[K12OSN] What hardware for Squid/Dansguardian?

[Jon White]

I believe that cpu seems to be more important than either hard drive or
memory in a proxy box.

At our high school (approx 200 connections) we originally had an old
dual p2 300MHz server that did the job admirably. Unfortunately one of
the processor fans gave out and lead to the eventual burn out of all the
fans and at least one of the processors. (Amazing what can happen when
the AC gets turned off over the summer months.)

Thinking to put together a quick replacement box, we grabbed a box with
a 700 (maybe 750)MHz processor and put it in place, assuming that it
would work fine. (Similar boxes run our smaller schools no problem.)

By the end of the first week it was obvious that this box couldn't
handle the load, as it was constantly needing to be rebooted due to the
processor overheating.

Fortunately we have a local vendor who gave us an excellent ($1700)
price on a dual 2.8Ghz Xeon small server/graphics workstation box that
they had, which has worked out great for us.

My hypothesis is that the single processor setup simply couldn't keep up
with the heat generated by doing so much work on the single unit, where
the dual processor setup spreads the load/heat around enough that the
fans can keep up. 

Of course I don't have any "technical data" to back this hypothesis up
(besides the fact that the new proxy hasn't had a problem since we put
it in), so your mileage most likely will vary.



On Thu, 2005-05-19 at 00:07, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> What hardware is more important for a caching/filtering proxy server
> that runs Squid/Dansguardian for a school of ~300 internet
> connections.
> 
> I'm thinking from most important to least
> 
> 1) hard disks
> 2) memory
> 3) cpu
> 
> Anyone agree/disagree? What min. sys. req. would people recommend?
-- 
Jonathan S. White
Computer Technician
Shaker Regional School District
jwhite at shaker.k12.nh.us
(603) 267-9223