Question to ELUNA SysAdmin list about hardware, # of users, # of items
- Article Type: General
- Product: Aleph
- Product Version: 20
Description:
Question to ELUNA SysAdmin list from Fang Peng, at SUNY - Stony Brook:
We are analyzing the hardware usage of Aleph servers and try to find future replacement. We are interested to know how many users are running or will soon upgrade to Aleph v20. Please answer the following questions. Doesn't have to be a full list, answer as much as you can.
How many FTEs in the library ( or how many GUI access? or how many GUI licenses )?
How many students?
What is your current Aleph Version? Are you planning on upgrading to a newer version?
How many bib records are in your Aleph system?
How many Authority records?
What server box is the system run on (Sun, HP, Dell or other, please specify)?
Do you use virtual server for Aleph v20?
What's the operating system and version ?
How many CPUs are used by Aleph host server?
What's the speed of the processors?
How much memory?
How much time (in seconds) does a query take (to return back query result on the webpage)? How's Aleph performing in general?
Here is what we have for Aleph v20 now:
Manufacturer: Sun
Model Name: V890
Hardware Platform: UltraSparc IV
Operating System and Version: Solaris
Hardware Serial Number: 111H28CA
Number of Processors: 8
Processor Speed: 1.2GHz
Memory: 16GB
Resolution:
There were six responses:
**** Response #1, from Mike Rogers, University of Tennessee - Knoxville: ****
- 135 licensed GUI users, 99 web users, 6 self-check servers, 5 z39.50 users
- approx. 26,000 students
- Aleph v.20.1
- 2.16 million bibs
- 1.17 million authorities
- Dell PowerEdge 2900 server
- no virtual environment
- Linux RedHat v.5.5
- 2 Intel Xeon 5460 quad-core processors
- 3.16 GHz (processor speed)
- 32GB memory
- Query times vary, but overall Aleph seems to be running very fast. All our hardware is new and we run the system on a 1GB network port.
**** Response #2, from Christine Moulen, MIT: ****
> * How many FTEs in the library ( or how many GUI access? or how
> many GUI licenses )?
~150 staff, 80 GUI licenses
> * How many students?
~12,000
> * What is your current Aleph Version? Are you planning on
> upgrading to a newer version?
19 moving toward 20
> * How many bib records are in your Aleph system?
1.7 mllion
> * How many Authority records?
1 million
> * What server box is the system run on (Sun, HP, Dell or other,
> please specify)?
Dell
> * Do you use virtual server for Aleph v20?
Yes, testing this at least.
> * What's the operating system and version ?
RHEL 4 (v 19) RHEL 5 (v 20)
> * How many CPUs are used by Aleph host server?
2 quad core processors
> * What's the speed of the processors?
3+ GHz
> * How much memory?
16 GB
> * How much time (in seconds) does a query take (to return back
> query result on the webpage)? How's Aleph performing in
> general?
1-2 for a basic keyword search, can be more or less, depends on complexity of search.
Performance is good. Just starting with 20 on the virtual server, so I don't have any real data points on that.
Performance was noticeably improved in moving from Solaris to Linux servers (non virtual) on version 19, at the server command line and batch services as well as response to the client.
**** Response #3, from Sean Crooks, SDLN: ****
SDLN is a consortia of approximately 70 full member libraries but SDLN itself has 5 fulltime and 4 part-time employees. Our Aleph v20 license has a max of 290 GUI users and 225 OPAC users. We run 40 www servers and 20 pc servers.
Currently we have approximately 350,000 patrons in the system but our system serves the entire state of South Dakota which has a population of over 800,000
We are currently running v20 which we upgraded to in early July 2010 from v18
Approaching 6 million bib records
Server: 1*HP ProLiant DL585 G5 for Aleph + 1* HP ProLiant DL585 G6 for Oracle (see specifics below)
Do you use virtual server for Aleph v20? No
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 64-bit
HP ProLiant DL585 G5 has 4 quad-core AMD 8389 processors, HP ProLiant DL585 G6 has 4 six-core AMD 8439 processors
What's the speed of the processors? G5-2.9 GHz, G6-2.8 GHz
How much memory? Both G5 & G6 have 32 GB RAM (G5 is PC2-6400, G6 is PC2-5300)
Response time: On a good day OPAC searching is around 3-4 seconds, busy days go up to around 12-15 seconds. GUI searching is a little slower. Unfortunately we’ve had several issues while running v20 that have ranged from hardware issues (faulty hard drive controller) to Oracle issues. I believe we have been fortunate to have access to good support resources at Ex Libris and the consultants we hired to perform our upgrade. SDLN does not currently employ an Oracle DBA so we rely on outside help for that part. Overall I believe our end-users are happier with version 20 compared to version 18 although we continue to work through various issues.
In addition to the above, we also run an additional G5 & G6 server in a development environment. The production database clones itself to the test db server every 12 hours to serve as a standby in case of server failure. We also run full system backups to tape every Sunday and incrementals to tape every Wednesday via VERITAS Netbackup 6.5 connected to a Sun L24 Auto-Loader tape library.
**** Response #4, from Bill Slauenwhite, Novanet: ****
165 GUI licences, 215 web, unlimited z39.50, 5 NCIP, 1 SIP2
45,000 FTE
ALEPH 20.2
2.7 M bibs
1 M authority
Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120
No virtualization
Sun 10
One 4 Core 1.2 GHz
16 GB memory
Good response time (sorry no metrics)
**** Response #5, from Ana Fidler, UC Santa Barbara: ****
- 145 FTE (300 Web, 200 GUI, 15 Z39.50 and 1 self-check licenses)
- 22,687 students
- Aleph 20.2.0 (3135)
- 3.00 million bibs
- 1.25 million authorities
- HP Proliant DL580 G5
- yes, VMware ESX 4.0
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 (Tikanga)
- 8 CPUs
- 2.93GHz
- 16 GB
- hard to say since we had some network issues lately. According to the staff, it is faster than our former v18 running on Sun V890.
**** Response #6, from Cory Snavely, University of Michigan: ****
How many FTEs in the library ( or how many GUI access? or how many GUI licenses )?
Roughly 479 library staff, 205 GUI licenses
How many students?
60,64
- Article last edited: 10/8/2013