Working on upgrade path -- Ballbark, what will this server support?

[tnedator]

Here are some site stats.

Last month, google analytics (bots are supposed to be excluded)

1,200 visits a day
20,000 page views a day
400-500 unique visitors a day.

From vBulletin:

50-150 members and gues online at a time (often staying at 100-120 currently online during afternoon and evening hours), based on 1800 second timeout.

User activity from AdminCP > Statistics & Logs > statistics show:

Over the last month, registered users logging in varied from 175 to 242 a day.

New posts varied from 750 to 2000 a day.

Total users 700, active (30 days) 400. Most online at one time 165.

I have limited yahoo bots to where there are only around 15 on at any given time, since last month I had most online users spike to over 500, with about 350 of them being Yahoo bots.

I'm currently on a 1152 MB SLM (guaranteed RAM) VPS hosted on a high end node (dual, quad core processors -- 8cores total, 15,000 RMP scsi disk arrays, 16gb RAM). It works very well, except for when another VPS on the hardware node becomes compromised in some way and then overwhelms the hardware node with I/O. While the virtuozzo software can guarantee your RAM, and to a degree CPU, the version in use by mosts hosts does not guarantee or limit I/O use, which can bring a hardware node to its knees.

Right now, I am on a hardware node that seems very stable (I had some problems on a different node last month), where no other VPS is creating problems with hogging the I/O, but I am making plans on a move to dedicated if I either have future problems or the forum grows beyond the VPS.

I run a football forum, and I am in the 'dead' season. Once training camp, and then the season starts, many of the 'inactive users' will likely come back to life, along with gaining new users. It is very possible (likely really) that I could see 150-300 people online at a time, especially on Sundays (game days). So, I am preparing an upgrade path if the VPS proves to not be able to handle the in season load or if I have anymore problems with other VPS's creating havoc on the hardware node I'm on.

So, my question (finally getting to it) is this. I am looking at Liquid web servers, because while I can get around in linux, I don't have the time or expertise to go unmanaged.

If I went with a server along the specs of this one here, what kind of growth could I expect to get out of it:

Intel E4500 Dual Core (core 2 duo 2.2ghz )(could go with Q6600 Quad)
2GB DDR SDRAM
160GB 7200 Sata drive (second drive for backups)

I know it would be ball park, but assuming the dual core (or quad) and 2GB RAm, and the SATA drive, can anyone give me an idea of how many online users this type of setup should handle?

If I see 200-300 people online this football season, will it handle it ok? What about peaks well beyond that, such as on a big news day (Broncos News), I get peaks of 500 or 1,000 online (other Broncos forums have seen that or more on big news days).

Any insight into what kind of growth a server like this would handle, would be really appreciated. Also, if there are aspects of the server that are inadequate (like the drives SCSI vs. SATA, RAID, etc.) for the kind of growth I am talking about, please let me know. The server spec'd above is within my price range, but I might be able to spring for a bit more in terms of drive upgrades if I have to.

Thanks

[royo]

You may probably want to have the main drive an SCSI one, with at least 10k RPM, and another SATA drive for backups. Depending on what you're running on your site, vB hacks and mods, you will be able to hold quite a bit, but expect slowness during high usage such as 1000 users online.
Depending on your budget you may want to go with your chosen spec, but it won't be able to withstand high usage peaks.

[tnedator]

You may probably want to have the main drive an SCSI one, with at least 10k RPM, and another SATA drive for backups. Depending on what you're running on your site, vB hacks and mods, you will be able to hold quite a bit, but expect slowness during high usage such as 1000 users online.
Depending on your budget you may want to go with your chosen spec, but it won't be able to withstand high usage peaks.


There is a pretty big jump in price going to scsi at most hosts I have checked out. If I stuck with sata, what's your best guess on what type of peak loads (users online) that setup above would handle?

Also, as to mods/hacks, very few. I am using the post_thanks hack and vbadvanced, and will soon be moving to 3.7, but don't know if I will enable galleries and stuff.

Not sure if it matters, but currently I have 13,000 threads 236,000 posts.

[tnedator]

You may probably want to have the main drive an SCSI one, with at least 10k RPM, and another SATA drive for backups. Depending on what you're running on your site, vB hacks and mods, you will be able to hold quite a bit, but expect slowness during high usage such as 1000 users online.
Depending on your budget you may want to go with your chosen spec, but it won't be able to withstand high usage peaks.


Also, how would a 10k RPM Sata Raptor drive compare to the SCSI? At liquidweb, for instance, jumping up to 10k scsi is $60 a month, but only $20 for the Raptop.

[royo]

Well, it would be close to the performance of a SCSI, but if you have around 700 users on the forums at the same time, chances are it will start to slow down depending on the users' activity.

[tnedator]

Well, it would be close to the performance of a SCSI, but if you have around 700 users on the forums at the same time, chances are it will start to slow down depending on the users' activity.

700 with the Sata Raptor or regular Sata drive?

If I am reading this, you are thinking that:
10,000 RPM Scsi - 1,000 online max
10,000 RPM sata Raptor - 700 online max
7,200 rpm sata - ??? online max

[royo]

It doesn't translate exactly that way, but I'm thinking it will get slow with a 10k RPM drive, a SCSI at 10k RPM will offer a small advantage over the Raptor. The 15k RPM however will offer a substantial improvement, depending on your setup.
In the end, the best thing you can do is trial and error, and upgrade later on when you see the need for it.

[tnedator]

It doesn't translate exactly that way, but I'm thinking it will get slow with a 10k RPM drive, a SCSI at 10k RPM will offer a small advantage over the Raptor. The 15k RPM however will offer a substantial improvement, depending on your setup.
In the end, the best thing you can do is trial and error, and upgrade later on when you see the need for it.

Yea, I know there are no exact numbers that can be applied to various configs, but I have been just trying to get a feel. I realize that browsing vs. posting, searching vs. paging through a thread are all just some of the variations that at any given moment could make a big difference on server load.