[Geoserver-devel] GeoServer hardware requirements and our current hardware specs

GeoServer GeoServer Developer
1

Hello,

I have been pushing our customer to use an open source solution,
namely GeoServer, for a new GIS project awarded us. Right now they are
still wanting to use ESRI and their ArcGIS Server solution, which in
my opinion is a wasted resource both financially and technically
(their current software offerings appear to be bloatware and far
exceed what we really need). ArcGIS Server hardware requirements also
appear to be very high, but they only list some basic information on
their website and I've been trying to obtain answers regarding our
current hardware specs and their recommendations for upgrades if and
where necessary. It has now been almost one week since initial contact
with a salesperson at ESRI, who apparently is my only direct contact
too (my initial questions have since been passed onto their 'technical
marketing group').

With the above in mind there is still hope in convincing our customer
to use the GeoServer solution. As such I'm hoping someone here can
help me and provide guidance far quicker than ESRI can (so a small
challenge too; I'm a big advocate of open source solutions and this
form of direct and responsive support).

I'm posting my original ESRI request below, which contains some basics
regarding our expectations and current hardware specs. Please
substitute ArcGIS Server with GeoServer where necessary.

Please let me know if you require any further information. I look
forward to your response.

Thanks,
Stephen Bull
EDS

--- original hardware questions sent to ESRI...

As discussed we are looking to purchase and install ArcGIS Server, for
use within a production environment, on some existing hardware (which
currently houses ArcIMS 4). We will be developing a web app for
serving real-time maps to and also performing geoprocessing of both
single and multiple addresses on a daily basis. The hardware is three
years old and may require upgrades in certain areas to at least meet
minimum specs. Basic hardware specs are as follows:

Sun Sunfire 280R
Single 800MHz processor
2 Gb RAM
2 x 18 Gb HD

The server currently runs Solaris 8, and with ArcGIS Server we will be
upgrading to/installing Solaris 10. Apache 2 and Tomcat 5 will also be
installed. On the ESRI Support Center website the hardware
requirements call for a 1.0 GHz or higher processor. Would we get away
with using an 800 MHz processor in a production environment (at least
for the time being), given the other hardware specs (2 Gb of RAM
etc.), or would you strongly suggest upgrading this? If so, what would
you recommend if 1 GHz is a bare minimum and something faster would be
preferable? Will 2 Gb RAM be enough also?

Per our conversation, your website also calls for a 24-bit capable
graphics accelerator, which our box currently doesn't have. Is this a
necessity given that we are developing a web app? (Does ArcGIS server
require certain graphics processing capabilities outside of the main
CPU?) Additionally, if a graphics card isn't necessary would we need
to compensate for this by setting aside a portion of main RAM for
certain processing needs (when generating map data)?

2

Stephen wrote:

Hello,

I have been pushing our customer to use an open source solution,
namely GeoServer, for a new GIS project awarded us. Right now they are
still wanting to use ESRI and their ArcGIS Server solution, which in
my opinion is a wasted resource both financially and technically
(their current software offerings appear to be bloatware and far
exceed what we really need). ArcGIS Server hardware requirements also
appear to be very high, but they only list some basic information on
their website and I've been trying to obtain answers regarding our
current hardware specs and their recommendations for upgrades if and
where necessary. It has now been almost one week since initial contact
with a salesperson at ESRI, who apparently is my only direct contact
too (my initial questions have since been passed onto their 'technical
marketing group').

With the above in mind there is still hope in convincing our customer
to use the GeoServer solution. As such I'm hoping someone here can
help me and provide guidance far quicker than ESRI can (so a small
challenge too; I'm a big advocate of open source solutions and this
form of direct and responsive support).

I'm posting my original ESRI request below, which contains some basics
regarding our expectations and current hardware specs. Please
substitute ArcGIS Server with GeoServer where necessary.

Please let me know if you require any further information. I look
forward to your response.

Sure, no problem, answers below. I don't know that we've done comprehensive testing of the minimum requirements, but I'm pretty sure you'll need better than a 800mhz...

Though yeah, hopefully you can convince your customer on a really nice server upgrade with the money saved on not getting an ArcGIS license. Though yes, it will take a bit more labor on your end to get a nice front end, it's not yet as easy as it is with Arc products to put a generic map up, though we're getting closer...

Thanks,
Stephen Bull
EDS

--- original hardware questions sent to ESRI...

As discussed we are looking to purchase and install ArcGIS Server, for
use within a production environment, on some existing hardware (which
currently houses ArcIMS 4). We will be developing a web app for
serving real-time maps to and also performing geoprocessing of both
single and multiple addresses on a daily basis. The hardware is three
years old and may require upgrades in certain areas to at least meet
minimum specs. Basic hardware specs are as follows:

Sun Sunfire 280R
Single 800MHz processor
2 Gb RAM
2 x 18 Gb HD

The server currently runs Solaris 8, and with ArcGIS Server we will be
upgrading to/installing Solaris 10. Apache 2 and Tomcat 5 will also be
installed. On the ESRI Support Center website the hardware
requirements call for a 1.0 GHz or higher processor. Would we get away
with using an 800 MHz processor in a production environment (at least
for the time being), given the other hardware specs (2 Gb of RAM
etc.), or would you strongly suggest upgrading this? If so, what would
you recommend if 1 GHz is a bare minimum and something faster would be
preferable? Will 2 Gb RAM be enough also?

For GeoServer in a production server I'd definitely recommend more than an 800Mhz processor. GeoServer is quite good at having a relatively low memory overhead, so the performance factor usually comes down to the processor. That's where I'd invest, preferably substantially more than a 1.0GHz. 2Gb RAM should also be enough. There is one setting that use a bit of a memory buffer by default, so if thousands of requests were coming in simultaneously than RAM could be a limiting factor. But that can be turned off (at the expense of not always always having standard compliant error responses). Image creation is the other area that might take some RAM, but it has been optimized to stream results out, only really holding a piece of it in memory.

In a production environment we'd also recommend setting up a Squid web cache and using a tiling browser client (such as the coming openlayers, google maps overlays, or mapbuilder may soon have the capability).

Per our conversation, your website also calls for a 24-bit capable
graphics accelerator, which our box currently doesn't have. Is this a
necessity given that we are developing a web app? (Does ArcGIS server
require certain graphics processing capabilities outside of the main
CPU?) Additionally, if a graphics card isn't necessary would we need
to compensate for this by setting aside a portion of main RAM for
certain processing needs (when generating map data)?

A graphics accelerator is not required. Some code may take advantage of it if one is there, but for the most part you should be fine.

GeoServer should work fine with Apache 2 and Tomcat 5, and I'm pretty positive we've had users work with it on Solaris 10.

best regards,

Chris

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3

All,

It's worth pointing out that Steven is talking about Ultrasparc processors, and from some quick poking at the Sun website, I see that even the highest-end chips don't go much over 1.5Ghz.

We have a dual-proc 933Mhz Sunfire 280 downstairs, and it's about on-par (raw number-crunching-wise) with a dual 2Ghz Xeon box. The hardware is just much much nicer and never crashes, the system is completely remotely operable (including turning it off/on and rebooting, even after a kernel panic) via a null-modem cable and the support contract gets you fixes in < 4 hours.

Steven, you're welcome to email me offline if you want to know more about how we've created a "parallel" geoserver cluster, right-next to our ESRI platform.

We wound up building 3 commodity servers, each with dual xeon processors and 1.5GB of ram, then putting an old PIII 733 as a load-balancer in front of the three machines.

The total cost of hardware and software for our three dual-xeon geoserver cluster was about $4000, and with balance (balance.sourceforge.net) and squid (squid-cache.org) working together, we get great scalability and great performance.

You can take a peek at a demo here: http://maps.massgis.state.ma.us/cpasitelocator/

The orthophotos are coming from a different data-source (hence their slowness...the geoserver ones are much faster).

--saul

comprehensive testing of the minimum requirements, but I'm pretty sure you'll need better than a 800mhz...

For GeoServer in a production server I'd definitely recommend more than an 800Mhz processor. GeoServer is quite good at having a relatively low memory overhead, so the performance factor usually comes down to the processor. That's where I'd invest, preferably substantially more than a 1.0GHz. 2Gb RAM should also be enough. There is one setting that