Date: Mon, 8 May 95 09:14 MET DST From: devet@spooky.lss.cp.philips.com (Arjan de Vet) To: Guido.VanRooij@nl.cis.philips.com Subject: Apache + FreeBSD 2.0 benchmark results (fwd) Message-ID: <m0s8N1O-0000zzC@spooky.lss.cp.philips.com> In-Reply-To: <3o8dp8$t3e@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
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From: taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw (Brian Tao)
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.providers,comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Apache + FreeBSD 2.0 benchmark results
Date: 3 May 1995 17:16:24 GMT
Organization: Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Academia Sinica
Lines: 138
Message-ID: <3o8dp8$t3e@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
NNTP-Posting-Host: @140.109.40.248
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I grabbed the Apache 0.6.2 server code and compiled it on my
FreeBSD 2.0-950412 machine at work. No problems getting it up and
running, and being near closing time 'round these parts, I decided to
hijack a few machines around the local net to pound on my server for a
few hours. Having seen a single 90-MHz Pentium handle 180,000+ hits a
day, 60+ client connections on its IRC server and serve as an
anonymous FTP server at the same time, I wanted to know how far I
could push a dedicated 486 for Web service.
A summary of my informal testing is posted below. The real thing
is at http://140.109.40.248/~taob/fbsd-apache.html (sorry, no DNS
entry for my machine yet). As I point out in the document, I'm no
expert at evaluating hardware or software performance, so comments and
advice will be appreciated.
------------
METHODS
Hardware configuration:
* ASUS PVI-486AP4 motherboard, 256K cache, PCI/VLB/ISA bus
* AMD 486DX4/100 CPU
* 16 megabytes RAM (1x16Mb SIMM)
* PCI-SC200 NCR-53c810 SCSI-2 controller
* Quantum Empire 1080S 1-gigabyte SCSI-2 hard drive
* D-Link 16-bit Ethernet interface (NE-2000 clone?)
Software configuration:
* FreeBSD 2.0 (950412 snapshot), 64 megabytes swap
* Apache 0.6.2 beta httpd server
* Lynx 2.3.x on client machines
Client configuration:
* Local network: 10base-T Ethernet
* 1 Sun SPARCStation 20 (Solaris 2.3)
* 1 Sun SPARCStation 10 (SunOS 4.1.3)
* 1 66-MHz i486DX2 (FreeBSD 2.0)
* 1 90-MHz Pentium (FreeBSD 2.0)
No special modifications were made to the operating system or to the
httpd server for this test. All results seen here are indicative of a
standard release of FreeBSD 2.0-950412 and Apache 0.6.2. The URL's
used in the test consist of 190 files for a total of about 5
megabytes. 150 files are HTML documents, ranging in size from under 1K
to 144K. Average HTML size is 9K. 50 files are GIF graphics, ranging
in size from 700 bytes to 288K. Average GIF size is 81K. All files are
located in the httpd root directory. The files used in the test were
provided by a client of Internex Online (http://www.io.org/) and were
chosen simply because of their number and range of sizes.
The Lynx text-mode Web browser from the University of Kansas was used
to establish HTTP connections to the server and to request URL's. A
script was written to repeatedly call Lynx with a random URL.
RESULTS
Total running time: 345 minutes
Number of requests: 201,254
Byte traffic: 3.65 Gbytes
Number of requests in 24 hours (est.): 840,000
Byte traffic in 24 hours (est.): over 15 Gbytes
Average network throughput: 1.8 Mbps
The following is an excerpt of wwwstat output on the log file after
the conclusion of the test:
Totals for Summary Period: May 3 1995 to May 3 1995
Files Transmitted During Summary Period 201254
Bytes Transmitted During Summary Period 3926224150
Average Files Transmitted Daily 201254
Average Bytes Transmitted Daily 3926224150
Daily Transmission Statistics
%Reqs %Byte Bytes Sent Requests Date
----- ----- ------------ -------- |------------
100.0 100.0 -368743146 201254 | May 3 1995
Hourly Transmission Statistics
%Reqs %Byte Bytes Sent Requests Time
----- ----- ------------ -------- |-----
12.39 12.36 485435696 24929 | 02
16.90 16.86 662136016 34020 | 03
17.62 17.60 691000295 35453 | 04
17.61 17.69 694388543 35440 | 05
17.64 17.65 693043522 35493 | 06
17.62 17.61 691353315 35455 | 07
0.23 0.23 8866763 464 | 08
Price vs. performance
My particular machine carries a retail price tag of about US$3000
(including a 4-megabyte ATI Graphics Pro Turbo PCI card and KFC 17"
monitor). With a more modest monitor and SVGA card, the above hardware
should not set you back more than about US$2000. The operating system,
server software and related utilities are, of course, freely
available. A setup in the US$1500 range would be possible, but at risk
of compromising on certain key components (mass storage subsystem,
motherboard bus type). The components listed earlier have proven to be
very reliable and responsive even under adverse load conditions. The
operating system, FreeBSD 2.0, also performed admirably under
pressure. It showed no indication of instability or excessive
performance degradation (e.g.: it was able to sustain better than T1
data throughput, 1.5 Mbps, for the entire test) and was able to cope
with an interactive X11 session at the same time. www.io.org runs
FreeBSD's commercial cousin, BSD/OS 2.0 from BSDI. Both are truly
marvelous operating systems and I would not hesitate to recommend
either to a PC-based installation that desires a UNIX environment.
CONCLUSION
If you are an information services provider who is in the market for
an inexpensive Web server configuration, do not dismiss PC-based
solutions simply because a "real" UNIX workstation costs more, and
therefore "must be better". A 486- or Pentium-based machine, as a
dedicated server, can realistically handle 200,000 to 500,000 requests
per day, based on my results. For installations that require heavy CGI
processing (e.g., as a search engine to a large database, or for
on-the-fly graphics rendering), a cluster of $3000 PC's may prove to
be an inexpensive, high-performance alternative to traditional
heavyweights like Sun, SGI and HP, without giving up the advantages of
a UNIX-based operating system.
(see http://140.109.40.248/~taob/fbsd-apache.html)
--
Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao
taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw <-- work ........ play --> taob@io.org
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