[Koha] Multiple KOHA - One Server

[Chris Cormack]

Hi Greg

On Wed, Aug 27, 2003 at 03:46:45PM -0500, Greg Lambert/Amigos said:
> How difficult would it be to host multiple Koha libraries on a single
> server?
> 
The good news is, not that hard at all :-)

One of the katipo servers has 4 different koha's running on it.

> The scenario could be:
> 
>    There are 3 small libraries in the same town that want to use Koha to
>    manage their individual library collections.   They combine their
>    efforts (and money) to get a single server up and running, but still
>    want to display the information individually (different web addresses
>    for each library, etc).
> 
>    How difficult would this be to create?
> 
Its not too bad, you need a different database, and a different
/etc/koha.conf file for each koha install.
And you need to edit the C4/Context.pm file to set the koha.conf for each
koha to use.

>    How many libraries could be hosted on one server?  (example  2.4 Ghz P4,
>    512 Mb Ram, 80 Gb HD, etc).
> 
It depends entirely on how big the libraries are, and more importantly how
many transactions they each do a day.
The spec above sounds fine for 3 small libraries.

>    Would multiple installs of Koha be necessary, or could the config files
>    be modified to have on install and then have the MySQL DBs be structured
>    to handle the different libraries?
> 
You could do it with 3 databases, 3 config files, but they all share the
same perl and perl modules plus html::templates. 
Its probably better to have separate installs though, which would allow you
to easily change the templates for each koha to make each library have its
own look.

>    Are there any "issues" about this type of hosting?
> 

This is the solution Id go for if I wanted to run 3 separate catalogs.
However if I wanted to run a union catalog over the three libraries, id go
for a single Koha install, and use Koha's concept of branches to deal with
the separate libraries.

I think it depends on the aim, do they want patrons to be able to search a
catalog and find books in all 3 libraries. Or would they rather have 3
separate catalogs.

Chris
-- 
Chris Cormack                                                     Programmer
027 4500 789                                       Katipo Communications Ltd
chris at katipo.co.nz                                          www.katipo.co.nz