[KLUG Members] Squid setup recommendation

[Tony Gettig]

Hey all,

I'm putting together a new caching box for work. Squid is high on the list, and
I've been charged with putting together a box for testing that, if the test goes
well, will probably be put into production.

The hardware: HP ProLiant DL360, 2 GB RAM, dual 2.something gig Xeon CPU's, dual
72 GB 10k SCSI drives. I can hardware RAID the disks, but I'm not sure I want to
given the massive amount of disk activity this box is destined for.

The people: anywhere from 500 to 2,000 concurrent users, with the potential for
up to 5,000+ in the event of a news event like 9/11.

I'm planning to use SuSE 9 with squid transparently. I think I can handle squid
and the other little packages that we intend to mix in with it (already tested
on a smaller scale), but I'm not sure about sizing the partitions. Is one file
system better than another for caching? How many partitions? How big? Should I
mirror the drives? I need the best performance with just a dash of fault
tolerance. :) The config of the box will be backed up frequently in case it
needs to be rebuilt.

Are there any squid configuration parms that I should be aware for a deployment
of this size? Any "gotchas" to look out for? Any on-going administrative
bummers? Cool tools for administration? I'd like to run the package that comes
with SuSE and can be updated with the provided tools, but I can compile and
install from source if necessary. Any arguments in favor of one over the other?

As Ross Perot once said, I'm all ears. :) Any recommendations or pointers in the
right direction are appreciated. Thanks!


-- 
Tony Gettig
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http://gettig.net