Chapter 6. Optimizing and tuning

6.1. Optimizing server

The heart of the system is MySQL database. The MySQL power depends on the speed of your hard-drives. We recommend using RAID solution (disk arrays) to speed up the overall server power. Your server configuration depends on number of flows which you want to analyze and amount of data you want to store.

There are some examples:

One to five Cisco 3600 routers with 1 gigabit interfaces
Optimal is a server with 1GB of RAM and 1 disk with 100GB or more.
One Catalyst 6500 with several gigabit interfaces
Optimal is a dual-core server with 2GB of RAM and 1 or more disks (RAID) with 250GB or more.
Several Catalyst 6500/7600 with 10Gbps interfaces
Optimal is a quad-core server with 4 or 8GB of RAM and disk array (RAID5) with 500GB or more.

There is a server component list (the first item is the most important):

  1. Disk R/W speed
  2. Size and speed of RAM
  3. Processor speed and number of processors
  4. Other peripheries

[Tip]Tip
The most powerful configuration is a RAID with SAS disks (using 15.000rpm disks).