I currently have a P4 1.7 Ghz server that I love at RackShack. It's been a great server for me. It has 1 GB of Ram and two 7200 RPM IDE drives. However, I currently have severl php forums and some demanding perl scripts on the server and my loads are now from 1.5 - 2.5 during the day and spike up to 4 at some times. When it's between 1.5 and 2.5 everything is very fast. When it spikes up to 4 I start to notice a slowdown in some of the larger php pages load times. I'm thinking of getting a second server to offload some of the demanding perl scripts and maybe one of the php/mysql forums to. It just so happens that I have a spare workstation here, and the servermatrix colocation deal (100 GB and a tower server for $50/month) might be a very economical option for me.

My current memory use looks like this:
free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1030992 1004988 26004 0 88584 618392
-/+ buffers/cache: 298012 732980
Swap: 2048276 60576 1987700 and while my load is at 1.25 my current CPU usage is between 10 and 20 percent user, 5 percent system.

Here are two computers I currently have that I could colocate, one of which I can part with (the other I need to serve as a gateway for my local LAN).

Server 1:
Tyan Thunder i840 motherboard (limited to a max of 512 MB ram because of Tyan's bios on the particular board that can't be ugpraded without ruining the onboard SCSI :()
Dual PIII 1 Ghz CPU's
512 MB RDRAM
2 * 36 GB Quantum Atlas IV 10,000 RPM Drives, 8 MB Cache each
Two onboard Intel NIC's
Onboard dual channel Adaptec Ultra 160 SCSI
Age: 2 years, 3 months old, except hard drives which are 12 months old.

Server 2:
Intel motherboard
1 GB DDR Memory (upgradeable to 2 GB without too much expense)
P4 2.4 Ghz CPU 533 mhz bus.
2 * Seagate Barracuda 80 GB 7200 Hard Drives, 2 MB Cache each
One onborad Intel NIC
Age: 6 months.

Usually Server 1 would be hindered by the max 512 MB ram restriction (which is why I'm replacing it as a workstation where it currently is used for Corel and PhotoShop). But my Free results above seem to say that 512 MB of Ram would be plenty. Or would my load shoot up as the potential memory used for caching went dramatically down?

What do you think - which server would you send to servermatrix to colocate?

I like server 2.

Sever1 might cost you some added fees getting them to do hands-on hardware work in the near future.

Sounds like a darn good deal though.

I thought about that too just because of the age. On the other hand I still have a dual PPro 200 that's been running continuously for 6 years without any problems, and I use the current dual 1 Ghz for my main computer every day so I think it's in pretty good shape despite being a couple years old. But then again a 2.4 Ghz with 1 GB+ Ram might trump the dual P3 1 Ghz with 512 considerably. But then again, SCSI seems like it might really really help keep the server speedy. I cant make up my mind :spiny: Anyone else have a strong opinion one way or the other for me?

--p.s. I just realized there was a separate colo forum which I didn't know existed since I've never considered colo'ing until now. Sorry :o