Hi I have been growing out of the shared hosting I currently use and would like to move to a dedicated host for not only capacity but also for isolation and hopefully a better quality of service. While at this stage I can not justify more than one host I do plan to add Raid 1 and perhaps redundant PSU's for some redundancy. My traffic is growing rapidly. June was only ~1,500 uniques, July is already ~18,000 and I hope to expect perhaps a 100% growth on that for a few months before it starts to level out. My bandwidth usage is very low but almost every unique is PHP and a MySQL read/write. I have been recommended to Softlayer and just had a "live chat" to their sales who recommended looking at their Xeon 5000 (http://www.softlayer.com/downloads/SL_Xeon5000.pdf) range. Is anyone able to provide some general advice or perhaps point me to a good guide on sizing a LAMP server? Cheers Craig
hmm... it seems you are not familiar with server management? In that case, you would want to have a fully managed server, and the admin will install software for you. It will be more expensive, but you will get safe in mind. Do you want to go with that route?
In a former career I was RHCE and Sun certified, however I would prefer to take the route of having that managed as my time is better spent on other tasks. Research so far is Softlayer will perform OS updates for MS/RH OS's and cPanel should cover the rest. My 10 years Unix admin experience was predominantly on internal application and database servers hence why I need help on sizing and what is important to a web server? e.g. 1) Should I go for a faster dual core CPU processor or slower quad core? 2) SATA is sufficient? 3) 4GB RAM enough/too little/overkill? 4) 100Mbit ethernet? or can I skimp wth 10Mbit until more is needed? And overall capacity planning.. e.g. a Quad core, 4Gb, SATA, 100Mbit should be able to handle how many uniques a day (keeping in mind it's all dynamic and using MySQL)? I understand some of what I am asking may not be straight forward so I prepared to follow some guides to learn more if needed.. just didn't have much luck googling for guides.. perhaps I had the wrong terms?
A quad core with 4GB of RAM and probably a SCSI drive as the main one, with a SATA for backups should work for you. "Dynamic" doesn't tell us a lot really, since many sites are dynamic. You might live with a 10mbps link if your site doesn't have lots of images and doesn't get really high peaks in traffic.
It really depends on your site. I always prefer quad-core. SATA is fine, but if your site is serving for many small files, SAS or SCSI would be better. Especially, if your site is database driven, I would take raptor drives at least. Try to get raid-10 raptors, if you want to save some money comparing to scsi for the RAM, 4GB would be enough in most of the case. If you need more, it would be better to get another server, and separate web and database. As you mentioned the bandwidth usage is low currently, 10mbps port is enough. When you are using around 6-7mbps, you can upgrade.
Excellent.. thanks for the good replies. Quad core, 4Gb RAM and 10Mbit seems to suit then.. As for the drives, files will be all small, a lot of the hits are simply redirects and tracking so very small PHP files but a database hit as well. I guess what I am describing is falling into 10k plus and/or SCSI? The price difference (assuming I use Softlayer) would be: Raid 10 with Raptors = extra $60/month Raid 1 with 10k SCSI = extra $30/month Raid 1 with 15k SCSI = extra $50/month Your votes out of those? When they list SA-SCSI for their drives - does SA simply stand for SAN attached? And thanks for the compliment on traffic growth but there is a fairly healthy PPC budget behind that so I can't take the credit. ;-)
I will take raid-10 raptors. Remember $60/month is for drives only. You will need to add $50/month more for raid card.