386/486, well configured: HOW MANY USERS?

[Conor P. Cahill]

In article <22232 at abcom.ATT.COM> brr at abcom.ATT.COM (Rao) writes:

>		How many users can such a setup handle (efficiently)

In order to tell you how many users a system can support, one needs 
to know what the users are going to be doing.

If you are talking primarily about a BBS style system and you get 
an intelligent serial i/o card,  a 33MHZ system could support upwards
of 40 or 50 users.

If you are talking about database users that will be updating and searching
entries in a database, you will probably start to notice performance
degradation when you get to 15 or 20 users. (not that this is also dependent
upon the database package itself).

If you are talking about power programmers that will be doing compiles 
and other such nonsense, you will probably run into degradation at 10 or
so users.

If you are talking about real power programmers that will be using X 
window workstations and compiling and other such nonsense you might 
run into degradation around 5 users.

*** ALL OF THESE NUMBERS ARE JUST REAL GUESSES ***!!!!!!!  The kind of
hardware you have, the kinds of applications that are running, etc. will
have a big effect on the number of users a system will support.

We have a 33MHZ 386 with 16 MB mem, 64K cache, 24 port megaport card,
2 680MB ESDI hard drives, DPT caching disk controller with 2 1/2 MB cache,
80387.  We have yet to run into a performance degradation and have had
as many as 7 users on the system (2 of which were real power users with
X workstations and running multiple compiles simultaneously, 2 dial in 
news readers, system backup in progress, 2 database users adding/deleting/
searching against a 5MB database).


-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Conor P. Cahill     uunet!virtech!cpcahil      	703-430-9247	!
| Virtual Technologies Inc.,    P. O. Box 876,   Sterling, VA 22170     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+