I never run stats on my server before and was gonna mess around with webalizer. it seems straight forward enough.

what im wondering is what part of a server does running this affect the most with a high traffic server?

specifically im wondering if you have enough ram and cpu power free so the hard disk isn't swapping does that mean its doing its job as fast as possible?

what warning signs would I be looking for if I want to run these stats for my own use to keep track of data transfer for billing?

thanks!

Webalizer runs _very_ fast for us.... even with sites with monthly transfer of > 20 gigs (after mod_gzip). It shouldn't put any strain on your server if you run it at non-peak times.

Running it on 2GB log files, on the other hand...

Although it's the only stats program I've found that can actually handle log files of 1GB+ without either a) crashing the program b) crashing the server c) taking a couple days