Do I need to bite the bullet?

[jawatkin]

I think I'm teetering on the edge of my hardware here, but perhaps someone has some insight. This is a dedicated server, hosting two of my own sites, both running Joomla CMS and 3.6.8PL2. One has just launched less than a month ago and other is just over 8 months old.

The just launched average online : ~20, max : 76 with 15 minute cookie.
Threads: 526, Posts: 6,577, Members: 411, Active Members: 411

The older site online: ~500, but during a 4-5 hour peak ~800, max: 1,605 with 15 minute cookie.
Threads: 116,962, Posts: 2,442,415, Members: 44,343, Active Members: 22,758

Current hardware:
Intel Xeon 3220-Quad Core [2.4GHz]
4 GB RAM
1 x 250 GB SATA

Current software:
mySQL 5.0.47
lighttpd 1.4.18
XCache 1.2.1

Lighttpd has squeezed a lot more performance out of this than I probably should have gotten. I have a few options, but I'm not sure what to do. Love my host (Softlayer) and won't go anywhere else.

I'm just wondering, do I spring for a dedicated DB server? Upgrade to a RAID-10 SA-SCSI on the current server?

If I go to a dedicated DB server, what should I be looking for? Obviously, RAID-10 + SA-SCSI, but do I need 15k RPM? What processor should I be looking at?

Thanks!

[c0bra]

I think I'm teetering on the edge of my hardware here, but perhaps someone has some insight. This is a dedicated server, hosting two of my own sites, both running Joomla CMS and 3.6.8PL2. One has just launched less than a month ago and other is just over 8 months old.

The just launched average online : ~20, max : 76 with 15 minute cookie.
Threads: 526, Posts: 6,577, Members: 411, Active Members: 411

The older site online: ~500, but during a 4-5 hour peak ~800, max: 1,605 with 15 minute cookie.
Threads: 116,962, Posts: 2,442,415, Members: 44,343, Active Members: 22,758

Current hardware:
Intel Xeon 3220-Quad Core [2.4GHz]
4 GB RAM
1 x 250 GB SATA

Current software:
mySQL 5.0.47
lighttpd 1.4.18
XCache 1.2.1

Lighttpd has squeezed a lot more performance out of this than I probably should have gotten. I have a few options, but I'm not sure what to do. Love my host (Softlayer) and won't go anywhere else.

I'm just wondering, do I spring for a dedicated DB server? Upgrade to a RAID-10 SA-SCSI on the current server?

If I go to a dedicated DB server, what should I be looking for? Obviously, RAID-10 + SA-SCSI, but do I need 15k RPM? What processor should I be looking at?

Thanks!

Upgrading the drives should help. I know the SATA drives are absolutely horrible with a lot of disk activity. I'm just about to ditch mine for SCSI too due to load issues. (I'm using them on another server and the performance gain under load is huge)

I think it's possible to run the SATA and SCSI together but I'm not sure. If it is, you could move the MySQL partition to the SCSI drive mounted as a secondary partition. And see if that helps with the performance.

Also what third-party hacks are you running? Some of them are real resource hogs...

[jawatkin]

Upgrading the drives should help. I know the SATA drives are absolutely horrible with a lot of disk activity. I'm just about to ditch mine for SCSI too due to load issues. (I'm using them on another server and the performance gain under load is huge)

I think it's possible to run the SATA and SCSI together but I'm not sure. If it is, you could move the MySQL partition to the SCSI drive mounted as a secondary partition. And see if that helps with the performance.

Also what third-party hacks are you running? Some of them are real resource hogs...

I'm running a fair amount of third-party hacks, but most are moderator tools (and I'd say 75% of them are included in vB 3.7!). I've also got Sphinx running (with 2.5M, you have to). Running SATA & SCSI would be ideal as a cost-savings measure, and not having to do an OS reload!

I just wonder, if I swap to SA-SCSI on RAID-10 on this server and go through an OS reload and rebuild the server, how much time am I really buying myself before I end up on a second server anyways?