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php limits
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 2:20 pm
by Rawhead

Okay so I'm using PHP on my site, IF it is a commercial site, how will php do under a strain of say 10-20k users? what are PHP MYSQL limitations? I know opinions, I need facts. Assume that I have the server capability and bandwidth to handle this.
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 3:38 pm
by Takuma
It is possible (if you make the right script)...
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 4:54 pm
by gotDNS
Get a whole damn bunch of fast servers...high bandwidth....neat and orderly code....maybe some GZip compression help, and it'll work out just fine. It should.
later on, -Brian
P.S. 10-20 thousand users at a time???
Posted: Wed Sep 04, 2002 5:12 pm
by BDKR
Here you go.
* Security
* Fault Tolerance
* Load Balancing
If you ask me, that's it in a nutshell. Now there are tons of associated details as you dive deeper. Here are some of them.
* Eliminating single points of failure
* Routing
* System management (what happens when a system or service fails)
* Disaster recovery (what if a db goes south? Are you replicating? What is your recovery procedure)
* Continous examination of code as the system scales.
* Network topology. (Our databses sits on thier own network to thwart saturation, as an example)
* and on and on and on.......
Now if this is a web site, is this on a shared host or something? Are you controlling the machines and access and all that jazz? Is this some looming posibility that you need to deal with before it gets out of hand?
Anyways, check out some of these things.
* Turbo Cluster
* LVS
* Kernel level routing
* Netfilter / ipchains or iptables for security and port forwarding
* IP aliasing
There is more, but I can't remeber all of it.
Anyways, I built and am responsible for a datacenter that is made up of the below.
2 Newbridge 2703 CSU/DSU's
1 Cisco 1750
1 Cisco 2505
5 floppy based firewalls.
A cluster of machines providing transaction and web services for various lotteries in Venezuela. The cluster is controlled using TurboCluster 6 from TurboLinux.
There is a lot more to it, but that's it without giving an inventory of each machine and other piece of equipment.
Now if we can just get this blasted MovilData to figure out what they're doing with our communications.
Later on,
BDKR
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2002 1:30 am
by gite_ashish
hi,
There are two categories of users: "total number of users/visitors" and "concurrent users".
If your are talking about 10-20k (or even many more also) "total number of users/visitors" - depends upon bandwidth, server h/w, storage capacity... and what all BDKR, gotDNS said.
For "concurrent users" - all of the above + the scripts need to be very efficient, to deliver fast response.
in order to maintain high availibility, performance tunning of web server, database server etc is also required.... it's not only php, mysql but one need to take care of many things including but not limited to datacenter, server h/w, and s/w...
linux, apache, php, mysql.... is the best suitable combination for such challenges !!!....
i think google.com can put some light on some of the topnotch sites running php,mysql combination.
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2002 8:32 am
by BDKR
linux, apache, php, mysql.... is the best suitable combination for such challenges !!!....
In as much as I agree with the above, it's not 100%
First thing you have to remember is that PHP is a scripting language that is written in C. There are some languages that are better for certian things. If you are talking about consistent high loads or long running processes (perhaps some cron job that runs once a day), then PHP just may not have the needed performance!
<frustrated rant>
Not to mention the fact that many people on the php developers mailing list seem to think that one should just be happy with the provided, but slow, data encapsulation constructs.
</frustrated rant>
As for mysql, there are serious concerns (that are ususally voiced by many Postgres users) concerning some of it's lack of features. Many of those lack of features are now myth (transactions is a perfect example), but there are still concerns with it's ACID compliance and ability to maintain the integrity of the data.
Now that's not to say that I don't have any problems with MySQL. I thinks it's great and it's replication barely keeps it ahead of Postgress as my decision for use under such conditions.
All of the tools that we speak about here are great, but we must keep in mind that all have thier issues and must be dealt with accordingly.
Later on,
BDKR
Posted: Thu Sep 05, 2002 8:54 am
by m3mn0n
To simplify this for anyone:
"it is not the limitations or speeds of php that are the factor here, but the limitations and speeds of your servers and connections!"