High-Performance Web Server How-To

ssassen writes "Aspiring to build a high-performance web server? Hardware Analysis has an article posted that details how to build a high-performance web server from the ground up. They tackle the tough design choices and what hardware to pick and end up with a web server designed to serve daily changing content with lots of images, movies, active forums and millions of page views every month."

gee, i wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. if their webservers are as reliable as the ones in the article..
i guess there's only one way to find out..

slashdotters! advance! :P

Re:10'000 RPM

[autocracy]

In comparison to what? Yes, they're faster than the 7,200 you probably have - but they only run at 2/3 the speed of most really high end drives (15,000 RPM). Really it's not too bad a trade-off.

Also, please note that the laws of physics say that it can read more data if the head is able to keep up - and I'm sure it is.

How to make a fool of yourself

[noxavior]

Step one: Submit story on high performance web servers.
Step two: ???
Step three: Die of massive slashdotting, loss of reputation and business


Still, if someone has a link to a cache...

And as the last step...

[MavEtJu]

... Don't forget to post an article on /. so you can actually measure high-volume bulk traffic.

[~] edwin@topaz>time telnet www.hardwareanalysis.com 80
Trying 217.115.198.3...
Connected to powered.by.nxs.nl.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /content/article/1549/ HTTP/1.0
Host: www.hardwareanalysis.com

[...]
Connection closed by foreign host.

real 1m21.354s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.050s

Do as we say, don't do as we do.

High powered webserver?

[Moonshadow]

In an hour or so, I'm predicting it will be a high-powered heap of smoking rubble. It's almost like this is a challenge to us.

Maybe it's their idea of a stress test. It's kinda like testing a car's crash durability by parking it in front of an advancing tank.

Re:So fast and soo goo...

[khuber]

It's still running. It's just extremely slow. Or maybe it's so fast it's zipping through space-time and it only seems slow from our reference frame.

-Kevin

Defintion of irony

[nervlord1]

An article about creating high performacne webservers being slashdotted

Re:10'000 RPM

[Krapangor]

10k drives are LESS reliable, since they move faster

This implies that you shouldn't store servers in high altitudes, because they move faster up there due to earth rotation.
Hmmm, I think we know now why these Mars missions tend to fail so often.

server load

[MegaFur]

Many other people will likely post a comment like mine, if they haven't already. But hey, karma was made to burn!

According to my computer clock and the timestamp on the article posting, it's only been about 33 minutes (since the article was posted). Even so, it took me over a minute to finally receive the "Hardware Analysis" main page. The top of that page has:

Please register or login. There are 2 registered and 995 anonymous users currently online. Current bandwidth usage: 214.98 kbit/s

Draw your own conclusions.

Re:server load

[Anonymous Coward]

Please flush my dns entry, or better yet unplug me. There are 0 registered and millions of the slashdot horde currently refreshing their browser and laughing at my stats. Current bandwidth usage: 100 Mbit/s.

Re:my $0.02

[khuber]

Back alley colocation. It's the only way to afford it these days.

-Kevin

More Advice from the site

[HappyPhunBall]

Once you have the hardware setup and the software configured, it is time to design your site to perform. The following tips will help you create a site that is just as scalable as ours. Enjoy.

1. Use lots, and I mean lots of graphics. Cute ones, animated ones, you name it and people expect to see them. Skimping here will hurt your image.
2. CSS style sheets may be the way of the future, but just for now make sure you include dozens or even hundreds of font tags, color tags, and tables in your site. Trust us. This has the added benefit of increasing your page file size by at least 30%. You do want a robust site right?
3. Make sure you are serving plenty of third party ads! Their bandwidth matters also, and you know the way to make money on the web is be serving lots of "fun" animated ads. This will not slow down the user experience of your site one bit! Those ad people are slick, they know that you are building a high bandwidth / high performance site and will be expecting the traffic.
4. A site is not a high performance site until is has withstood the infamous Slashdot effect. You will want to post a link to your site on /. post haste to begin testing.

That should be enough to get you started. Now you too can build a rocking 200K per page site, and having read our hardware guidelines, you can expect it to perform just as well as ours did. One more free tip: Placing a cool dynamic hit counter or traffic meter on your site in a prominent position will encourage casual visitors to hit the reload button again and again, driving the performance of your site through the roof.

How not to get slashdotted?

[Bahamuto]

Does building this high performace web server prevent you from being slashdotted?

Re:Server running at near 100% load

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhmm, he does post a url. See NineNine.com [ninenine.com] for details. I think you could learn a bit from the owner of a porn site when it comes to server performance.

Slashdotted

[entrylevel]

Ooh! Ooh! I really want you guys to teach me how to build a high performance webserver! What's that? You can't, because your webserver is down? Curses!

(Obligatory disclaimer for humor-impaired: yes I understand that the slashdot effect is generally caused by lack of bandwidth rather than lack of webserver performance.)

how 2 test a so-called "high-performance" server

[eagleyezx]

1. load it full of pr()n
2. post the link on /.
3. check back in 30seconds

if it still works, it's high-performance