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When Apache/PHP is running they need to use system resources such as hardware based CPU, RAM, DISK, because of those availability they run and process the inputs.

What gives Apache/PHP very special room of space/comfort/flexibility in terms of hardware tuning? (16core CPU? 32GB RAM? Highest spin disks?)

Example: Industry has 500 PLC (machines/robots/motors etc) simultaneously will be using this server, real time media data and reporting, writing docs, printing, automatically packaging etc etc etc

Thanks

YumYumYum
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    It completely depends on the software. You could easily write a PHP script that needs lots of memory, needs fast IO, needs a large processor, or all of the above. The only way you will know is to test on the small scale, and hope everything scales linearly. – Zoredache Aug 05 '11 at 17:20

2 Answers2

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The kind of hardware you need pretty much depend on :

  • What your application does
  • How many users your website has.


RAM helps, fast disks help, CPU help too -- but we won't be able to tell you much more about that : it all depends on your applications.

For example, if your application does a lot of heavy calculation, it will need more CPU than an application that just serves static files.

If your application does a lot of heavy SQL queries, a fast disk, a fast CPU, and a lot of RAM if you have a lot of data, will be more than helpful.


That being said, a bit of caching, a well-configured server, and some optimizations on your code / SQL queries, can often reduce those needs quite a lot...

Pascal MARTIN
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  • PLC processors does not have any storage. So all the storage robotic parameters (cutting the models, printing the shapes, move the machine left right bottom top etc designed in user browser and submitted) will be crawled real time using JSON data format its like bullet traffic of 500 stations. My server is planed to put highest CPU, highest RAM, highest spin disks (allocated with giant space). No room for error or i can simply say every request need a special timing. Fiber network is planed too. But will that help Apache/PHP to run better. Or plan as cluster node, layer of service? – YumYumYum Aug 05 '11 at 17:18
  • If you need the absolute quickest response time, the most appropriate thing to do would be to pre-process all the data needed for a job and serve them up as static files. Only you know your application and can tell if that would be appropriate. – MikeyB Aug 05 '11 at 17:51
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I would put the different tasks classes each into their own server cluster.

  • PLC: You need fast (i.e. with high throughput - not bandwidth!) redundant network cards and lots of processes available for connection. To serve many concurrent processes you need CPUs - as many as possible (e.g. 4 x 6-core HT = 48 logical processors). PLCs will mostly require read-requests of small database portions - so put into that enough RAM to cache these DB-requests. Speed for CPUs is not that interesting - 1 GHz would be enough - but you need cores...

That way you should consider. Don`t invest too much into FC/SAN - local storage might be faster (and much cheaper). SAN is interesting if you have many servers with always changing storage demands. But this are NAS and iSCSI-boxes that can help here, too.

Nils
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