What you call different Applications for staff and OPAC would be implemented as two Apache VirtualHosts. They share a lot of the underlying perl code in common, so it it usually more efficient to run them on the same server.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Erik Lewis <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:elewis@ngrl.org">elewis@ngrl.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I understand that Koha is essentially 2 parts an Apache application<br>
server and a MySQL database server. I also understand that some<br>
libraries run a seperate application server for staff access and one<br>
for patron access. If I'm not mistaken you can run these on different<br>
machines as well.<br>
<br>
1) Is there any problem mixing Application servers with the Database<br>
server. Example a Mac serving MySQL and either Windows, Mac, or Linux<br>
App servers?</blockquote><div><br>The mysql server can be whatever, but I would stick to one of the major Linux distros for the Apache/Koha server(s) unless you have a very strong reason not to, and are happy about debugging as you go. The system-dependent chunks are in Koha's compiled perl module dependencies, so mysqld is unaffected. Some folks do use MacOS for serving Koha though.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">2) Any upper limit on the number of App servers?</blockquote><div><br>No, but it isn't really necessary to build a huge "farm" either.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">3) Where does the Zebra indexing live?</blockquote><div><br>Wherever. It can even be a 3rd separate server, talking to the same DB server, with it's own copy of the Koha code, or a mounted drive of the same dirs. Keeping code in sync during updates can be a problem with this approach, however. I'd say keep Zebra on your Apache server unless you find performance issues.<br>
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">4) What are the pitfalls of having the Database server on a separate server?<br></blockquote>
</div><br>Firewalls, and more points of hardware failure. Introduces network performance/reliability bottleneck for every operation. Complexity of administration (OS updated, security, etc.). <br><br>--Joe<br>