Topic: What hardware is e-smith using?

[Colin Mattoon]

Hi:

A question came up here today as we were admiring the e-smith site in between arguing with our ISP and the local phone company about access options in preparation for setting up our web server...

What hardware and what type of connection is e-smith using?  This site works well, and I think it would be instructive to those of us who are planning to use the server to host a web site to be able to gauge performance by knowing what this site runs on.

The documentation does, of course, provide recommendations, but I would be very curious to know...I had to gently remonstrate one of my fellow managers that we were not going to be able provide performace similar to this site with one PR166 with 32 MB FP memory over a 56K fractional T1 (!!!), but I wasn't really able to specify how much we have to be prepared to spend either.

It would be a useful starting point: one that we could work backwards from.  And please don't tell me this site is hosted on a 386sx!

[Gerald Jansen]

The hardware being used by e-smith has little relevalence when it comes to addressing your question. The question should be what hardware is necessary given x number of users doing what. I have been installing e-smith servers on Cyrix 200 MMX systems with 32MB and finding them them stable and responsive acting as firewall/routers, file servers with dedicated internet connections. The file serving is light with only accounting, word and excel files. The email is usually for 5 to 10 users in small organizations. I think the hardware suggestions listed on this site are very realistic, possibly conservative.  Hope this helps.

[Darren Windham]

I have it on an old Gateway p100 with 96mb of ram (probably overkill) and with a 1.6GB hd.  Running as smtp, http, and proxy for my home LAN on the @home network.

[Colin Mattoon]

No, I understand what you mean -- but I meant something different. For example, I'm running e-smith on an AMD-K6 with 64 MB sdram over a dialup line and the performance is excellent for my home lan.

But what I'm looking for is a way to use e-smith's site as a baseline for making decisions at our company.  We intend to put up a web site for our customers.

If e-smith posted the hardware they use, the connection speed, and the sort of load they experience, it might be useful to ascertain the performance one might expect with a site of similar complexity and traffic.

After all, when one visits Walnut Creek to download something for Slackware, they present you some basic specs to brag up about Free BSD.

And, in my case, these are areas of knowledge that I am sorely lacking in.  If I were a Linux expert, I would have simply created my own gateway server.  I'm pretty sure my AMD-K6 would be adequate to serve a couple of requests per minute over a 256 KB frame relay.  But what about 20 requests per second?  

That's why I was curious...If e-smith.net and e-smith.org are on one P350 with 192 MB sdram, with a fractional T1, that's one thing.  If the site uses a dozen dual PIII machines, each with a giga-byte of ram and DS3 connection, that's quite another:-)

[Kim Morrison]

Colin,

Regarding e-smith's infrastructure:  Well, here is the story.  

Our .org site is run on a Pentium 90 with a SCSI HP hard drive.  It's running a modified version of e-smith 2.0.  We have it running off of a Premium residential ADSL connection.  It's getting *alot* of traffic right now (the FTP downloads of our software eat up the bandwidth) due to the recent press activity around e-smith.  I think normally it's pretty snappy but yesterday and today it's been bogged.  

Our .net site must have a secure server and provide a feed to the agency that processes our credit card transactions.  Because we needed $US transaction processing up here in Canada, the number of options open to us were limited and we were forced to go with an ISP hosted site until we can afford an ecommerce site that we design and host in-house.  

Once we move into office space (soon!), we'll get a higher-bandwidth connection into e-smith and eventually bring our .net site and e-commerce solution in house.

I wish I could tell you that our .net site was running on a P60!

Cheers,

Kim

[Colin Mattoon]

Thanks, Kim...the problems with e-commerce are perfectly understandable -- but the fact that you are getting away with hosting e-smith.org on a P90 through a residential ADSL connection runs entirely counter to bold statements made by my ISP and my local phone company.  That is great news.

Maybe we will create the next amazon.com on a 486DX120 over a dedicated dialup line

[Paul Newby]

Hi,

> We have it
> running off of a Premium residential ADSL connection.

Can you elaborate on this a bit?  What's a 'premium
residential ADSL connection', and who provides this
service in your area?

Thanks,
Paul N.

[Joseph Morrison]

Hello Paul,

> Can you elaborate on this a bit?  What's a 'premium residential
> ADSL connection', and who provides this service in your area?

Magma provides it (http://www.magma.ca) and their "premium" service includes a static IP address. The regular service doesn't promise you the same IP address each time you connect.

They still use PPPoE though, which was a pain to get working with our Linux systems. But it's working now, reasonably well. Magma has very good technical support, which we've appreciated.

However, we still plan to upgrade our service within a couple of months. Our current service is not really adequate for our FTP hosting requirements.

Best regards,
- Joe