??: [ic] Can I setup multiple stores and store owner accounts on a single Interchange server instance

[Daniel Davenport]

>>> jim.wang at comcast.net 12/14/04 02:13PM >>>
> Ethan,
> 
> Thanks a lot for the details you provide.  So, for many stores to
share a
> single sever instance is not a viable solution for commercial use.  
> 
> The question now should be:
> - What is the memory consumption for a server instance?
> - CPU usage percentage?
> 
> I am trying to figure out what average hosting cost for each
storefront will
> be if we use IC.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Jim

One of our servers is running approximately 15 catalogs under one
instance of interchange.  It runs fine...the only thing i don't like is
that reconfig requests are too quiet (errors aren't displayed; you have
to check the error logs to see what died).  Well, that and installing a
global sub/tag/etc requires a full restart (which takes about 15
seconds...not long enough to freak out vlink, but long enough to
possibly cause a noticeable delay to visitors).  

One could run interchange with the --test option before attempting a
restart, if one were paranoid about a global change they'd made.  But
for the most part, the only thing that could go wrong from changing a
catalog, is that that catalog would die.  It's not easy to accidentally
have one catalog break another.

CPU- and RAM-wise, the server in question is a dual P3/733 with 512MB
RAM.  Idle time is consistently 80% or higher (load average atm: 0.04,
0.10, 0.08) and memory usage is about 560MB (71MB of it swap), with
apache, tomcat, mysql, and interchange running.  Keep in mind, though,
that a number of the catalogs don't get much traffic at all.  I wouldn't
hesitate to run 5 busy stores on it, but i'd have to look at performance
at that point before recommending more.

/