What kind of server setup to use.

[zkilzz]

Hello people!
I need a new DB server and i'am wondering whats best for me. I just cant afford the forum beeing slow and how downtime anymore.

Right now i have 2 servers. One DB server and one webserver. The DB server is a 2 x Opteron 1.6GHZ with SCSI disks and 2GB ram.

The webserver is a 2 x Opteron 1.3GHZ also with SCSI disks and 1 GB ram.

Now i dont know what is the right way to move forward. My forum got 25.000 members and usually around 500 users connected avreage. It got 1.5 million posts.

Right now I have installed GARS, Photopost and Vblogetin and i want to have the hardware good enough before i release it.

I want this hardeware to handle 10 times more traffic than the old setup did.

Should i use the old webserver as a mailserver, the old db as the webserver?
And then by a new server like this as a DB server?

DELL PowerEdge™ 6850 Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 7120M, 3.0GHz, 4MB L3 Cache, 800Mhz FSB
Additional Processor 1x Additional Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 7120M, 3.0GHz, 4MB L3 Cache, 800MHz FSB
Memory 8GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory (8X1GB 400MHz single rank DIMMS)
Hardrive SAS 146GB SCSI Ultra320 (15000rpm) 1'' 80 pin harddisk

Or maybe its best to divide it differently? More servers etc. My budget is 12.000USD.

Marius

[DaveTomneyUK]

So you have 3 servers would it be better to sell all 3 and buy a super server with the money you get from the old servers you sell as I am sure you would get over £2000 for all 3 servers and a descent server would cost in the range of about £1500+ as mine only cost £1900 and its very fast.

[zkilzz]

So you have 3 servers would it be better to sell all 3 and buy a super server with the money you get from the old servers you sell as I am sure you would get over £2000 for all 3 servers and a descent server would cost in the range of about £1500+ as mine only cost £1900 and its very fast.

The last server in my quatation costs aprox 12000USD alone. ;)

[jason|xoxide]

Why, exactly, would you only get one hard drive? That's the slowest point in a modern server.

If you are looking for a DB server that scales then you will want a large RAID 10 array and a ton of RAM. On that, if your budget is that high, why don't you get two DB servers and run a master/slave setup. That will scale considerably better than a single server.

With a budget of $12K USD you can get a pair of Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers w/ dual Xeon 5130 CPUs, 4GB of RAM and (6) 73GB 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID 10.

[zkilzz]

Why, exactly, would you only get one hard drive? That's the slowest point in a modern server.

If you are looking for a DB server that scales then you will want a large RAID 10 array and a ton of RAM. On that, if your budget is that high, why don't you get two DB servers and run a master/slave setup. That will scale considerably better than a single server.

With a budget of $12K USD you can get a pair of Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers w/ dual Xeon 5130 CPUs, 4GB of RAM and (6) 73GB 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID 10.

Thats why I'm asking my friend. To get input from experienced guys like you :) Thanks for the tip!

[zkilzz]

Why, exactly, would you only get one hard drive? That's the slowest point in a modern server.

If you are looking for a DB server that scales then you will want a large RAID 10 array and a ton of RAM. On that, if your budget is that high, why don't you get two DB servers and run a master/slave setup. That will scale considerably better than a single server.

With a budget of $12K USD you can get a pair of Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers w/ dual Xeon 5130 CPUs, 4GB of RAM and (6) 73GB 15K RPM SAS drives in RAID 10.

What do you think about Opteron vs Xeon? Whats best for a vbulletin site?

And what about the new quad core cpus?

[jason|xoxide]

Right now, the pecking order is as follows:
Quad-core Xeon (Kentsfield, 2x 4MB Cache)
Dual-Core Xeon (Woodcrest/Conroe, 4MB Cache)
Dual-Core Xeon (Woodcrest/Conroe, 2MB Cache)
Dual-Core Opteron (DDR models actually perform slightly better than DDR2 at the same clock speed)
Dual-Core Xeon (Dempsey, 2MB Cache)
Single-Core Opteron
Single Core XeonOf course, clock speed also matters. For example, a 2.4 or 2.6 GHz Dual-Core Opteron is likely to be faster than a Dual-Core Woodcrest Xeon (w/ 4MB Cache).

Because vBulletin is so DB heavy, the most potential for performance would be in increasing the available RAM and speeding up your disk subsystem (hence the 6-disk RAID 10 I suggested). I'd just pick the Xeon 5130 CPUs as they're at a pretty good price point.

EDIT: I just reread the original post where you mentioned wanting to have 5000 active users at a time. At that point, you may want the faster CPUs.

[eva2000]

AFAIK there's no Quad-core Xeon (Kentsfield, 2x 4MB Cache) technically,

server version would be quad core intel xeon clovertowns LGA771 pin
desktop version would be intel core2 quad kentsfield LGA775 pin

but yes dual core xeon woodcrest is the top top right now for server class cpus

update on Opteron vs Xeons http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=160103 new Xeons based on woodcrest core are flogging opterons right now :)

[jason|xoxide]

AFAIK there's no Quad-core Xeon (Kentsfield, 2x 4MB Cache) technically,

server version would be quad core intel xeon clovertowns LGA771 pin
desktop version would be intel core2 quad kentsfield LGA775 pin

but yes dual core xeon woodcrest is the top top right now for server class cpus

update on Opteron vs Xeons http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=160103 new Xeons based on woodcrest core are flogging opterons right now :)

Whoops... Typo... I meant Clovertown...

[eva2000]

Whoops... Typo... I meant Clovertown...
:)

either way new intel kentsfield/clovertowns are flogging opterons right now :)