Hello everyone,

We are planning to implement a dotnetnuke enviroment for over 1700 Active Directory users and 300 normal users (who don't use AD Login). We currently have a testing enviroment on a virtual server with a sql express (2005 edition). But my question is , is this enough for dotnetnuke to function normally? We have about 100 concurrent connections.

We now have the following setup:

Windows Server 2003 (Standard Edition) (SP2)
Intel XEON 3,40 Ghz 1GB RAM
IIS 6.0
SQL SERVER 2005 (Express Edition)
DotNetNuke 4.9.4 (Upgraded from 4..9.3)
Internet Explorer (6.0) (should be upgraded soon)

Should this require physicial hardware or would it be suffice to say that the virtual server can handle this number of users.

Thanx in advance.

More RAM dedicated to your VM would be a very definite plus.  Even in single-user testing environments I find a huge difference in performance between 1GB and 2GB on a DNN/IIS/SQL virtual system.  Note:  That's 2GB devoted just to the virtual system.  Your physical system should have a total of at least 3GB in order to effectively devote 2GB to the virtual (also depends on what type of virtualization you are using - VMWare? HyperV? Citrix?)

  
Now....whether your listed config is sufficient for 100 concurrent users really depends on what content you are providing and what those users are doing with that content.

Examples:

• Is the site devoted to simple browsing of mostly text-based content (blogs and forums)?  That would be no problem for your listed config.
• Are people perusing photo galleries?  Serving up page after page of photo previews would be quite a bit more taxing on your system -- you may need to consider further increasing RAM (for more caching) and upgrading the speed of your physical storage.
• Are you streaming instructional videos?  Your system won't be able to handle 100 concurrent users streaming vids.

So...what kind of content does your site provide and how do you expect users to make use of it?
 
-mamlin