[SunHELP] what hardware/architecture do you use for dns and web?

[Sheldon T. Hall]

Bob Ababurko says ...
>
>    I am in an interesting position in at my new place of employment to
> influence the choice maker(s) in the hardware that will be implemented in
> their transition.  Right now they are running Linux based
> hardware which I
> am not all that happy about....but hey its a job  They like Linux due to
> the its cost effective nature.  I have told them that I believe we can do
> this with similarly priced Sun hardware, which can be had on ebay for
> comparable costs...... but do not know what will be required.
>    What I would like to know is....would something like the Ultra 1 be
> sufficient to run a primary DNS, with a second for secondary or would
> something more be needed.  The DNS will mainly be used for a large
> announcement list...(so, alot of lookups)  Also, what would an Ultra 1
> running apache run like?  Maybe I could get anyone or everyone to post on
> or off list, to reveal what hardware/architecture they are
> running and what
> kind of performance/numbers they are seeing(for both DNS and web).  I
> realize that Ultra 1 are not very high performance but, I figured
> I needed
> to start somewhere since cost is definitely a factor.
>    I would very much like to be administering Solaris boxen at
> work, so any
> help would be greatly appreciated!

I can't speak to the U1's performance, although I expect it would be
adequate or better, but it might be politically easier to go with a U2 or
better, since Solaris 10 won't run on anything less than a U2.  IIRC, it
only runs on mid-to-upper U2s, so check that before laying out the cash.

DNS is very memory-sensitive; the more stuff it can cache in RAM, the faster
it will be.  I think this makes more difference than the processor speed.

FWIW, on my small LAN, a SPARCclassic serves nicely as a DNS server.

-Shel