Re: [Cobalt-general] Hardware requirements of BOSS

[Russell B. <bo...@dc...>]

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005, Harri J=E4rvi wrote:

> what are in your experience the hardware requirements for a BOSS
> server running all three servers for a group of 100 to 200 students
> and set for about 10 autotests per submission? The server will contain
> the mysql server too.
>
> How much memory will be needed? How much processing power should be
> available? Would you suggest a multiprocessor system?

Until recently we used an Athlon 1GHz with 512MB RAM for all three=20
servers.  This performed well but would become noticeably slower close to=
=20
submission deadlines when students would using the autotests available to=
=20
them.  About a year ago, we upgraded to a dual Xeon setup with 2GB RAM.=20
This is more than adequate perhaps even overkill for our purposes but it=20
helps ensure that there's no chance we get swamped by last minute=20
submission rushes!

In short, a fast CPU (> 2GHz) and plenty of RAM (> 1GB) and you really=20
can't go wrong.  If you've got a slower system that should be fine too=20
but, if this is the case, you might want to look at separating the testin=
g=20
server to a another machine is really do lots of automatic tests.
  Multi-processor is really not a requirement.

I hope that's helpful.  Please email back if you've got any other=20
questions (and we'll try and respond quicker next time!).


Russell