How many concurrent users are allowed?

[Steve B]

Again,

 

This is probably a newbie question:

 

I currently work with a shopping cart solution that uses .asp or .asp.NET and can use either MS/SQL or MS/Access.

 

SQL seems to be the way to go, if a site is going to have many concurrent users and lots of traffic. MS/Access works fine for up to about 7 or 8 concurrent users without bogging down to much.

 

How many concurrent users can OSCommerce handle before it starts slowing down?

 

Is there a limit differences between IIS 5, IIS 6, or Red Hat LINUX 7.3?

 

If using IIS 5 is it better not to use ODBC?

 

Is it better to use persistent or non-persistent connections?

 

Is it possible and/or better to use MS/SQL as a backend database?

 

I am asking as I am seriously considering converting a shoestore site to the other software or OSCommerce. I have LINUX leanings and would rather go that route. The site gets about 100-200 hits/day and about 25-50 orders/months. Any suggestions?

[Guest]

MySQL is less resource intensive than MS SQL. This is also true of Linux and Apache versus MS Windows Server and IIS (Linux and Apache make more efficient use of resources).

 

Access uses either a stripped down version of MS SQL or a database engine called Jet (which is being phased out in favor of the stripped down version of MS SQL). It is not designed to be used by more than a handful of people at the same time.

 

osCommerce is most comfortable on a Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP (LAMP) site. You can use it with MS Windows/IIS/MS SQL, but it can have odd issues that require you to make coding changes. It is simpler just to stick with LAMP. Even a relatively light weight LAMP server should have no difficulties handling the work load that you described (averaging less than two orders per day and less than 10 hits per hour). Consider that the forums are running a similar solution and generally handle thirty connections without problems.

 

Good luck,

Matt

[Steve B]

Matt,

 

Thanks for your reply....That's great to hear!

 

Matt or anyone else.....

 

Let's say, that I had 50 such sites on a server, with the same traffic. I'm thinking of a 2.4ghz dual cpu with a 400mhz front side bus and a 512k memory cache, with a gig of memory, and a couple of 15000 RPM SCSI drives?

 

Would I be able to do this with a 600mz single CPU and 512k of Memory with a 10000 RPM SCSI?

 

Assume for now that the DB is residing on the same server. I know this is rather subjective what I'm asking. I am seriously thinking about purchasing some servers and want to leave room for expansion without degrading performance. I was in contact with one OSCommerce client whose site sometimes was extremely fast and other times bogged down, I suspect it was either a server set-up problem or a conncurrency problem.