Maximum Sites / Scalability

[blacknight]

What is the recommended maximum number of sites per DA server?

At what point does scaling become an issue?

[ctnchris]

IMO, this really depends on the server specs, bandwidth, how busy the sites are, etc.

[blacknight]

Yes I know that. But I am looking for some kind of example. Let's say with:
P4 2.8 Ghz
1 Gb RAM
2 x 80 GB HDD

What kind of numbers are we looking at?

[sHuKKo]

I have got a p4 2.4 ghz 512 mb ram 2x 40 gb hdd server with 400+ users and 600 domains..

I have got another server celeron 2.0 ghz 1 gb ram 80 hdd only 2 domains on it..

p4 performs better than celeron 2.0 because 1 site on that cely uses more bandwidth more email more everything from all sites on that p4..

But these are all depending to your usage and your customer profile.

In reality If I have enough funds :) 200 standart domain/user per server is a good equation ..

[DirectAdmin Support]

I *have* seen a few servers running ~1000 users and ~1600 domains, but I think that's a bit past the upper limit ;) The main limitation is the apache load times and the nightly tallies. Apache takes a good 10 seconds to read in 1000 httpd.conf files with that many virtualhosts, so apache restarts mean a few seconds of downtime. Tweaking of the httpd.conf templates are also required because apache has troubles holding open that many filedescriptors for the error logs. The nightly tally can take a few hours with webalizer going full blast, but should get the job done regardless.

:)

John

[l0rdphi1]

Yeah, my Dual XEON w/ 2gb ram is barely touching .2 avg. load with currently 240 domains.

Theoretically, I'll hit 2 load @ 2400 domains :)

And, by the way, this same lot of 240 domains had a 2.4 celery w/ 512 ram at its knees

[DirectAdmin Support]

Yes, vegetables arn't the best webservers ;) Although, they really help with throughput (fiber) :rolleyes: ...hehehe.

John

[RealNames]

Do Domain Pointers count as load on the server? Would it be OK to run say 600 sites and another 1400 domain pointer url's? Would that be about the same load as 600 sites with no domain pointers.

Do domain pointers use bandwidth over and above the site they point to? I am talking about all low traffic sites and pointer url's.

Thanks.

[jdlitson]

Pointers don't have to load any text and graphics so the load is tiny.

[RealNames]

Thanks for the reply. Do 600 small sites and 1400 Pointers sound like it would work OK or is it too much, is there any software limit on the numbers?

Also, slightly off-topic, is there something in DA similar to Domain Pointers from the Reseller Panel, but it uses so called Masked Forwarding. What I mean is when you typein www.domain#2.com on the-web, and that redirects or points to www.domain#1.com the browser window still shows you as being on domain2.com even though the website you are on is really domain1.com

Thanks for your help.

[nobaloney]

600 sites and 1400 pointers should work on a reasonably sized system, 1.5G P4 or better (not Celeron), with one gig of memory or better.

Answer to your second question: No. Not yet.

Jeff

[RealNames]

Hi, When you say No, Not YEt, does that mean it is coming soon?

Also, many domain registrars offer Maked Forwarding, so am wondering why it can not be done in DA?

Is there some valid reason for it nopt being included with DA, or perhaps the developer simply never got around to implementing it in the CP as I suspect may be the case. This is a MAJOR feaure that I assumed was part of DA and am very disappointed it can not be done.

I am sure it is relatively easy and simple to do or else GoDaddy and others would not offer it FREE to their clients as they do. Can Direct Admin Mod please address the issue too?

[nobaloney]

I wrote not yet because I expect DA to offer it soon.

I agree with you that it's not hard to do, and in fact we offer it at no charge to our retail hosting clients, but because it's not built into DA we do it for them manually on their request.

There are several ways to do it; one is to set up the httpd.conf file with a ServerAlias and to turn off domain rewriting; that's the "cleanest" way, but only someone with access to the server can do it.

The way GoDaddy (and we) do it for clients is to set up a zero-size frame.

To see how a zero-size frame works, check out http://domains.nobaloney.net. It will automatically rewrite to https://secure.ezsecureusa.com/nobaloney/domains/ but if you then look at the page outside of frames (I don't know how to do it in IE; in NS/Mozilla it's simply a right click then "Frames | Show only this frame"), you'll find that the real URL is a reseller account at "https://secure.registerapi.com/".

Note that for this domain we're also using rewriting to force https; that's not part of this issue, and you do not have to do that part of it.

Both domains.nobaloney.net and secure.ezsecureusa.com/nobaloney/domains are hosted on a DA server; the secure.registerapi.com URL is the Dotster domain reseller server.

Note if you're going to buy domains there, first set up your account and then write me (address below in my sig) and tell me to give you a $12/year price; the default is $15.

Jeff