Benoit St-Jean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Anyone knows if there are any limitations for
> Comanche, e.g. number of simultaneous connections,
> number of pages for a swiki server, number of swikis
> for a server, number of uploaded files, search
> behavior on a swiki with 1500 pages, etc... That kind
> of stuff...
Nobody really knows.
The STOMP project began to get at this, but it focussed more on
performance than on ability to handle load.
I'd like to mention, however, that it's hard to crash a swiki with just
load. I can't recall seeing it done, in fact. I'm sure it is possible,
but it takes a LOT.
To make it even harder, I've recommended that Swikis should have a
built-in load limit, just in case: specifically, they can refuse to
accept more than n simultaneous connections. Most people seem to
generally agree with me, and it's pretty easy to do, but because nobody
sees load-based crashes in practice, no one has wanted to install it
even when I've put together a patch. I don't argue with them -- don't
fix a problem that isn't there! But if you actually do run into a
problem with load, be aware that there is a good saftey mechanism
available.
> In the worst case, anyone has number to give me an
> idea of how the server would react under a more
> heavier load than myself testing alone! :)
Two possibilities. If you are running the Swiki with lots of memory and
lots of available descriptors, then it will simply slooooow down. If
resources run out, however, then Swiki is very likely to lock up.
To answer your probable next question, there is no support for
load-balancing Swikis across multiple computers. It's tricky, because
you'd want edits to be reflected across all servers.
And to answer a next question, Squeak will not take advantage of
multiple CPU's. Swiki is multithreaded, but all the threads share a
single CPU.
Instead of load, a more serious problem is that Swikis still have some
mysterious bugs lurking around. Or more likely, certian VM's have
mysterious networking bugs floating around, which is just as bad.
Swikis on Unix seem to be pretty good nowadays -- they crash less often
than they are rebooted for upgrades, AFAIK -- but who knows? Don't run
something that needs very good reliability on a Swiki. :|
Lex
