Re: [Bug-gne]various random thoughts

[Tom Chance]

> Why would the whole database slow down? My
> experience with MySQL shows that
> it's usually fast enough to do most things, with the
> exception of thousands
> of inserts per second into heavily indexed rows.
> That, I assume, isn't the
> schema that you've got.

Well really there will be a lot of select requests,
some of which will be selecting up to 1,000,000
characters (I think thats roughly the limit we set).
Only for the central db server (of which there will
only be one to start with) will there be insert
requests, and they will be fairly uncommon as we won't
be getting that many submissions at any one time for a
couple of years I should think! By which time one
hopes we might have a top quality server to act as the
central db server.


> A MySQL server will need lots of ram and lots of
> CPU. MySQL doesn't allow
> multiple front-end rdbms servers with the database
> available behind them
> all - the recommended solution to that kind of
> problem involves replication
> onto multiple slaves. In fact, that's probably the
> way to go anyway.
> 
> A master which allows inserts and updates (and
> potentially deletes too) and
> handles the database admin functions. This
> replicates onto an array of
> slaves, each on a separate machine. Accesses to the
> data from the outside
> goes to the slaves not the master via a
> load-balancing setup (alteons or
> somesuch). That way the master is pretty well
> protected and changing content
> won't slow down client access.

That is pretty much the "dream" system Rob and I came
up with when we realised the db may come under quite a
bit of strain. The problem for the moment is that we
will be using GNU computers to host GNE, and I doubt
they have more than one or two machines at most for us
to use, so we'll probably have to make do with a Perl
box and a MySQL/Image box for now, until we can secure
more machines. Ideally we'd get about 10 Perl boxes, 3
MySQL boxes and one Image box, a 2mb connection, and
have them all put somewhere where Rob and I could set
them up ourselves, so we don't have to rely on a GNU
webmaster to set them up as we want them. But that
would require quite a lot of financial backing :/

=====
"True security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated 
individual effort - Fyodor Dostoyevsky"

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