I need to upgrade my server.

I was wondering if I should pay 200$ to go from xp1700 512mb ram 60gb hd to a p4 2.4 512 80gb

or if I should buy my own server an collocate?

How much would a server with those specs cost? 1u cases look so expensive.

Thats not an upgrade...thats a downgrade :p
I'd recommend upgrading to an xp2600+ w/80gb hdd...unless you're willing to have a lot of downtime whilst you're transferring everything over to a new server, and then having to use new IPs.

You can't upgrade from AMD to Intel without upgrading the motherboard, after upgrading the motherboard
In Linux: The Kernel & Programs (such as Apache) need recompiling
In Windows you may need to reconfigure or it may just not work.


And a server with those specs will probably set you back $700-800? I don't know retail prices, only wholesale.

The problem is really the CPU. The 1700 isn't getting the job done. Do you think a 2600 would get the job done? The server isn't mine. It belongs to my hosting company so I dunno if I would be able to change the CPU.

Just contacted my host and he said my machine only supports an upgrade to a 2200+. It's that or the upgrade to the p4 2.4.

XP1700 isn't that slow, a P4 2.4 is just a bit faster.

There could be something wrong with the server, or you really need Dual Xeons to process your task.

Over my 2 websites I get about 70k unique visitors daily. 55k of them access my ad server, which is on the same server, 4 times.

Other than that, neither site is PHP or MySQL intensive, though both do use php for simple includes.

Is that reason for dual Xeons?

anile8,

If you aren't doing PHP and MYSQL, then your apache maybe tuned incorrectly. you should be able to serve millions of static page per server.

But I said I'm using php for all pages, and a heavily accessed ad server.

Simple includes are quite easy on the CPU. The adserver maybe a problem, they usually do all kind of tracking and cookie that makes the server slow down. Have you try turning off the ad server to see if that is the problem?

Yeah, it is the problem. I can't contour it though. It needs to be there. What can I do?

You could split the ad server onto a sepate server. That should help it. I would say have the two servers connective on a Private Lan, so you could backup the data across the servers.

But that would mean an extra 100$/month for the server...

Instead I could upgrade to the p4 2.4 for a one time fee of 200$.

You don't think the p4 2.4 will be able to handle it?

Am I looking at a dual cpu server purchase?

It seems to me something is wrong with the ad server. upgrading to p4 2.4 wont' have you with this issue. check all the configs and see if there is any flag you could do to reduce the load from the ad server first.