slighty OT: new hardware for a mapserver application

[Arnulf Christl]

Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> Thanks for the tips Ed,
> 
> There should be about 100Gb of imagery in geotiff format, 5 to 10 Gb of vector
> data stored in shapefiles, and about another 5 to 10 Gb of tabular data
> stored in MySQL.

The vectorial data will not cause any problems though i would suggest to 
merge the shapes and MySQl alpha data into one PostgreSQL/PostGIS 
feature table. We are truly happy with PG doing all the work and 
rendering sections out of 10 million and more polygons within milliseconds.
There are quite different opinions though regarding performance of shape 
files versus databases.

> I am not expecting a huge number of hits per day, but right now it is hard to
> say... perhaps 10 to 100 requests per day?

Is that individual requests or number of users? Larger installations are 
known to render several hundred thousand maps a day so that your 
suggested numbers should not even get you start to think.

> We are considering a dual processor xeon system with SCSI disks, as this
> closely resembles our test machine.

As suggested, keep it cheap, step up later. Dual CPU is cool, loads of 
RAM is cool when using PG, fast disks are good for large raster data 
(see Ed, he is the expert on rasters). If you need more database vector 
performance put it on a separate machine.

Best, Arnulf.

> Thanks again,
> 
> Dylan
> 
> On Monday 08 August 2005 10:11 am, Ed McNierney wrote:
> 
>>Dylan -
>>
>>I always recommend buying cheap stuff and making sure you ask it simple
>>questions <g>!
>>
>>If you are running lots of imagery, a fast disk subsystem is a good
>>idea.  But it's helpful to define "large quantity" more precisely,
>>because one person's "large" is another's "minuscule".  RAM is cheap and
>>always a good idea, as it can be used for disk caching and swapping is a
>>big performance hit.
>>
>>If you can be more specific about (a) the size of your data sets, (b)
>>the volume of requests and image sizes supported, and (c) the formats of
>>your data (TIFF? PostGIS? Shapefiles?) perhaps we can be more specific
>>about recommendations.
>>
>>	- Ed
>>
>>Ed McNierney
>>President and Chief Mapmaker
>>TopoZone.com / Maps a la carte, Inc.
>>73 Princeton Street, Suite 305
>>North Chelmsford, MA  01863
>>ed at topozone.com
>>(978) 251-4242
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: UMN MapServer Users List [mailto:MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU] On
>>Behalf Of Dylan Beaudette
>>Sent: Monday, August 08, 2005 12:34 PM
>>To: MAPSERVER-USERS at LISTS.UMN.EDU
>>Subject: [UMN_MAPSERVER-USERS] slighty OT: new hardware for a mapserver
>>application
>>
>>Greetings,
>>
>>We are currently in the process of ramping up the scale of a
>>mapserver-based application, and thus in search of some new hardware.
>>
>>So far we have priced out some dual processor systems, with the best
>>deal from Dell. The machine will be running the UNIX version of
>>mapserver. The large quantity of imagery and high density vector files
>>will require a powerful machine in order to keep latency low.
>>
>>Any suggestions or stories about previous purchases (related to a
>>mapserver
>>application) would be much appreciated.
>>
>>Thanks in advance!
>>
>>--
>>Dylan Beaudette
>>Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group University of California at
>>Davis
>>530.754.7341