[Mapserver-users] performance information

[Ed McNierney]

Jerl -

Unfortunately, the only possible answers are (a) a complex discussion or
(b) blah, blah, blah.

The performance of any Web map server will depend on a long list of
factors - the number of users, the frequency of map requests, the size
of each map request, the average Internet bandwidth to each user, the
pixel depth and image format served, the amount of RAM on the server,
speed and number of CPUs, the interface used for hard disks, the number
of hard disks, their seek times, the number of independent data
channels, the number of data layers used, the format of each layer
(raster, vector, database), the file formats used for each data storage
format, blah, blah, blah.

The only simple answers are incorrect answers.  If I only need to serve
one map request to each user, and I can take as long as I like to do it,
I can serve an almost unlimited number of simultaneous connections
"without major impact to the system".

This is a very complicated discussion.  I have been very pleased with
MapServer's performance - I switched from a single-purpose, dedicated
raster map server that I wrote myself, to MapServer.  But I worked with
MapServer and my data for a long time so I understood how to design my
system (that's something I'd do with any server, not just MapServer).

Most folks feel I run a "pretty big" MapServer installation.  I serve
over half a million maps a day to up to around 1,000 simultaneous users
(more when there's a California earthquake <g>) from about 21 terabytes
of vector and raster imagery in a variety of formats.  I don't claim to
be the biggest MapServer installation around, but I certainly serve more
maps from more data to more users than the average site, and MapServer's
been great for doing that.  But one could easily choke a system that's
much "smaller" in several dimensions with bad design.

If you have a particular MapServer application in mind, there are
several folks here who could give you advice if you could describe it in
as much detail as possible.

	- Ed

Ed McNierney
President and Chief Mapmaker
TopoZone.com
-----Original Message-----
From: mapserver-users-admin at lists.gis.umn.edu
[mailto:mapserver-users-admin at lists.gis.umn.edu] On Behalf Of Jerl
Simpson
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 5:15 PM
To: mapserver-users at lists.gis.umn.edu
Subject: [Mapserver-users] performance information

Hello all,

I am curious if anyone has done stress and performance testing on
mapserver?

I know I have seen some numbers, but I can't find those now.
I am basically wanting to know number of simultaneous connections that
can be served with out major impact to the system.
I know this number varies based on the strength of the architecture and
such.  But if I could find info that says "On my Dual Xeon blah blah
with 2Gb RAM blah blah"

Or something like, "I noticed a performance hit when we had X
simultaneous connections."

Does anyone have this data?  Or know where I might find such data?

Thanks very much.

jerl
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