When to tweak? Your thoughts too Eva2000!

[Indy]

Well I finally have narrowed down a choice for a server.

ThePlantet 2800 Series
Dual 2.8Ghz Intel Xeon Processors
2GB ECC Registered Ram
Dual 80GB SATA HDD 7200 rpm, 8MB cache
2000 GB Bandwidth
100% SLA Guarantee
RedHat Enterprise 3.0

Question is, would you "wait and see what you got" or ask for and apply Eva's tweak settings prior to opening up the forums to the public. Not a new forum, but transfering an [up to 300 online users] existing forum to a new server.

If it is recommended to do some tweaking ahead of time, what would those settings be? (Oh Eva!)

Thanks to everybody here at vB and fellow vB users for a great product and support!
Dan

[eva2000]

depending on what mysql version you get 3.23.x or 4.x will decide what you set specifically for your my.cnf variables/settings

i'd back up existing /etc/my.cnf that you get with your server by default just in case it has some settings which need for it to work .. but

if you use mysql 4.x use below /etc/my.cnf and restart mysql

[mysqld]
max_connections = 500
key_buffer = 16M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 64M
join_buffer_size = 1M
read_buffer_size = 1M
sort_buffer_size = 2M
table_cache = 1024
thread_cache_size = 64
wait_timeout = 1800
connect_timeout = 10
max_allowed_packet = 16M
max_connect_errors = 10
query_cache_limit = 1M
query_cache_size = 32M
query_cache_type = 1
skip-innodb

[mysqld_safe]
open_files_limit = 8192

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M

[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 64M
sort_buffer = 64M
read_buffer = 16M
write_buffer = 16M

if you use mysql 3.23.x use below /etc/my.cnf and restart mysql

[mysqld]
set-variable = max_connections=500
set-variable = key_buffer=16M
set-variable = myisam_sort_buffer_size=64M
set-variable = join_buffer=1M
set-variable = record_buffer=2M
set-variable = sort_buffer=2M
set-variable = table_cache=1024
set-variable = thread_cache_size=64
set-variable = wait_timeout=1800
set-variable = connect_timeout=10
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=16M
set-variable = max_connect_errors=10

[safe_mysqld]
open_files_limit=8192

[mysqldump]
quick
set-variable = max_allowed_packet=16M

[myisamchk]
set-variable = key_buffer=64M
set-variable = sort_buffer=64M
set-variable = read_buffer=16M
set-variable = write_buffer=16M


should be good... then a few weeks of mysql continous uptime and mysqlinfo.php /extended status output results would give a better indication of how mysql is performing with those my.cnf settings

personally, I like to run on basic mysql settings for a few weeks and monitor my mysqlinfo/mysql extended-status output to see how the server performs before changing my.cnf settings etc (so as to have a base for reference)

HTH