Re: [squid-users] Notes on very large cache deployment

On Wed, Jun 13, 2001 at 08:46:17AM +0800, francisv@dagupan.com wrote:
> I'm just curious if there are notes out there describing how they
> deployed their squid systems (multiple cache, one very big cache, etc.).
> We're planning to deploy a bigger system (we have 2 squid servers, one on
> freebsd and the other on linux, both with 700MB of RAM and 30GB of hard
> disk space). I would be grateful if someone could give me pointers where
> to start.

This is a problem which we've had to address. Around 18 months ago we went
from an optional cache service to interception caching for the entire
university (around 30000 hosts), and have had usage steadily increasing
since, with current termtime traffic levels at around 16 million requests
per day (close to 100GB in total).

We initially deployed a pool of Sun Ultra 10 boxes running Solaris
connecting to an Alteon Acedirector L4 switch to provide the
load-balancing, but we're now introducing a couple of Linux machines into
the pool to give us considerably more performance, migrating some of the
Suns to other duties.

We've opted for Dell Poweredge 2500 servers, each with 1GHz CPU, 1.5GB RAM
and 8x18GB non-RAIDed disk (one reserved for system and log partitions)
across two Ultra160 SCSI channels. Software is based upon Redhat 7.1, with
a recent 2.4 kernel, iptables and reiserfs for the cache disks. Squid
version will initially be 2.3.STABLE4-hno.20000819 (to match our other
machines) but plan to migrate to 2.4 within the near future.

The machines are currently in testing, but initial performance testing
under "real" load (throwing our entire traffic into one machine!) took the
machine comfortably over 200 requests per second. It remains to be seen
how well they perform once the cache is well-populated.

If people are interested, I'll consider putting some notes on the web once
the machines are fully in service.

        Robin

-- 
--------------- Robin Stevens  <robin.stevens@oucs.ox.ac.uk> -----------------
Oxford University Computing Services ----------- Web: http://www.cynic.org.uk/
------- (+44)(0)1865: 273212 (work) 273275 (fax)  Mobile: 07776 235326 -------