Linux

Hello all,
I'm looking to implement a Linux server that will host up to 60 simultaneous X sessions, all running firefox to a secured web interface.

Does anyone have any experience sizing a system like this?

The reason for the setup isn't as important (Since I really don't understand why they want it this way... but I digress...)

So are there guidelines for sizing a system for X window connections? The application load shouldn't be too great, but we are talking about 60 instances of Firefox and whatever overhead each concurrent connection would take.

Any guidance or insight is appreciated.

Thanks

Shawn

I hope this is for over a local network -- X sessions aren't very bandwidth-efficient!

Essentially, you need overkill. You're tunneling something which, at least in bursts, can be as or more demanding than broadcasting uncompressed video, times sixty. VNC would be more efficient, though that may or may not trade off with higher CPU on the server... Lots of bandwidth, several cores, a pre-emptive kernel running at 1000 ticks for maximum responsivity, a good gigabit card and a good board that won't bottleneck it, some gigabit switches(at least the layer closest to the server). At least disk might not be an issue unless the web interface is a hog all by itself...

Furthermore, Firefox is a greedy program whose resource utilization patterns assume it's the only instance of itself in the system. Even at total idle, sixty would keep a modern machine quite busy. Install plenty of memory. Google every firefox performance tweak and do its opposite -- turn off prerendering, decimate all caches, increase waits. Install no add-ons, plugins, or themes. The Adobe Flash plugin is particularly infamous for eating CPU while doing nothing and occasionally SMP-locking. Pick a reasonably modern, unloaded machine and just test firefox on it, opening lots of instances and tuning.

This is, of course, a very strange way to accomplish whatever goal they have. I can't think of any good reason to tunnel a web browser when you could tunnel a web page -- it's like emailing a video of you typing up some text. Maybe you can at least convince them to tunnel xterms running a text browser? Or, even, a text browser on a local terminal? Those would still give them 100% control at the server end, which is what I think they want, but without anywhere near as much brute force.