Re: [cobalt-users] How many users?

["Steven Werby" <steven-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<cuny@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On a Raq3 with 4 IPs (we will host virtual sites, so we'll run several sites under
1 IP).
> How many sites do folks think we can comfortably host if some of the site are
running
> low usage Perl scripts (i.e. Bulletin Boards, guest books, FrontPage Ext, etc.)

The # of IPs are unimportant.  You can run hundreds of virtual sites on a single IP.
If the sites are all projected to have very little traffic, I expect that you could
host a couple hundred.  That being said, RAM will play an important factor.  How much
do you have?  If your users are running a lot of CGIs and your server is sluggish,
you will *definitely* benefit from boosting the RAM if you don't already have the
512MB max.  There are so many factors that affect CPU usage, RAM, bandwidth (I'm
assuming you have a fast connection and that's not a limiting constraint) and disk
I/O which will determine your server's peak and typical performance.  You should
probably test each CGI, look at the code to make sure it's efficient and compare its
performance to that of other CGIs with similar functionality and consider replacing
the CGIs with CPU-friendly PHP scripts with the same functionality.  For example, you
may find that the Perl Ultimate Bulletin Board performs poorly under a moderate load,
but the PHP Phorum product does not.

In order to be of more assistance you should post your RAM, what bandwidth you have
and how fast your connection is to the network (especially if it's throttled by your
colocation provider).  Also provide projections for web usage per site (pages per
day, MB per day), mail users per site, mail usage (in and out), whether you will be
allowing IMAP mail access (can eat up CPU time), what CGIs you will be running and
how often they will be used per site.  With at least some of this info. you may get
more specific feedback.

Steven Werby {steven-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx}