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This document outlines recommended hardware and environmental configurations for Clearspace and Clearspace Community deployments.

General Requirements

Internal Deployments (Clearspace) — Resources Based on Number of Users

Note: The number of users represents the total number of users, not "active" users. It's assumed that around 20 percent of the total users are active.

Users CPUs RAM Location of App Server and Database
Clustered?
100 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 1GB Java heap Share a box No
500 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 1GB Java heap Separate boxes No
1000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 2GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes
5000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 4GB, 2GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes
10000 4 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 4GB, 2GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes

External Deployments (Clearspace Community) — Resources Based on Page Views

For external deployments, the configurations can be similar but the activity is measured in different ways. Also, the association between page views and content is not a hard rule. For example, it would be possible to have more reads (page views) than content creation (content / month) on a busy site.

Page Views per Month Content Created per Month CPUs RAM Location of App Server and Database
Clustered?
500,000 20,000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 1GB Java heap Share a box No
1,000,000 20,000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 1GB Java heap Separate boxes No
5,000,000 50,000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 2GB, 1.5GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes
10,000,000 50,000 2 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 4GB, 2GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes
25,000,000 100,000 4 dual core CPUs (at least 2 GHz) 4GB, 2GB Java heap Separate boxes Yes

Example JVM Settings

It's important to use the latest JVM (Java Virtual Machine) for your platform as well as the correct GC (garbage collection) settings. Clearspace requires at least a 1.6 VM.

Heap Startup Parameters
1 GB -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
2 GB -Xms512m -Xmx2048m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -XX:+UseParNewGC -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC

In both cases this will allocate a 512 MB heap at minimum as well as allocate 256 MB to the "PermGen" space of the VM heap. Finally, we configure the "Concurrent Mark Sweep" GC algorithm. We've found this to be the optimal GC setting for deployments on multiple core processor configurations.

If you want to debug the contents of your VM, use the following extra startup parameters:

Debug Parameters
-verbose:gc -XX:+PrintGC -XX:+PrintGCDetails -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -Xloggc:/path/to/log/file/here.log

Please refer to your application server's documentation for information on setting these startup parameters.

Time Configuration

For clustered configurations, it is absolutely essential that all cluster nodes have system time with as little drift as possible. This is generally adjusted on a regular interval by syncing with an NTP server inside the firewall. For servers under higher load, it may be necessary to increase the clock sync interval as loaded servers will be more likely to experience clock drift.

Network Topology

It's important to keep your network as simple as possible to minimize environmental interference. For example, a bad network architecture would contain multiple firewalls, proxies and network hops between your users, the application server and the database. Keep the following things in mind:

Example Hardware