Last year we benchmarked a Mac mini running Mac OS X (client) with
Apache 2+. The mini was easily able to handle 1000 hits per second
(using Apache bench with 32 simultaneous connections requesting a
2K file).
A 2K file is a very small file. Since most web sites use graphics,
and even have html pages of much greater length than 2K, the
analysis of just 2K file transfers is rather pointless. A good
analysis needs to access transfers of various file sizes, and a
mix. Most analysts should aware of this. The value of the above
study is dubious at best.
Apache bench is a valid cross-platform baseline. The resultant 86
million hits a day can be modulated to whatever extent you wish to
reflect a persons real-life complex site. Obviously people don't
have static sites either, but measuring dynamic sites across
heterogeneous platforms turns out to be difficult. So the Apache
bench is just a starting point.
It is simply meant to counterpoint the "if your looking at 10+
connections per second (just pulling numbers out of the air here) a
single mini most likely won't be fast enough" and the "10k per day
!= mini. :)" pronouncements which seem to go unchallenged.
-Anita
I'd be more concerned about them melting down from extended usage.
I'd never trust any mission critical application to a mini - xserves
exist for a reason.
- John
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
John May : President <http://www.pointinspace.com>
Point In Space Internet Solutions email@hidden
Professional Lasso / PHP / MySQL / FileMaker Pro Hosting
