*BSD News Article 62137


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From: isdmill@gatekeeper.ddp.state.me.us (David Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Optimization for a News server
Date: 14 Feb 1996 19:13:56 GMT
Organization: Maine State Government
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Message-ID: <4ftc9k$7te@web.ddp.state.me.us>
References: <4foqfk$fu6@soggy.eis.net.au> <DMq59v.IAD@ritz.mordor.com>
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Chris Mauritz (ritz@ritz.mordor.com) wrote:
: Ernie Elu (ernie@eis.net.au) wrote:
: : I am in the process of setting up FreeBSD news server running INN to
: : replace my current Linux server as an experiment.
: : 
: : The current machine is quite a busy little 486DX40.
: : I am keen to hear of any suggetions on how to configure FreeBSD to get
: : the maximum performance as a news server.

: To get the most out of a news server, you should have:

: *32-64mb RAM (64 is much better *grin*)
: *SCSI-2 PCI or VLB disk controller (I prefer PCI)
: *At least 3 fast disks to spread things over (I prefer Barracudas)
:  (put alt on one, all the other hierchies on another, and all the
:  other news binaries/logs/history files on the 3rd one)
: *To squeeze out even more bits, using 2 disk controllers would
:  also help since 3 7200rpm drives can easily saturate a non-wide
:  SCSI bus.

All good suggestions.  With news you'll be doing *tons* of seeks an not 
much streaming IO, so the second adapter might not gain you much.  I'd 
opt for more memory on it myself.

: With the size of a current newsfeed, I'd start with 3 Seagate
: or Conner 7200rpm 4 gig drives.

I like this:)

: Of course, these are all hardware suggestions.  :-)  If the machine
: is only a news box I suppose you might improve things by forcing
: the OS to use a much larger disk buffer cache.  How you would go
: about doing that on FreeBSD I haven't a clue.  I also make sure

I don't think you do:)  I believe FreeBSD makes all "spare" memory disk 
cache automatically, and seeks to balance all disk accesses.


--
David Miller			Usual disclaimers apply