[consulting] Drupal server requirements

[Laura Scott]

On Mar 28, 2006, at 1:42 AM, Boris Mann wrote:

> On 28-Mar-06, at 12:13 AM, Lists wrote:
>
>> If Drupal should grow to be a widely recognized and deployed tool,  
>> then it
>> will really need to remember that having physical access to a  
>> hosting server
>> is not a common reality, and suggestions geared toward improving  
>> its speed
>> and stability will need to keep this in mind.
>>
>> One can not blame the horse if the wagon is over-loaded.
>
> Umm....we were specifically talking about optimizing for high  
> traffic / high load situations. Drupal *is* being deployed into  
> these situations. The tension here is that "default", out-of-the- 
> box settings/system architecture that might be appropriate for a  
> small virtual hosting setup are not appropriate for high load/high  
> availability systems.
>
> (and yes, throw more hardware/memory/etc. at it is a valid answer  
> if those options are cheaper than the consulting time you'll spend  
> tuning, which it often is...)

I would only add that if someone on a shared hosting environment is  
running a site that is running up against the limitations of Drupal's  
default MySQL setup, then that person almost certainly is already  
under the Sword of Damocles with the hosting provider. Shared hosts  
do not seem to like busy websites at all these days. I don't care how  
big of an account you have. Busy sites almost always are driven to  
VPS or dedicated solutions.

Just this month we've had two sites bumped off of a shared host that  
did not like the resources the sites demanded. One is currently in  
limbo while the client decides what to do. The other we've moved to a  
VPS where we're doing all kinds of tunings. Still, it's a challenge  
as the site is ramping up towards well over 25k page views a day,  
with very active posting and user registrations. ANY info and data re  
good settings for an InnoDB setup emerging from this discussion is  
most appreciated by me!

Laura

PS - I've found that spam bots can be incredibly burdensome. I've  
implemented bad behavior module on most sites now, and it seems to  
help immensely. The downside is that sometimes the module makes  
mistakes (by blocking actual users), and that can be incredibly  
frustrating!