Topic: What would you use ????

[Richard]

I am currently running a dual PIII 800 server with an IDE Hard Disk to run Server 5.
We were running transproxy to help with bandwidth issues, but noticed sluggishness when traffic picked up. We belive it may be due to the IDE Hard Disk & the crappy seek times. Is this our problem ?? If so, what SCSI Controler & drive would you use ? This is our main server which operates 5 sub-servers.

Input please ???

Thanks,
Richard

[Orville Carter]

Richard,

The IDE drive may not be the only problem. The amount RAM may also be a problem.
Most EIDE hd's are fairly good performers - especially the 7200 rpm's.

Cheap network hub's can also be a problem when traffic increases. I had a 10BT (el cheapo) hub while the pc's have Intel 10/100 BT NIC's. During heavy use the collision light was almost on constantly. Now its much better with an intelligent 100BT managed hub.

OC

PS: I use 23Gig scsi wide drives on my SME servers.

[Filippo Carletti]

Squid performances are affected by ram and ram usage is proportional to cache size. SME default is 100 M, that will need a low amount of memory even after days of usage. You could use top (sort by mem pressing M) to see how much ram squid is using. 20 M for a 100 M cache is common.

[Richard]

I don't think ram was the problem, we had 512mb in the machine. However I did notice massive HDD transfer when under load.
Also I do not think it is the network switch, we removed transproxy & everything works fine, even under heavy traffic.

Any other ideas before I drop some serious cash on a SCSI controller & drive ???

Thanks,
RichardFilippo Carletti wrote:
>
> Squid performances are affected by ram and ram usage is
> proportional to cache size. SME default is 100 M, that will
> need a low amount of memory even after days of usage. You
> could use top (sort by mem pressing M) to see how much ram
> squid is using. 20 M for a 100 M cache is common.

[Filippo Carletti]

Good. If you have plenty of ram you can use some for squid.
Change cache_mem (default is pretty low, 8 MB).
You could also try to lower maximum_object_size to store only small files.

[Richard]

Excuse my ignorance, what file do I need to modify to up the ram size??

Richard

[Alexander Ziemann]

Make an insert to /etc/squid/squid.conf stating more cache-memory and bigger cache size on disk by adding a file e.g. 15squidcache to /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/squid/squid.conf (did i get that right, folks?):

This is, what i stated in my 15squidcache file:

cache_mem 16 MB
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 1000 16 256

This reserves 16 MB + for Squid and enlarges disk-cache to 1 GB.

Also: Squid is always slower than direct ADSL access. Squid is slowest, when you use squidguard and transproxy. I checked that a few months ago on a PII400 Server with 256 MB ram. It was disgusting slow. I disabled squidguard and transproxy again.

But squid is faster, if your users often visit the same pages with these little graphics, which is often the case in our network.

So we stay with squid.

hth
Alex

[Filippo Carletti]

> Make an insert to /etc/squid/squid.conf stating more
> cache-memory and bigger cache size on disk by adding a file
> e.g. 15squidcache to
> /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/squid/squid.conf (did i get
> that right, folks?):

/etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/squid/squid.conf

> This is, what i stated in my 15squidcache file:
>
> cache_mem 16 MB
> cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 1000 16 256
>
> This reserves 16 MB + for Squid and enlarges disk-cache to 1
> GB.

16 MB for a 1 G cache is far too low, performances will be really poor.

[Richard]

What do you recomend ??

Richard



Filippo Carletti wrote:
>
> > Make an insert to /etc/squid/squid.conf stating more
> > cache-memory and bigger cache size on disk by adding a file
> > e.g. 15squidcache to
> > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/squid/squid.conf (did i get
> > that right, folks?):
>
> /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/squid/squid.conf
>
> > This is, what i stated in my 15squidcache file:
> >
> > cache_mem 16 MB
> > cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 1000 16 256
> >
> > This reserves 16 MB + for Squid and enlarges disk-cache to 1
> > GB.
>
> 16 MB for a 1 G cache is far too low, performances will be
> really poor.

[Alexander Ziemann]

Hi,

i am no squid expert (, but: 16 MB cache and 1 GB disk improved performance greatly at our site, compared to the standard settings.

Alex

[Filippo Carletti]

> > 16 MB for a 1 G cache is far too low, performances will be
> > really poor.

> What do you recomend ??

I should recheck squid docs, but 64 MB for 1 G would be enough.
It depens heavily on the number of object you have in cache.
See: http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ-8.html

One more thing: be sure to have IDE DMA enabled (hdparm) if using IDE disks.
squid likes ram and fast disks.

[Richard]

What would I add to the 15squidcache file to allocate 128MB of ram & 2G of cache ????

I tried experimenting but everytime squid would fail on shutdown.

What does 1000 16 256 mean on the second line ???


Thanks,
Richard
Filippo Carletti wrote:
>
> > > 16 MB for a 1 G cache is far too low, performances will be
> > > really poor.
>
> > What do you recomend ??
>
> I should recheck squid docs, but 64 MB for 1 G would be enough.
> It depens heavily on the number of object you have in cache.
> See: http://www.squid-cache.org/Doc/FAQ/FAQ-8.html
>
> One more thing: be sure to have IDE DMA enabled (hdparm) if
> using IDE disks.
> squid likes ram and fast disks.

[Filippo Carletti]

cache_mem 128 MB
cache_dir ufs /var/spool/squid 2000 16 256

squid will use more than 128 MB
cache_dir is documented, after the size (2000) there are the number of directory.