Hi

I'm gonna buy myself a dedicated server for my online game.

The game is using php and mysql, and now to the question

what would be the best for a site that uses databases alot, you see I have limited money but I want good performance so what should I choose.

SCSI or ATA
Single Athlon XP or dual Athlon MP (or P4)
512mb ram or 2gb ram

SCSI
dual Athlon MP
2gb ram

it is easy, the more you are going to invest, the better the performance will be.

but fast ATA HDs will also do fine (choose the 7200 HDs ...).

If you need a dual CPU? Just if you are going to handle really big databases. But if (one database bigger than 500 MB), I would buy such a system just for the database and on other, perhaps little slower (PIII 800, 1GB RAM and ATA HDs) for the normal sites.

athlon MP is great for databases. look at anandtech.com, they have benchmarked some systems and are now using a dual MP system for their forum database

ok thx for the answers

You can also increase the speed of drives with RAID, I think.

Yes, with RAID 0 (for read/write performance, no fault tolerance) or RAID 0+1 (some say RAID 10) for read/write and fault tolerance.

Raid 0+1 is totally different than Raid 10 . A person gave this link (http://www.raid.com/04_01_00.html) on another thread and I have found it very useful. BTW, RAID 0+1 involve at least 4 drives to start with ... not as easy as some people would think especially if you are using rackmount chasis ...

cheers,
:beer:

Hey, you're right! :) Thanks Dektong. RAID 10 also requires 4 drives (it took me a while to install in 2U rackmount).

raid 10 seems good but expencive :(

You're right ... I spent a lot for those RAIDs :(

I guess, as long as your server is within easy reach or doesn't need to be mission-critical, regular SCSI/ATA HD is fine :)

My production server had 1 or 2 hard drive failures in the past, but the RAID took care of them (at least I sleep better at night). However, my lab server (with no RAID) is online 24/7 and never had any harddrive failure in the last 3-4 years.

RAID are evil :D they make your HD crash more often ;)

If you are looking for a good RAID site for some homework, take a look at this. http://www.acnc.com/raid.html

have already been on that site and read it through

my last topic was a joke I thought you would understand that :)

I understood it was a joke, thought I would try and help everyone out.