AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

Hello,

First I want to introduce myself. My name is Chris and our store currently runs on CRELoaded B2B 6.4.1a. We are seriously looking at moving to AbleCommerce as it seems like a much better platform plus, I know Windows better than Linux. With that, the test part of this post is to see the kind of responses I get so that I can gauge the support community as I will be spending much time here in the near future. I don't want to move from a community that lacks good participation to another one. I am looking at a good community when switching to a new store.

My question is this. We have a VMware environment that is running on a Xiotech SAN. What I have read, everyone suggestions running the SQL on a separate server. I see the logic and agree with that. If I do that I will be running the SQL server and the Web server as VMs on Vsphere. I am planning on 8GB RAM and 4 Virtual CPUs for the Web server and probably something similar for the SQL server. Does this sound like I am on the right track? Overkill? Underkill? Our store currently only gets 600 visits a day with 10K hits a day (average). So, we are fairly light but, we plan to ramp that up and I don't want to have to re-architect this within a year. Anyone else want to give their infrastructure setups so I can compare?

Thanks,
Chris
Network Cables Online, LLC

Interesting responses.

I am planning on using Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL Server 2008 R2 on a separate server. Anyone else doing this?

Your specs seems extraordinarily high for a 600 visitor-per-day site. Especially since SQL is running in a separate instance.

I run multiple AC7 sites on a single Proliant DL360 G3 server running Server 2003 with SQL 2005 Express in 4Gb RAM. I get about 2,000 unique visitors and roughly 60,000+ hits per day. My site performance is fine by my standards.

Site performance is based on a variety of factors, so it's incredibly difficult to predict your particular experience based on specs alone. You've certainly got a good hardware platform, I see no reason why you wouldn't see top-speed performance for quite a long time using the equipment you've spec'd. Load up 250,000 products and yeah, it's gonna be a different story. Again, all depends on your particular experience.

Running SQL on a separate box isn't just a suggestion - it's legally required to maintain PCI Compliance when accepting Visa/Mastercard transactions online. Plus the performance boost is staggering compared to running it local to the IIS web server.

Community activity is always a dynamic beast. Some weeks it busy every day, other weeks not. This is a tough time of the year for a lot of site owners. We're doing taxes, reconciling all of last years work, updating catalogs and doing version upgrades.

Thanks for the update. I think I am going to be happy with this shopping cart. So far, I love working on Windows again. Life is too short to be "hacking the command line" as with Linux

At least I did get a response. The CRE Loaded forums are a dying beast. The platform is just too buggy and requires so much customization.

I got the eval working on Win 2008 R2 and on a seperate server running SQL 2008 R2. So, I am really happy with that. A little learning curve for me but it already seems much easier to work with.

Thanks for the reply.

Glad to hear you've made progress.

The forums here are chocked full of good information, the difficulty is finding it sometimes. The search feature for this forum leaves a little to be desired

I've also got some good information on my blog at http://www.AbleMods.com/Blog/ as well as more technical information on my support site http://www.AbleMods.com/Support/

Able has a large Wiki library of information too at http://Wiki.AbleCommerce.com/. There you can find some real goodies like source code for a payment gateway and shipping gateway, data class design etc.

Great site man. Thanks for the info. I am excited to start working on this more. It won't do everything we need but it does most and will be a better platform to work from. I am supprised they are using a PHP based forum here

Hey, I just noticed you are out of Indy. I am currently in North Carolina but lived in Indy for 34 years. Technically our shop is based out of Brownstown, IN down in southern Indiana. I still have lots of friends in Indy. Good to see a friendly "face" ...Not that anyone else isn't friendly

frankenstein897 wrote:Interesting responses.

I am planning on using Windows Server 2008 R2 with SQL Server 2008 R2 on a separate server. Anyone else doing this?

Yup. No problems here. We get about 11k unique visitors a day.

*However*. SQL Profiler is your friend and you may find a few additional indexes to be highly beneficial. Plan on spending a little time in performance tuning.

Heheh we're all friendly here in Indiana. Yeah I've lived in Indianapolis for about 10 years and central Indiana all my life. Hoping to move to central/southern Florida this summer or fall if our plans work out....tired of these Midwestern winters

Yeah, that was one of the reasons I moved as well. NC is a little better but not as nice as FL. Thanks for help again, I will be browsing your sites as well.