Webserver Hardware Comparison

[GmanOhio]

Hello all -

I currently have 3 webservers (main, backup and a dev box) and its time to replace them - at least the 2 servers right now anyhow. They are all Dual PIII 1Ghz systems with 1-2 GB of memory, decent storage, etc. Money being tight however my question is how does a single CPU P4 - say 3.2 w/HT compare for this type of application. I been able to find all kinds of articles on performance comparisons that are for the 3D apps, audio/video encoding and decoding, games etc but nothing for Website hosting performance. Especially any that directly compare say a Dual PIII setup to a P4 or Dual Xeon.

I am trying to determine if I am best suited on a $4000.00 or so budget to do 2 xeon systems or 2 P4 systems or a mix.

Any thoughts, links to articles or insight is appreciated.

Thanks,
Geoff

 

[addragyn]

Need more info.

 

[Xanathar]

Why do you need to replace them?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Like they say, what specifically is loading down the servers? a single 1 GHz P3 should be able to serve tens of thousands of pages a day if they're static or even simple dynamic pages.

 

[jose]

Take a look at this P4 mobo. It has 64bit pci slots which is good . You'd have to get a xeon mobo to get this feature.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/P4/875/P4SCT.cfm

I'd look at 2.4ghz cpu's w/ 2-4gig of memory & a 64bit scsi controller. Anything from a LSI 64bit host adapter to a LSI raid adapter . Depends on your budget. You can get 36g 10k4 drives for $144ea. I would not put ide on any server...

You may also check out deals on small dell servers..

Regards,
Jose

 

[GmanOhio]

Part of my need to replace them is that I am moving from one colocation to another - so while the current main server is online I need to get up and running at the new location. That way I can simply make a DNS change and hopefully have no service downtime.

 

[GmanOhio]

Dave - thx, in addition to my reply post to addragyn
my other reasonings are this -
the current hardware is approaching 3 years old. Which worries me a little especially on the HDs - which are IDE at the moment - Raided yes, but still IDE. The servers currently runs a bit of everything and in addition to IIS it is also running SQL, Coldfusion MX, some Flash Communications Server testing stuff, Imail ,WebTrends Report Center and Nortons Corp AV. I currently host approx 50 domains ranging in directory size from 3megabites to 800megabites and hits ranging from 25 to 10,000 a day. Email hosting for 15 or so domains w/approx 200 email address. I dont know what my through put is exactly as I said its a colocation at an ISP and I am not limited in anyway, but I would guestimate that I am in the ballpark of 60-80gb per month avg.

So all that being said - that is why I am looking for some guidance/assistance on which way to move forward. I THINK that a good highend P4 3.2E setup with maybe raided 150 SATA WestDigital 10K rpm drives and a min of 2GB mem will do the job for another 3 years but I am still curious for some other experienced input.

Thanks,
Geoff

 

[GmanOhio]

Xanathar -
chk out my replies to DaveSimmons and addragyn to see why I feel now is the time for replacement. Just not sure if P4 will do for another 3 years or if I need xeon - for this type of application what is the performance diff between the 2

Thanks,
Geoff

 

[DaveSimmons]

That makes sense. My brother actually did something similar recently, and got a dual Xeon Dell server to colocate at thePlanet.com -- he's happy with them and his server except for the learning curve of moving from a Raq4 to bleeding-edge products (Red Hat ES, Apache 2, and the latest Plesk).

His own business' traffic plus that of his clients prompted him to go with the the dual Xeon for future-proofing for the next three years, and to get 2 x 1 GB sticks for 2 MB instead of 4 x 512. Over 3 years the extra cost made sense, since he needed site searching, databases, forums, and quite a bit of traffic.

One benfit of buying more power than you need is that you remove the chance of needing to switch machines again, with the money and time costs. For him the time loss would cost more than the cost savings of a cheaper system.

 

[GmanOhio]

Dave -
Thx for the reply

 

[Jason Clark]

We use dual athlon 2000 mp machines for all our webservers here. Each server has 512mb memory, soon to to be 1GB due to java's memory management <grin>. Each box averages 200-400 simultaneous users. Translating to probably 300,000 unique pages per day, cpu averages around 20% or so.

Hope that provides some reference.

 

[GmanOhio]

Jason -
What OS are you running on these?