Brain Murmurs

We have been profiling JIVA’s performance and have now started focusing on the JIVA Server. We decided to migrate our JIVA Server to a substantially slower machine and see how much traffic it could handle before bogging down.

After considering a few truly archaic options (like an SGI O2 running at 180 MHz) we decided that a 1.42 GHz G4 Mac Mini would fit the bill nicely: considerably slower than the average production server, not ridiculously out dated, and cheap (as of today, they can still be purchased new for $499 at the Seattle Mac Store).

So here’s the new setup:

Server Specifications
1.42 GHz G4 Mac Mini (1 GB of RAM, 80 MB hard drive)
Network connection: 802.11g wireless (54Mbps)
Internet connection: DSL 1536 Kbps downlink / 832 Kbps uplink

Performance Results
Number of clients: 448
Number of packets currently being processed: 274
Average CPU Utilization: 17.7%
Memory Utilization: 200 MB
Number of packets processed: 202135
Number of packets remaining: 47469

Analysis
At this point the server is handling traffic from a total of 448 desktop computers, with 274 computers doing work and interacting with the server right now.

Handling traffic from the 274 clients is using about 18% of the Mini’s available processing power (it experiences periodic bursts up to around 70% CPU utilization).

At this point, there simply are not enough idle clients to drive the Mini to the point of failure! 274 clients are handled with ease. Based on the average CPU loading alone it would appear that the the Mini could handle up to 1,370 active clients, although other factors may come to bear before that number is actually reached.

Bottom line: a system as small as a Mac Mini can easily handle the load of over 250 desktop computers over regular DSL, and quite likely can handle more. This number will probably go up significantly with a faster machine connected to clients via a LAN.

We’ll update the figures on this page as we get more information.

If you’re interested in helping us figure out the upper limit, feel free to download the JIVA Client and join in the fun.

The latest statistics for our network can be seen here

Filed under: JIVA, JIVA (Technical) by Administrator