Is horizontal scaling feasible in BBB2.3?

[egma...@gmail.com]

Dear All,

Thank you so much for your help

I have another simple question, assume that I would like to scale horizontally, I can go up to 64 CPUs/VM with a whooping 256GB, can I expect to have something of let's say a 1000 concurrent users?

Best,

Elias

[basisbit]

Next time, please don't ask such setup questions in the developer mailing list. Please use the bigbluebutton-setup mailing list instead.

The best setup will depend a lot on the used hardware, software configuration, bbb settings and user behavior. So you'll have to test and monitor to find the best setup for you. However, here is a rough suggestion: You'll want to use roughly a 8 or 12 dedicated CPU cores per each BBB VM with ~ 300Mb/s uplink capacity (see recommended system requirements in the BBB docs). Then use Scalelite ( https://github.com/blindsidenetworks/scalelite ) as session load balancer (it distributes new sessions to the different BBB servers).

A host system with 32 CPU cores / 64 CPU threads thus can host 1000 users or more - assuming proper configuration and using a current gen CPU with high single threading performance, high multi threading performance, not using cores / memory from more than one NUMA node within a VM, having the host virtualization system optimized for low latency and dedicated CPU core assignment. You'll also want at least 1Gb/s of dedicated upload bandwidth or more for that number of users or you'll have to reduce default webcam video bitrate (halving the default bitrate is usually not noticed by typical school users).

For better efficiency, you might want to evaluate using LXC/LXD/Docker vs KVM/VMware. If using full virtualization, you'll also have to make sure that ntpd does not adjust the system time of the host or the VMs during your usual system usage time.

I know of setups with 100.000+ students based on AMD EPYC 7502P or (even better) AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (or similar) with ~1500 or more students per dedicated server (each running a couple of VMs or Linux containers of BBB).

Personally, I'd suggest you to rent dedicated bare metal servers with the needed hardware (high single threading performance and high multi threading performance - check for decent TDP limits) in a big and flexible and cheap datacenter and then set up your BBB VMs/Containers on those. Make sure your choice of datacenter has good network peering for the region where you expect most of your users, and prefer a provider with unlimited network traffic or high TB/month rates and low price per extra TB.

Many BBB service providers also choose to use dedicated servers with Ryzen 3800X (or similar/better/newer) and install BBB directly bare metal on those servers, because such server sizes are usually available in much higher quantities.

Also, please read https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.2/install.html#before-you-install

For further details, please use the search feature, those topics were already discussed plenty in bigbluebutton-setup.

Best regards,

basisbit

[basisbit]

The previous email is for current BBB 2.2.x and 2.3.x - there currently is not much of a difference.