[OFF] How much server is enough?

Anon

Hi all,

This is probably a little off topic but may be of help to others (as well as me).

How can I gauge how much server I need?
Bandwidth is easy to work with, so is disk space but what about the machine itself?

There is a good deal over at catalog.com on RedHat servers but they're based on 500mhz celeron processors w/128 ram.

If I wanted to run 4 sites, each with PHP/Mysql combinations - would that be enough?

Is there a way of figuring this out or a place I can reference stats to get some ideas?

Thanks for any input you can give

Steve

Anon

Hey Steve,

Well, it's a tough question as it's often a matter of hunch. Well, it all comes down to what kind of sites you're running...

If they're for your aunt running simple guestbooks, then an old 200mhz with 64 megs of ram would be enough. And if it's largerscale datawarehouse solutions, then dual 733MHz Pentium3 with 512MB ram would be adequate.

So, you see. There is no general rule of thumb to what kind of hardware needed. But better buy it too big than too small, ehh ? My experience tells me to focus on the amount of ram rather than processor. running several apache and IIS based servers it shows RAM is what is needed.

I would stick to Pentium2 / 3 for reliable and fast hosting, but a Celeron processor... hmm, I never tried that...

Anon

Celerons are now the exact same as Pentium IIs, except that they now have half as much cache. Since any cache over 128k makes little difference on any but the most heavily loaded servers, they are a very good choice for budget servers.

The most important factor in a scalable site that can handle a large load is memory. A pentium II 266 with 512Megs ram is a much better choice for a web server than a Pentium 733 with 128 Megs of ram. The 733 may feel faster at light loads, but under heavy load will quickly run out of ram and slow to a crawl.

The important metrics:

static to dynamic ratio
average hits/second
peak hits/second
database scalability.

Anon

Excellent info! Thank you for replying...

Steve