Red Hat Linux 7.2 launches; FTP servers host over 15,000 concurrent users

As Red Hat Linux 7.2 launched this week, the FTP servers behind Red Hat's
free download service adeptly handled as many as 15,000 users concurrently. Individual servers
handled more than 2,500 concurrent downloads.

"A robust server infrastructure based on Red Hat Linux allowed us to support this extreme workload with relative ease," said Andrew Anderson, Red Hat Senior System Administrator.

Red Hat used system tuning experience gained from Red Hat Linux's record-breaking SPECWeb
results to achieve this performance. The six Dell PowerEdge 2450 servers comprising ftp.redhat.com had very few modifications from the base Red Hat Linux distribution. One small change to the kernel allows it to cache files more aggressively, reducing the workload on the supporting infrastructure. The other change was to use a very lightweight FTP daemon, vsftpd,
designed for the demands placed on a server under this level of load.

The components required for this deployment have been rolled out individually over the past few
months, ensuring that by the time Red Hat Linux 7.2 launched, each part of the overall system had been thoroughly tested and proven reliable.

"With a stock Red Hat Linux system and a bit of fine tuning we were able to achieve an order of
magnitude capacity increase, without changing the rest of the infrastructure," said Michael Tiemann, Red Hat CTO. "This is key to keeping our costs down while increasing the level of service we can offer to customers as we grow. While an order of magnitude improvement may seem extraordinary, it is typical of the kind of results our customers demand, and that our professional services group delivers every day."

To receive more information on Red Hat Linux 7.2 or to download the FREE IDC White Paper "Linux: A Journey Into The Enterprise" please click
here