[Mapserver-users] server specifications

[Gerry Creager N5JXS]

Excellent points, including some I'd not thought of.

Thanks!
gerry

Ed McNierney wrote:
> Ryan -
> 
> Here are a few things to think about:
> 
> 1. We run MapServer on both Windows and on Linux, on similar machines.  I have no evidence that either operating system is perceptibly faster or slower than the other, and I know of no reason why one would run faster.  Use the operating system your server administrators know how to use.  If they know both, let them have a shouting match to decide <g>.
> 
> 2. You need to understand your client load and goals before you can spec the hardware.  That is, you can't tell if the hardware is fast enough until you define precisely what "fast enough" is supposed to mean.  How many simultaneous users?  What response time requirement?  I'm sure you'll say you don't know all that, but you need to make some guesses so you can get a baseline.
> 
> 3. Your Web server will run multiple instances of MapServer/MapScript as needed to serve simultaneous requests.  If there are two CPUs available, two simultaneous requests will go faster.  One request will go a bit faster (sometimes) on two CPUs because the OS and MapServer can run in parallel.  However, MapServer is not multithreaded and will not take advantage of multiple processors when running a single instance.
> 
> 4. You should probably have lots of RAM in any event, for OS file caching and to support multiple MapServer instances.
> 
> 5. The biggest performance issues, if you're serving lots of raster data, involve your data organization and disk subsystem.  SCSI RAID disk arrays are certainly faster than other systems, but they're quite expensive.  In our experience IDE RAID arrays can be quite good if they're configured as read-only data stores - mixing read and write operations will hurt you a lot.  Be sure your raster data is well-understood, and well-organized - appropriately tiled, indexed, and with overviews if appropriate.
> 
> 	- Ed
-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Texas Mesonet -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
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