-saving, but having used it remotely for 6
months now, I think it's a dream, if not a little rough-round-the-edges - I
think the web-based admin is a little flakey at times, and *must* get round
to installing SSH very soon.

Regards
Dave Small
daves@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx