I have a dedicated server... Here are the basic specs Supermicro Dual Socket 771 Server Board, Intel 5000V Intel Xeon Clovertown E5320 Samsung 4-Gig DDR2-667 ECC FB-DIMM, 2x 2G Dual Western Digital 150-Gig Raptor 10k rpm I am contemplating adding a second server and 8 more gig ram. Its about $200 for the processor and $250 for the ram. I could also upgrade the drives to 15k drives. What preformance improvements can I expect to see? This server mainly hosts a few popular and large vBulletin forums... Which are growing, so future needs are a consideration. Backups are a nightmare, crippling the server every night while the files compress. (one site's backup is about 10g) There are slowdowns at other times of the day as well. If I send an email newsletter to my members I can also cripple the server. It just seems to not be able to handle "additional" load. The server is fine most of the time, its just when I do something strenous that things become a problem. My second option is to fully upgrade the server. I would probably go to something like this. This is a fully managed server BTW.
If you're going to upgrade the whole server, you'd be better going for something like this - http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/1026/SYS-1026T-URF4_.cfm?UIO=Y. It would probably cost a similar amount for the same spec but with much greater upgradeability. We've started using these servers and the same MB with 4x3.5" drives and they are brilliant servers. Surprisingly not that expensive for the chassis (minus CPU, RAM and Drives). You don't say what it is about backups that are crippling the server. I'd guess there were 2 issues. The first is the disks but that's a lot more expensive to fix because the chassis limits what you can do, and the next is RAM which is much cheaper and easier to upgrade. Upgrade the RAM as much as you can reasonably afford. That will give you more performance and might solve your problem, but I'd guess the drives need updating too. It's not going to be the speed of the drives but the configuration of them. Run RAID10 if you only have 4 drives, but if you have 8 (as per the link above) then RAID 1 (or RAID 5) for OS, and RAID 10 for Applications. The other 1 or 2 drives would operate as hot-spares. Get a good hardware RAID controller and you'll be onto a good thing. At the moment the CPU would be last upgrade, but eventually an extra CPU will give you extra performance but look out for licencing costs as some companies charge per CPU. Westmere CPUs are excellent CPUs and we've never been able to max one out yet despite trying, so if you're budget can stretch, and the motherboard will support them, go for it. If the budget is limited then I'd say a combination of a little more ram, and a better disk system, would be my preference. I'd sacrifice some RAM (cheaper to upgrade later) for a faster disk system at the moment, but faster disks would be limited without some additional ram...so try to get a little more of both if possible.
The processor is old one. You would benefit even better performance from newer technology processors like Nehalems 55xx series or 56xx series. Have you tried SSDs? They work really well on DB intensive websites esp. like VB.
I know SSDs are fast, but I dont know much about SSDs as far as reliability, set up, etc. Could I just swap my current drives or is there more involved? Im seeing prices around $1200 for the chassis (http://www.acmemicro.com/estore/showproduct.aspx?pid=8019&lastcatid=429&step=4) and I still need Processors, HDs and Ram. That chassis seems like overkill. I have 2 HDs. I could see myself maybe going to 4 at some point, but never 8.
I appreciate what you are saying, but eventually these sort of chassis will be the norm. The difference in price between the 8x2.5" drive chassis and the 4x3.5" chassis chassis with the same MB is just a few dollars (literally just a few dollars). At the moment the 3.5" drive is still the most common, but 2.5" drives will eventually become the norm as the drive for greater efficiency and more processing power per 1U of rackspace (saving on power, cooling and floor space). We started off buying the 4x3.5" chassis because that's the type of drives we have in all the other servers, but we've started to use 2.5" drives now. At $1200 dollars that's an incredible price..wonder if they deliver to the UK? A CPU, 4 Drives, and 12GB of RAM is going to bring it under the price of the server you linked to in your original post. Anyway, I still think one of your major problems is still the drives. It's probably the last thing people think about (except for the size of the drives) but its one of the major factors that determine performance. The ability to add more drives, and separate applications from the OS so they run on different spindles will provide a greater resilience and performance capability than just adding an extra CPU of tons of RAM when your disk I/O performance is likely to be a major bottleneck in your current set-up. Only you can decide what you need, and you have the details of where your performance bottlenecks are. I'm just know from my own experience that the drive set-up (forget size, think performance) needs as much careful consideration as the CPU and RAM when it comes to getting the best out of your hardware. Hope you get it all sorted.
I appreciate the advice, and I have thought about the drives. Im not a hardware guy so I am at a bit of a handicap. Like Ive said previously, Ive noticed 2 specific occasions when the server gets crippled. (there are other times but I havent identified whats going on at those times) The 2 occasions are when backups are running and when I send out a mass email. That tells me its PHP thats having issues which brings me back to ram and processor. (hence why I dont suspect HDs much) The server runs smooth most of the time. Its only at times of stress that the server cripples. That said, I am also considering replacing the Drives with a pair of Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 ST3146356SS. Im not opposed to SSD but dont know alot about what I would need to put them in this server and what the downside to using SSD (besides cost) might be.
are you sure it is a cpu and not IO issue? You might just need a 2nd drive to use it as backup target so you would not do both reading and writing on a single drive during backup