Dedicated Server

I thought it was running slow
I wont suggest anything maybe jjorgensen626 will get in here 2 morrow and give some good advice gal.

Those options almost seem overkill for an apache webserver, for IIS these options are OK. But Linux should not need too much more than what you currently have (well a little more memory wont hurt 128+512=640). Do you have access to a chart/graph of the resources your site demands? Also, and sorry for the many times I have asked this, but what is the connection speed (wan connection). If you are using the same hosting company than no need for this info, but if it is a different company, please provide this information.

If I have to choose:

Apache = Pentium 4 1.8 ghz with 512 mb of SDRAM

IIS = Celeron 1.8 ghz with 1024 mb of SDRAM

btw- I have a web server w/ T-1 connection, P4 2.4 1536Mb DDR 2700 tons of storage, IIS on W2K3. although it is not dedicated, all sites currently are static sites. This webserver is at an internet cafe I run in CA. If this sounds like useful information cscgal, let me know.

Overkill? Most vBulletin-powered websites run off of dual Xeon processors with 1-2 gigs of RAM and SCSI drives - and this is dedicated to the forums alone! Unfortunately I can't afford this as I make very little money (if any) off of this site.

After doing a bit of research at vbulletin.com (and asking this same question) I got a reply saying that
a Celeron 2 ghz with 1024 mb RAM, a 7200 RPM drive for files, and a second 10000 RPM drive dedicated to MySQL, should be able to handle about 300 concurrent users. That is a lil more than twice the traffic we have right now, which doesn't exactly leave a lot of room for future expansion.

The connection is irrelevant. It's more than enough and I'm with the same hosting company I've always used.

So what did you decide, or have you? I didnt think Apache needed that much Horse Power for what your using it for, but hey, Im not a linux guy. The Linux admin at my workplace didnt think you needed that much either. In either case, I guess it comes down to the bang for the buck $$$$$. So my chioce:

Celeron 1.8 ghz with 1024 mb of SDRAM

I chose a package for a Celeron 1.8 ghz with 512 mb of ram for $80/month. I'm also going to pay an extra $20-25/month for as much added ram as I can get. If I could get another 512 for that much, then great . Otherwise, even an extra 128 or 256 would be helpful. Just long as it doesn't run me far over $100/month.

I stay away from the celerons.I used to have a 1.8 I guess in your choices
{Pentium 4 1.8 ghz with 512 mb of SDRAM}
{Celeron 1.8 ghz with 1024 mb of SDRAM}
you were torn between RAM? (Pentium =twice the power as the celeron)were all those choices the same cost per month.Heck I dont really think it makes a differnce though they are not that far apart in difference

I guess we agree. Thats cool, and not a bad price. Just curious, but do you know the connection speed the hosting company is using. I would like to look into doing some hosting ventures (depending on the $$) but if their using anything in the range of OC-12 then I guess I'll stick to the smaller hosting options that I'm already offering.

I was torn between the RAM, but like I stated eairler, I didn't think CPU was a big deal (going from 450Mhz to 1.8 Ghz) so I opted with the RAM

http://www.cihost.com/cheap_web_hosting/

I was torn between the Unix Dedicated Celeron plan and the Unix Dedicated P4 plan. As you could see, a celeron with more ram would still be cheaper than a P4 of the same clockspeed, with a lot less ram.

To serve daniweb, cpu power isn't even close to as important as ram is. With more ram, I can cache more of the database. Which means that pulling up any info from the database (viewing posts, threads, etc) will just be reading from ram without even touching the hdd (the main bottleneck of the system). The hard drive will only need to be touched when posts are written to it.

For this reason, ram is most important on a server dedicated to a site such as this one. While I still would have liked to go with a P4, ram is just more important.

Here are three setups I'm looking at. Which do you think would be better suited to run this site alone, which mainly interacts with MySQL and php.

Pentium 4 1.8 ghz with 512 mb of SDRAM
Celeron 1.8 ghz with 1024 mb of SDRAM
Celeron 2.0 ghz with 256 mb DDR RAM

Of these three, which would be the best solution (in your opinion) for a database driven site?

The P4 has more cache RAM. I think that counts, due to the threading nature of what you are running (slight pun intended). The more it can hit local memory, the quicker it can talk to the world. All three are pretty close, though, and would work OK.

OK well it's all set. I called up my webhosting company again and changed my order.

P4 2.4 ghz
1024 mb RAM

The bottleneck of the system are a single processor, sdram as opposed to ddr, and a single IDE drive

Did it cost more

The hard drive will only need to be touched when posts are written to it.

Surely vBulliten uses some kind of sessions system that requires writing on page load? (Correct me if I'm wrong - I can't get hold of the source code for vB without considerable difficulty or cash).

I actually don't know enough about how this works. From what I understand, when the database is cached, and entirely in RAM, sessions can be written to RAM instead of to the hdd as the data can be written to volatile memory.

stay away from celerons! they are unstable and crash easily