[Tilesathome] New hardware available to serve the project somehow

[Matthias Julius]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> writes:

> In a multi-server setup, it would be possible to have one server run the 
> Mysql database with the tile meta data and process uploads, while a 
> second server (accessing the tile repository in read-only mode) would 
> serve tile download requests. That could provide some breathing space 
> for the components involved, but on the other hand there's still one 
> place where tiles are stored so if the bottleneck turns out to be 
> writing to and reading from the tile repository then it might not be 
> such a good idea to have separate servers.

But it shouldn't hurt neither.  In any case the tile server should
benefit if it doesn't have to run the database.  If nothing else
apache would have more memory available.  Of course queries for empty
tiles would have to go over the network.  So this is probably only
efficient if the servers are standing next to each other.  Or the tile
server would need to host at least the empty tiles db.

Another way of splitting might be to host the different layers
including database on different servers.

>
> You are of course free to just get the current PHP source (it is in SVN 
> under sites/other/tilesAtHome or so), install it and play around with 
> it. Modifying the t at h client to upload to your server(s) should be 
> simple. Some guidance by OJW will perhaps be required as regards pieces 
> of the puzzle that aren't in SVN (like apache config, cron jobs, MySQL 
> structure).
>
> The final decision on whether and where tiles at home is moved lies with 
> the people running "render farms" - you can provide the best server, but 
> if they don't follow, then your server will run empty. And while the 
> people running "render farms" are free to decide how they participate, 
> they will most likely do what OJW  (Oliver White, creator of tiles at home 
> and current maintainer of the tiles at home server on dev) says. 

I guess they will do what general.conf says.  So anybody with commit
access can change that (and start a commit war).

But of course this is useless unless the maps use it to get tiles and
send requests to.

Matthias