search.cgi 84% cpu load? 300 concurrent users

[Bibbi]

Hello,

search.cgi 84% cpu load, what can i do?

greetz
Bibbi (ger)

[David]

It is normal that you get high CPU load when doing a search.

But the load should only last for about between 0.1 and 1.0 seconds per search performed, depending on the size of your index.

Can you provide more details of you server hardware, index size, O/S, other load already on the server & search duration.

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David

[Bibbi]

Hello,

the Server is an AMD 3600, 2GB Ram, OS Linux
I have 1000 Pages (index only)

300 User are const. online and use the searchengine (at the same time).

greetz bibbi

[David]

Yes, with 300 concurrent users doing searches, this could put a lot of load on the system.

I would,

1) Put the search function on a dedicated server so it isn't being shared by other tasks. You should be able to justify the cost of a dedicated server for 300 users.

2) If you can, get a dual CPU or dual core machine.

3) Your index will be small for only 1000 files. So create a RAM disk and copy all the index files to the RAM disk. Then run the search from the RAM disk. Create a script to do this at boot up. Here is the start of a script,
mkdir /tmp/ramdisk0
mke2fs /dev/ram0
mount /dev/ram0 /tmp/ramdisk0
The will reduce the search times.

4) The next version of the CGI will be faster. Between 2x and 10x depending on the search. So if none of the above works for you. E-Mail us for a early beta build of this new version.

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David