Administering Very High Volume Internet Services
Dan Mosedale, William Foss, and Rob McCool
Netscape Communications
Abstract
Providing WWW or FTP service on a small scale is already a
well-solved problem. Scaling this to work at a site that accepts
millions of connections per day, however, can easily push
multiple machines and networks to the bleeding edge. In this
paper, we give concrete configuration techniques that have helped
us get the best possible performance out of server resources.
Our analysis is mostly centered on WWW service, but much of the
information applies equally well to FTP service. Additionally we
discuss some of the tools that we use for day-to-day management.
We don't have a lot of specific statistics about exactly how
much each configuration change helped us. Rather, this paper
represents our many iterations through the watch the load
increase; see various failures; fix what's broken loop. The
intent is to help the reader configure a high-performance,
manageable server from the start, and then to supply ideas about
what to look for when it becomes overloaded.
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