Load-testing Orthanc: Enterprise-level Server Requirements?

[Emsy Chan]

Hi!

First of all, just a reminder to everyone that I don't understand enough of C to answer the questions I'm about to ask. :(

I want to try to do a "load-test" on Orthanc to see whether how many studies / users / etc. it can support (for day-to-day work). 

I plan to design it in a research format, so I can get analyzable data (details of which I have yet to work out - although any suggestions at this time are welcome).

For this, I intend to try to get research funds to buy a server. So, in this post, I hope to get feedback on the server recommendations for Orthanc in Windows.

(I could always ask for the biggest and baddest server in the world, but if Orthanc - as it was designed primarily for research / routing / etc - cannot utilize the higher end specs, it'd just be a waste of money. Since I *do not* know what Orthanc cannot utilize, I don't know how high my requirements should be. E.g., if Orthanc cannot make use of 16Gb of memory, then 8Gb will be enough, etc etc)

Again, (before we get mired in the discussion of Orthanc as a Hospital PACS again), I re-iterate that my current plan is to research the capacity of Orthanc so that if the results are good, I'll have more leverage to get additional funds to bring in the real experts.

Of course, if anybody already has research data on Orthanc's capacity as an Enterprise-level PACS server, I'd be grateful as well.

Thanks!

Regards,

Emsy

[Sébastien Jodogne]

Hi Emsy,

You should definitely focus on the recently-released PostgreSQL plugin for Orthanc:

https://code.google.com/p/orthanc-postgresql/

This plugin will put the entire load on a PostgreSQL database, that is enterprise-ready and that can hold terabytes of data. So, instead of focusing your analysis of the hardware requirements of Orthanc, you should instead focus on the hardware requirements for PostgreSQL.

As far as Orthanc is concerned, I do not think that memory is an issue. Please note that the official Windows binaries are compiled using Microsoft Visual Studio Express, which implies that they are 32bit, and thus limited to 3GB of memory. Orthanc can be compiled on your own for 64bit, but you will need a full version of Microsoft Visual Studio. But, once again, memory will be more an issue to PostgreSQL than to Orthanc.

HTH,

Sébastien-

[Emsy Chan]

Thanks for the clarification! 

I will check on the server requirements for PostgreSQL. (I'm quite optimistic because I know of at least 1 commercial PACS that runs on PostgreSQL, so I might try to get the hardware details from them.)

I am definitely using the PostgreSQL plugins for the study (I've seen your published graphs comparing PostgreSQL and SQLite.) :) All my Orthanc instances are now running on PostgreSQL. 

If in theory, a 32-bit compile of Orthanc will not be the bottleneck in the case of using the PostgreSQL back-end, I may just stick to a 32-bit compile of Orthanc.

Regards,

Emsy