I currently run my sites on 3 servers. They are all dual xeon 3.0s with 2GB of RAM, and during peak hours operate around 25-30 load. My current hosting provider doesn't offer load balancing yet (SoftLayer), but I'm promised it's coming soon.. All of the servers run cPanel on Linux, and the problem resides mostly in my proxy sites (perl scripts) that I have had optimized as best I could (by my management company and a programmer). I am open to any and all options. My hosting company can upgrade me to dual 3.4 xeons (+$79 / month), or to dual 2.8 dual core xeons (+$224 / month), or upgrade my ram ($25 / GB / Month), or dual opteron 270s dual core (+$224 / month). Obviously, I'm looking to get the most bang for my buck, so suggestions in this department are appreciate as well. Thanks for your help
Suggestions: -Use PHProxy, it uses less CPU -Care to post the output of top for us to judge if you need more processing power or RAM? I personally would go for a cluster of many lower-end machines, as those usually give you the most bang for buck.
Gonna have to forgive my ignorance here, don't understand a few things.. What would the difference between a 'cluster' and a 'load balanced' setup be? Also, what is 'top'? This is why I hire people to manage these for me Thank you for your suggestions.
Nothing really, but the cluster I was thinking of would be much cheaper and easier to setup. It's called a DNS round robin. To run top, just SSH into the server and then type "top". It will show the RAM usage, the top CPU users, and the CPU usage. I'll give you some of my credentials. I own the Blockmenot Network, which gets 1,600,000 hits per day. I currently have two servers, a P4 3.0 Ghz w/1GB RAM, and a AMD 64 4200+ X2 (dual core) with 1GB Ram. If I was running CGI proxy, I would need something like the setup you are using. PM me if you have MSN messenger, maybe we can talk a bit