I'm building a server for a future web site with dual 833Mhz processors a HARDWALL for my main drive, a SCSI RAID setup (undetermained storage space) and 2 gigs of SDRAM. It's going to have SuSE Server 9 on it. What should I do to max out the capabilities?

Serve porn?

Ok, that was a lounge response.... I am going to use the server for videos though. Ok, I'm going to use that server to hold my Skit videos and CGI Demos. Another server will just allow people to download them from it. I'm thinking of useing the basic 3-5 server setup to speed things up just in case I get a lot of hits. I might brush up on how to stream the "video of the week/month" and make it an optional feature just to add a little something to the site. But in the meanwhile, I'm just looking for good programs to do that with Linux. One of the servers will be dedicated just for forums, and I'll be sure to link people to GameDev on the affiliates page.

With those specs, there's little you can do to max it out by having other people test it unless you've got at least a T-1 connection to the internet.

If you want to stress test the machine, write a perl (Or your favorite language) script that connect to your web server as many times as it can and downloads a web page. Do this from as many computers as you can. That server should be able to handle at least one thousand connections a minute (And probably a lot more), provided that the connections are downloads of simple web pages.

Cheers,
Aaron

I ment what programs to work with SuSE do I need to maxout the capibilities? You know, settings to make the OS run quicker. Is there a limit to how much I can put on the server at a time? Or should I just stop thinking like it's a Windows-based clutter-box.

it should run fine out of the box. i wouldn't tweak too much, unless you know what you are doing...

With linux, really unless you are going to try some unusual software, there isn't any tuning needed.

Don't run X on your server.

Setup ssh so you can admin it remotely. Make sure that you don't allow everyone in the world to access it via ssh (i.e. limit what IP addresses it will talk to)

Setup apache with whatever services you need...

That's about it and you've got a good stable web server.

If you run into performance problems, then look for the bottle neck, but with the above configuration, you shouldn't see any major issues.

Get the book linux power tools and read it carefully, has lots of optimisation tips in it..

Ok, I guess I'm going to have to get another version of Linux, since I'm losing my bid on E-bay. Unless you can tell me another place where I can get SuSE 9 Enterprise Edition.

Quote: Original post by smiley4
Ok, I guess I'm going to have to get another version of Linux, since I'm losing my bid on E-bay. Unless you can tell me another place where I can get SuSE 9 Enterprise Edition.

Eh, you may want to try something like Fedora Core 2 if you're just starting. It'll have anything you need to run whatever services you need on the machine, along with easy updates via apt or yum, and it you should find it accessable as a new user. Along with that, you can download it for free. Or did you really want to buy the phone support?

Check out fedora.redhat.com

KB