Database and Application Server Setup

[amruth kiran]

Hey Forum members!

I was wondering what would be the ideal technique to setup a server for a small enterprise organisation? This would be hosted online with low-medium users approx 500 at a time.

Should I attempt a simple XAMPP/WAMP/LAMP setup along with PostgreSQL all on the same system? or would a separate Database and Application Server be more efficient for scalability issues?

Any suggestions would be welcome,
Thanks!

 

[mobo]

Server engineering is above my paygrade, but of course multiple servers are always more scalable.
But if you are sure you won't need more than what a single machine is capable of, then the added complexity and possible performance hit may not be worth it.

LAMP is probably the best choice, but you may also want to consider Elastic as DB. It can be very effective for certain types of workloads. Node.js might be more convenient to develop with if you are already offering rich client side functionality.

The right answer can vary wildly depending on the the exact workload. Sadly, it's near impossible to simulate a real world load. If you are looking to add more servers later, then I guess you can always decouple your services when you do that.

 

[amruth kiran]

Thank you for your quick reply @mobo !

I was hoping to use WAMP along with PostgreSQL on the server side with PHP and Python as the scripting language to handle all transactions, but Node.js seems to be better at higher order/multi client requests ( still figuring this out, correct me if I'm wrong). The project is to just visualise and probably analyse some satellite imagery data ( Remote Sensing and GIS ) so I can't put a number on the complexity yet.

" If you are looking to add more servers later, then I guess you can always decouple your services when you do that" What do you mean by decoupling?

Thanks!

 

[mobo]

I just meant that if you go with a single machine setup now, and plan to add more later, you can always move the DB to its own separate system then.

I don't know what all functionality postgres offers, but do look into elasticsearch. It has some features specifically for geolocation. It is not SQL compliant though, so it may not be suitable for more typical RDBMS data sets.

 

[amruth kiran]

Thank you so much for the suggestion @mobo ! Elasticsearch seems very interesting for my work. Hopefully I'll be able to cook up something.
Cheers!