Re: [mv] Optimizing a catalog

["Bill" <bill@webteam.net>]

> > Hi,
> >
> > I have a single catalog that is experiencing about 20-40,000 page views
a
> > day.  I'm running MV3.12 on a Digital Alpha with 512 MB of RAM.  I use
mySQL
> > and file based sessions.
> >
> > I was wondering if anyone out there has any recommendations for
optimizing
> > my catalog, my server has a load averaging 4-5 at peak hours and many
> > customers are receiving Error Messages because the Minivend server can
> > handle the number of requests (I'm not blaming Minivend, I know I need
to do
> > some work to make things run more efficiently).  I currently have
MaxServers
> > set to 15, Hammerlock to 120, Housekeeping to 15, and PID check to 300.
>
>   A few suggestions...
> 1) the obvious... another server with a transparent switchover.. I can't
think
> what they call it...
> 2) take your catalog out of minivend and only use the order process. If
> you switched to C or mod_perl you'd get much better perfomance, and I'm
> sure the catalog gets hit more than the order section.
> 3) are you doing static pages at all? Make your process as static as
possible.
> 4) I believe mv can cache pages... find some that don't change and cache
them.
>
>   I'm sure there are more ways... but probably moving your catalog out of
> MV is the easier one/cheaper one that will get results. Depends on how
> much mv code you really use in the catalog. We use very little, and have
> been toying with the idea ourselves. We already have a way of storing the
> number of items ordered in a cookie so we can use a complete order tag in
> a non minivend page. using C or fast cgi or some mod_perl piece would
> probably bring your load down a lot and serve pages out faster.
> - Ant
>
> --

Thanks Anthony, I've been pondering building the static pages, it's probably
the best solution.  I'm not very familiar with the use of C or mod_perl with
Minivend.  Are these new features or is it something you set up during
configuration?