RE: Speed on Raq

[Edin <edin@wws.de>]

With Linux anyway. You can achieve much better performance with your machine
putting more RAM in it. Linux has a very effective cache (see NT-Linux
comparison in german c't magazine). Memory is getting cheaper and cheaper.
Processors are expensive. The biggest problem with RaQ or Cobalt in particular
is managing dynamic Sites. It's a perfect company-presentation server with
static sites only informing people about you. My experiences with it shown me
that if you use perl or python on it you have to say good bye to the
performance. One thing I don't really get is: I have the feeling that their own
admin site - which must have been done in CGI - is quite fast. Even system
monitors are quite quick. 




Am Tue, 17 Aug 1999 You wrote:

> ******    message to minivend-users from Kyle Hayes <kyle540@quicknet.net>     ******
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 17 Aug 1999, Cameron Prince wrote:
> 
> > ******    message to minivend-users from Cameron Prince <PRINCECB@novachem.com>     ******
> > 
> > We originally setup our two stores on Cobalt RaQs. The performance was piss
> > poor! These boxes have a non-Intel processor called a MIPS and it's about
> > the equivalent of a Pentium 100 MHz. CGI-Wrap is turned on by default and
> > Minivend will fail, but the big kicker is that CyberCash (and most other
> > credit card verification programs)encryption/decryption won't run on it.
> > This is because their programs were compiled for linux on the Intel
> > platform. If you plan on having an extremely low usage store front, the RaQ
> > may be a good place for you, but we ended up co-locating our own servers
> > with our ISP.
> 
> I just converted over from a Pentium 166 to a P-II 400.  I would not call
> the results spectacular, but it is now usable.  With the Pentium machine,
> things were very slow on the checkout page.  Just getting the page on the
> screen could take 10 seconds.   Now, it is more like 2 or 3.
> 
> Cobalts are cute little machines, but I don't know that I would serve
> much dynamic content from one.
> 
> PaymentNet (now called Signio) has/had a client piece written in Perl that
> did the client-side encryption and connect.  It sounds like CyberCash is
> just trying to skim the cream with the Intel boxes.
> 
> > I have a Compaq Prolient 450Mhz Server with RAID-5 ($7,000.00) for one and a
> > http://www.hitech-usa.com/ 450Mhz Server ($2,000.00) for the other with both
> > running RedHat v6.0. Both stores smoke now. I would guess performance is up
> > by at least 70%.
> 
> Yikes.  Only 70%??!?  You should get a _factor_ of 7 speed up, especially
> on the RAID box!  We put enough RAM in our server to make sure that the
> disk is not the deciding factor in anything.  That seems to help a lot.
> All my previous experience tells me that if your web server hits the disk
> for anything more than booting, you will have bad performance.
> 
> A lot of people seem to try to "save" money by not putting enough RAM in
> their webservers.  I think this is a mistake.
> 
> Best,
> Kyle
>