Hardware

While ElectroServer is flexible and can run on many different hardware configurations, it performs best when a few things are kept in mind.

ElectroServer is highly concurrent.

ElectroServer is designed to support many concurrent users. To do this, ElectroServer uses a highly-scalable thread pool internally. Along with using this pool for processing user requests, the server also uses this pool for many background tasks that are running at all times. This means that adding more processors (or cores) will invariably increase performance of the server.

Ultimately though, processor speed is the most important item for scalability. In both a standalone instance and a registry instance, processor speed is number one with concurrency a close second. When dealing with gateways you can use smaller machines as you can simply scale by adding more gateways into the mix.

The more RAM the merrier.

The exact amount of RAM necessary on the server depends entirely on the number of processors and the type of traffic. In general, every core or processor should have at least one gig of RAM. This means a single processor dual core machine should have two gigs. A dual processor, dual core machine should have at least four gigs.

This rule of thumb is far from perfect but it's a good starting point. On Intel or AMD hardware, we would recommend against more then eight gigabytes of RAM as we haven't seen it give much improvement but when in doubt, more RAM is safer then less.

If you are running on Sun's Sparc hardware, please contact us and we can work with you to determine the optimal configuration.

Operating system concerns.

ElectroServer runs beautifully on any operating system that can run Java 1.6 or later. In practice though, the choice of operating system dramatically effects the performance you can expect from the server.

Despite the growing popularity, Windows appears to offer the worst performance with ElectroServer by a significant margin while the various Unix options all perform well. For the ultimate in performance and scalability, Solaris on Sparc is the clear choice due to the fact that it supports a great deal more processors than are available with Intel or AMD systems.

So which is best?

There is no "best" hardware/software platform for all situations but if we were to pick a single configuration that is both cost effective and performs great in all common scenarios we would suggest a dual-core Linux box with between two and four gigs of RAM. Increasing the box to a dual-processor/dual-core system will literally double your performance as well. If growth is important, getting the box with only a single processor installed and half the RAM is a great way to leave room for growth without breaking the bank.