asking opinion on hosting database and web on one server

Hello all,

Should MySQL and Apache be hosted on separate servers or it's ok they
being on one server? We're building a compound that includes about 10
websites, all their contents are hosted in MySQL. There will be
frequent database updates and the webserver will have to handle heavy
traffic.

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinion and experience or pointers!

Bing

dubing@gmail.com wrote in news:1131747381.396063.6170
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

> Hello all,
>
> Should MySQL and Apache be hosted on separate servers or it's ok they
> being on one server? We're building a compound that includes about 10
> websites, all their contents are hosted in MySQL. There will be
> frequent database updates and the webserver will have to handle heavy
> traffic.

It depends. How heavy? On what kind of network? And on what machine?
Everyone has a different frame of reference. You can easily run 10 db-based
web sites on a single machine. On the other hand, it might be difficult to
run 1 db-based web site on 10 machines.

Start out with the database and web server on the same machine. There may
even be performance and security advantages to using a local database via a
socket. When the time comes, look at your scaling options, which depend on
your resources:

- tune the application code for better performance
- tune the db for better performance
- move the database to a dedicated server
- move the busiest site to its own web/database server
- get a better server
- get a better network
- get a caching service

In short, identify your bottlenecks before making your next step. I've seen
small applications completely consume CPU and memory using inefficient SQL
statements on tables with only 100 records. I've also seen massive
performance improvements by simply adding indexes on large tables. And
nothing short of upgrading your network connection is going to help you if
the bottleneck is bandwidth-related. Some sites get relatively small
amounts of traffic, but experience crippling peaks tied to dates or events,
so they look to caching services like Akamai to provide static resources or
to temporarily cache pages.

Be assured that there are far more underutilized web servers than
overworked ones. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to scale a web site, so
start out by making the most efficient use of the resources at hand.

Thanks for the advice! I appreciate it.

Bing

<dubing@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1131747381.396063.6170@g43g2000cwa.googlegrou ps.com...
> Hello all,
>
> Should MySQL and Apache be hosted on separate servers or it's ok they
> being on one server? We're building a compound that includes about 10
> websites, all their contents are hosted in MySQL. There will be
> frequent database updates and the webserver will have to handle heavy
> traffic.

What is your objective?
Reliability? Better with 1.
Security? Better with 2.
Performance? Only bother with the second if it's cheaper to buy a second
machine than to increase the resources avaliable to the first.

Alun Harford

>>
>> Should MySQL and Apache be hosted on separate servers or it's ok they
>> being on one server? We're building a compound that includes about 10
>> websites, all their contents are hosted in MySQL. There will be
>> frequent database updates and the webserver will have to handle heavy
>> traffic.
>

Okay, maybe I can give you a benchmark from a web hosting
company I work for. We have an Apache server running on one day
average of 15 queries/sec. It also runs a MySQL 4.x database
average 100 queries/sec over a day average (serves other machines).
At "busy" times during the day it runs at about .4 load factor.

Hardware, Dell Poweredge, Dual Xeon at 3 GHz, 3 Gig of RAM,
Seagate 15K.3 Ultra 320 disks.

We saw a BIG performance improvement when we went to
RHEL 4 from Redhat.

Hope this helps.

--
John
__________________________________________________ _________________
John Murtari Software Workshop Inc.
jmurtari@following domain 315.635-1968(x-211) "TheBook.Com" (TM)
http://thebook.com/