On 16-12-2009 6:37, Michael Bowe wrote: > Hi, I need some hardware/software suggestions for TPROXY servers. > > We're an ISP and have been trialling Squid for a while on an assorted > collection of spare hardware. (We've got some Dell 2950 running VMware and > iSCSI, also Dell 2970 with VMware and SAS HDD, also HP DL360-G5 non-VMware > with SAS HDD). All these servers have been working pretty well, but we now > need to work out a budget to buy proper dedicated gear. > > We have some POPs which have about 5000 cable modems. Cisco routers running > WCCP feed groups of Squid 3.1 / TPROXY servers. At the moment we have 3 to 4 > sibling no-cache servers at each POP. > > We currently deal with HTTP traffic of about 150Mbps but would like to > dimension the new gear to support double this. I didn't even know ISP's still used proxies in this century :D I assume you use them to save on bandwidth and improve the experience for the end-user? > > What are peoples opinions on what sort of hardware to use? > > Maybe groups of mid-size servers be best? I was thinking along the lines of > : > Eg HP DL360/380-G6, 1 x 2.4Ghz quad core, 32Gb RAM, 4 x 15K 146Gb HDD > > Or should we be looking at just using one larger server : > Eg HP DL380-G6, 1 x 2.4Ghz (or faster) quad core, 64Gb RAM, 8 x 15K 146Gb > HDD You might also consider more smaller servers. You can get 3 R300's for the price of a single R610.. Storage would perhaps be an issue, but since you have an iSCSI SAN... You could also use CARP to split up front-end squids and storage squids like wikipedia does, and create an even more scalable setup: http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/presentations/san/Wikimedia%20architecture.pdf I'm still not sure about virtualizing or not.. It both has advantages and disadvantages.. > > When buying HDDs for these servers, you can choose between 2.5" and 3.5" > drives. Should there be much difference in performance between the two? I > see the 3.5" version of 15K's are quite a bit cheaper and also are available > in sizes > 146Gb I think a 300GB 3.5" disk is the same price as a 146GB 2.5" disk, but you can put more 2.5" in the same machine :) If I remember correctly a 15k 2.5" disk can do more iops (key factor) than a 15k 3.5" disk. http://proliant.blogspot.com/2007/02/sas-drive-technology-large-or-small.html Of course nothing beats an SSD in performance, but Dell charges such ridiculous prices that for a squid machine I personally think it's not worth it yet. > There are choices for the disk controller. Eg HP lets you choose between > 256M, 512M, 1G RAM on the supplied P410i RAID card. We wouldn't be running > any RAID, but would extra RAM on the card still be helpful with speeding up > disk access for squid? I think not, since I think most data is random, and not frequently accessed. > Dell R610/R710 seems pretty similar to the HP DL360/380. But with the Dell > you have to buy dual quad core, which seems a bit wasteful for squid? > (unless you were going try and dice the server up to run multiple squids > under VMware). Probably best to save a few $$ and stick with 1 x CPU and put > extra cash towards more RAM or disk? Or do you think VMware is an OK way to > make use of all the CPU's? On our trial servers the VMware ESXi seems to > work OK but in the back of my mind I worry about the extra overhead it > introduces. I'm in a Dell only shop, and you can buy the R610 with any 1 or 2 cpu's, it's a choice. (And probably cheaper than HP). As I said, I'm not sure about virtualization, but you could run some benchmarks to compare things and base your decisions on what you find . If you do, let us know your findings ;) -- With kind regards, Angelo Höngens systems administrator MCSE on Windows 2003 MCSE on Windows 2000 MS Small Business Specialist ------------------------------------------ NetMatch tourism internet software solutions Ringbaan Oost 2b 5013 CA Tilburg +31 (0)13 5811088 +31 (0)13 5821239 A.Hongens@xxxxxxxxxxx www.netmatch.nl ------------------------------------------
