[mapserver-users] Web Server Tricks... Kind of Off Topic

[Paul Ramsey]

By far the most performant decision would be to use the slow machine as 
a proxy. That way it just has to serve HTTP. I would strongly suggest 
investigating the proxying capabilities of your slow HTTP server.

Pericles S. Nacionales wrote:
> Lot's of interesting reply on this one but what I would recommend is a
> combination of two previous posts.  First, Tyler Mitchell mentioned WMS.
> Yeah, use that for your raster datasets.  For vector datasets, I would
> then suggest importing them into a geodatabase (PostGIS) and connecting
> to that database from your slower web server.  This way, you can still
> use "normal" MapServer functionalities on the "local" layers.
> 
> So, 
> 1. set a WMS server app on your fast machine and add all your raster
> layers there.  
> 2. On the same machine, install PostgreSQL and PostGIS, and convert your
> shapefiles to a PostGIS database (there's a utility included in
> PostGIS). 
> 3. Create a WMS client application on your slow machine and add all the
> layers from your WMS server app.
> 4. Add your PostGIS database/s as layers to the WMS application.
> 5. Do anything else you'd like.
> 6. Let us know how it works.
> 
> This unfinished application works almost like that:
> http://arbutus.gis.umn.edu/cambodia/.  The raster layers come from a WMS
> server app that resides on a Windows 2000 machine (hw: Dell Optiplex
> Gx1, 400mhz PII, 256Mb RAM) with Apache (sorry, I gave up on IIS a long
> time ago) while the vector layers reside on the local machine (arbutus)
> running Linux 2.4 (hw: custom, AMD k6-2 500Mhz, 384Mb RAM).  I did this
> while fooling around with the WMS stuff.  This was going to be my
> masters project...
> 
> G'day!
> Perry N.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
> [mailto:owner-mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu] On Behalf Of Puneet
> Kishor
> Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 7:12 PM
> To: 'Hankley, Chip'; MapServer List (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: [mapserver-users] Web Server Tricks... Kind of Off Topic
> 
> would be cool, wouldn't it! but, unless mapserver can be made into a
> daemon
> (or a service), this really is not easy. 
> 
> think about it...
> 
> a user request comes to your dummy (slowpoke) web server. The webserver
> determines this is a ms request...
> 
> one way, of course, would be to simply pass the request to a different
> webserver... both, in Apache and IIS (and probably every other webserver
> on
> earth except perhaps the 10 line ultramicro one somewhere) you can
> easily
> forward a request to another computer based on a number of parameters.
> but
> what's the point of this... you may as well have that "other" server
> published and not have the users go to your slowpoke server...
> 
> what you want is that the grunt work of ripping through the mountains of
> shape files or other data is done by a chunky backbox with gobs of ram
> and
> solid-state harddisks for storage, no? so, the slowpoke server passes
> the
> params to your backbox which constructs the requisite image and dumps it
> into a storage that is url-accessible by the slowpoke.
> 
> now, the way ms is right now, it is just a program (a great one, but
> just a
> program nonetheless). it runs only when poked by either the webserver
> (cgi)
> or perl/php (cgi). you need it to be like a server itself (then it will
> really live up to the last two syllables in its name), fully threaded
> n'all,
> perhaps forking, just like Apache is, in its own memory space, etc. 
> 
> Perhaps it could be... SDL is the man for to comment on that. 
> 
> Even better if it could be a mod_mapserver a la mod_perl, all compiled
> and
> loaded within Apache itself, but that is another story...
> 
> pk/
> 
> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Hankley, Chip [mailto:Chip.Hankley at GASAI.Com]
>>Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 4:44 PM
>>To: MapServer List (E-mail)
>>Subject: [mapserver-users] Web Server Tricks... Kind of Off Topic
>>
>>
>>I am by no means a guru at configuring / working out web 
>>server hardware /
>>networking issues... and could use a little guidance.
>>
>>Our main webserver is pretty much a dog. We're running a 200 MHz dual
>>processor server w/ win2K and IIS... it handles a number of 
>>things for our
>>company (besides mapserver)... and it is S L O W (i know... 200 MHz,
>>Win2K... big part of the problem).
>>
>>Anyway... my options are limited b/c of internal politics and 
>>the like - so
>>Linux is out, as well as my own dedicated server.
>>
>>What I'm wondering is if there is some way to "pass-through" 
>>my mapserver
>>requests to a more powerful box within the organization. For 
>>instance, a MS
>>request would come in, and instead of being processed on that 
>>server, the
>>actual mapserver work (the process of rendering the image 
>>from the raw GIS
>>data) would occur on another more powerful machine, and then the image
>>either would be passed back for service to the client, or 
>>would be read
>>directly from that machine. Is such a thing possible? What 
>>would be the
>>performance implications of such a trick?
>>
>>I think this is kind of how MO IMS and ArcIMS work in that 
>>there is a "Map
>>Server" that runs as a service... not necessarily on the web server.
>>
>>TIA
>>
>>Chip Hankley
>>
> 
>