Hi,

What do you think is better for a hosting company:

- 2 servers: dual PIII 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 18 GB SCSI HDD

or

- 1 server: dual Xeon 2.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 2 18 GB SCSI HDD

I am thinking about performance, wich solution will be better?

both tipe servers are 1U so the 1 big server option is cheaper in monthly colocation...

Twice the processor speed, twice the memory, and twice the number of hard drives doesn't necessarily mean twice the capability. I'd go for two servers so each server has less work to do, and if one goes down, only half as many customers would get upset. ;)

I'd beef up the second option a little more, some more RAM and RAID on the drives. But generally personally i'd go with the second, 1/2 the management software costs, less administration, just make sure you get backups with that, like with anything :)

I agree with Porcupine.

Go with the second but I would add some more hard drive space and also make sure you have raid. You should have redundant power supplies on there as well with a machine of that quality.

If you have a nice budget or some good financing, look at the Dell Poweredge 8450's.

Originally posted by ToastyX
Twice the processor speed, twice the memory, and twice the number of hard drives doesn't necessarily mean twice the capability. I'd go for two servers so each server has less work to do, and if one goes down, only half as many customers would get upset. ;)

I agree. I would also add a second drive (can be IDE) to each box so they can run local backups as well as backups of each other. Backups would occur inside the network, so there's no bandwidth hit. ;)

Hi, Thanks for the comments,

Lets see, I have two votes for option 1 and another two votes for option 2, so I am again were I started... :)

I am more inclined on option 2 as monthly charges on colocation and administration software, and software licenses are less. Also, administration it's easier...

Emoore, Porcupine, when you say RAID what do you have in mind, performance (RAID 0) or protection against HDD failure (RAID 1)?

Option 2 is a server that let me put a Adaptek 2005S zero-channel RAID card but option 1 don't...

Also, everione seems to agree on more HDD space, what do you recomend? these servers are both 1U and they can hold 3 SCSI hard drives...

Thanks again,

RAID level depends on what you need out of your harddrives usually.... You could always go 3x 36gb scsi RAID 5, and get usage of both performance, and security out of the drives while getting more space also.

Also, at the expense you're shelling out, i'd move from 1gb of ram for the second option to 2gb, it would likely balance it out a little better :).

The more you can spread things out the better... less angry customers when one box goes down. Also would be a good idea to put each server in a different data center in different areas of the country to have some additional separation there.

With two servers you can start your own small cluster and get ultimate reability, scalability, etc. :cool:

I would go with 2 servers instead of one. This gives you a whole server for redunancy. Also, the amount of memory is probably fine. Most people over buy on memory anyway :)

If you can get redundant drives and power supplies I would go with the single server. Keep in mind, if you don't have local access to the server, you are going to have to pay someone $ to work on it. Most co-lo places I have seen charge upwords of $50 an hour. I always like the fact of having more than 1 server, but that is because I can normally buy 2 cheaper servers for less money than buying a really good one with redundant supplies, etc.