[ic] CPU upgrade for IC server?

[Jon Jensen]

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, Grant wrote:

> I'm accumulating more and more jobs that I like to have run daily. They 
> started out running in the middle of the night, but they're creeping 
> over into real traffic hours.  Right now I've got a P4 single-core 
> 2.8Ghz CPU and 1GB RAM.  Would a CPU upgrade be likely to execute the 
> jobs more quickly?

Only if they're very CPU-intensive, which many jobs aren't.

> Would it make the website more responsive while jobs are running?

Yes, as long as your Interchange processes aren't blocking on database 
locks. For example, when using MySQL with MyISAM tables, any write 
(insert/update/delete) locks the entire table while it's being done. If 
your jobs are doing lots of database writes there, you'll be blocking your 
Interchange reads no matter how much CPU horsepower you have.

If you are using MySQL with InnoDB tables, or PostgreSQL, or most other 
SQL databases, your reads & writes will coexist much better.

In general these days it's nice to have several CPU cores free for serving 
customer traffic, and if you do batch jobs or back-end administration, at 
least one CPU core for that. Assuming traffic levels warrant the 
investment.

Jon

-- 
Jon Jensen
End Point Corporation
http://www.endpoint.com/