[Deploying Sakai] Hardware Recommendations

[Charles Severance]

Hi all,

I am setting up the first Sakai servers in the Blackboard managed hosting facilities and being asked what kind of hardware I need.   I did a little polling and IMing and came up with this model:

App Servers are Two Xeons with 12M RAM

DB Servers start with Two Xeons and 24M of RAM 

In terms of growth of load, each app server (with 2 CPUs and 12M of RAM) supports 1000 logged in users.

For each 1000 logged in users I will add 0.5 CPUs and 4M of RAM to my DB servers.  My initial DB server above will support 2000 logged in users and above 2000 I need to start adding RAM and CPUs.

Is this model reasonable as a first approximation or is it crazy?  From my conversations I might be able to use 8GB RAM for the App Servers and maybe I need a touch more CPU per 1000 users on the DB side.

I am still going round-n-round in my mind Oracle versus MySql.  If one requires far more or less hardware per logged in user - it might push me in a particular direction.

I know this is simple - I am just looking for a starting point for a model that can be adjusted as experience is gained.

Thanks in advance.

If there is a Confluence page on this - feel free to tell me to RTFM :)

/Chuck