[Koha] Question concerning Koha setup, it may be stupid but please show your brilliance

[Joe Atzberger]

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.

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Erik Lewis <elewis at ngrl.org> wrote:

> I understand that Koha is essentially 2 parts an Apache application
> server and a MySQL database server.  I also understand that some
> libraries run a seperate application server for staff access and one
> for patron access.  If I'm not mistaken you can run these on different
> machines as well.
>
> 1)  Is there any problem mixing Application servers with the Database
> server.  Example a Mac serving MySQL and either Windows, Mac, or Linux
> App servers?


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.


> 2)  Any upper limit on the number of App servers?


No, but it isn't really necessary to build a huge "farm" either.


> 3)  Where does the Zebra indexing live?


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.


> 4)  What are the pitfalls of having the Database server on a separate
> server?
>

Firewalls, and more points of hardware failure.  Introduces network
performance/reliability bottleneck for every operation.  Complexity of
administration (OS updated, security, etc.).

--Joe
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