I have a very busy vbulletin forum. The server runs the one site and both the webserver and mysql server on the one machine. It runs quite well and has been growing quickly and server load has been going up during peak hours. These are some stats later on in the evening when it is not too busy but server load around peak time is around 5.5-6.0 or so. top - 21:12:04 up 7 days, 6:19, 3 users, load average: 2.48, 3.34, 3.39 Tasks: 240 total, 1 running, 239 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu0 : 24.8%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 73.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu1 : 23.6%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 74.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st Cpu2 : 49.2%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 48.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu3 : 52.0%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 45.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu4 : 15.3%us, 1.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.1%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu5 : 17.6%us, 0.7%sy, 0.0%ni, 81.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Cpu6 : 52.0%us, 2.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 45.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st Cpu7 : 58.7%us, 3.6%sy, 0.0%ni, 36.3%id, 0.0%wa, 0.3%hi, 1.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 12302712k total, 9199672k used, 3103040k free, 369116k buffers Swap: 2096472k total, 0k used, 2096472k free, 5912668k cached This is running on a: Dual Proc Intel Xeon-Clovertown 5335-QuadCore-LV [2GHz] 12GB ram 2xWD2500YS 250GB Sata Raid1 CentOS 5.5 64bit I am now in the process of picking up another server with the same specs to consolidate my other sites to one server and am looking for some advice on what would help performance wise. I understand that once all the server optimizations have been done, the next step is to run a separate websever and mysql server. What I am thinking of doing is making the current server a dedicated webserver (not virtualized) and then virtualizing the new server (XenServer) as follows: Mysql Server: 4 vcpu / 6GB Ram (Dedicated MySQL server for the forum mentioned above) Webserver/MySQL Server: 4 vcpu / 6GB Ram (bunch of sites i'm not too concerned about) So my question is, will I see a performance benefit in moving the mysql server to a dedicated VM with 4 core 6GB ram environment or is it better off on staying on the same machine?
you need to do "top" on your box and see how much cpu mysql takes. als you load average is 2.48. as far as i remember it should be devided by the number of cpu's to get a feel if it is slowed or not, and in your case 2.48/8 is well below one, so there is short answer as there is no benefit in moving mysql to a separate server at the current load PS: BTW, love your setup, how much that may cost?
Curious if you can provide a link or can give us specs like forum size (posts total and posts per day) to give us an indicator to what your needs are. VB tends to be a resource hog and it's even possible you've simply not configured yourself very well. And consider a CDN for all static content to alleviate some load from the servers. You would be surprised how much just moving css, js, and images can add to a server. Even if you save 20% of your load that's probably going to buy you months on your current setup for very little costs and work of adding a CDN.
Don't go for a virtual environment unless its only dedicated for you. For the stats provided, i don't think the server is too much overloaded. A little optimization can hold you in that server even longer.