we are going to buy a dedicated server. we would like to host about 250 customers each server. the most of our customers just do have html, cgi, java, php sites. there are some mysql sites which we will host on our server. what hardware details would you recommend us? of course we will use raid as well. which raid level would you recommend us? what about memory? scsi vs. eide is there a big difference between those?

What you think about the following server. is there enough expected capacity for 250 customers each server? if not what else would you built into? it's quite important that our servers has a good performance.

Standard Dedicated Server:
Redhat Linux
Rackmount Case
ATX - Motherboard
128 SDRAM "Memory"
3com-905 Ethernet card "10/100"
Pentium III 700 MHZ
1 Western Digital Drives - 20 Gig

Thanks a lot!

Regards
Claudius Röllin
Hostpoint.ch

umm.. what procesor is it??


A SCSI is better then a IDE. Its always recommended. The only difference between the two is data read time.

pentium3 700 MHz

I think you should be fine. Though more RAM wouldnt harm anyone :)

ooo.. 128mb ram.. naa

250 users... you'll ned minimum 1gb otherwise you'll get crashes almost everyday once its starts getting loaded.

Yes, etones is right.
I know that this depends on the sites, but I think you need at least 512MB for 250 domains.

If you're going to use Raid, you're going to need more than one hard drive. If you're on a budget, you're probably going to want to go with Raid 1 (see here (http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html) for more information on Raid).

I'd go with pentium 3 700mhz or higher :) w/ at least 512 ram , as what etones have said 1gb is best ,we learned it the hard way :( stuffing over 85 sites with only 512 ram and about half the sites are running complex cgi scipts and Sql databases :) crashes the server every week or so.

In choosing bet. ide and scsi, if cost is not an option , there is no argument there scsi is the best but i'd take dual IDE's anytime over a single scsi :) at least w/ 2 ides it gives you a bit of a redundancy :) im a low budget typr of guy, unless of course if we start charging ppl at $30 bucks a month then we can afford to buy dual scsi's :)


elijaH

Originally posted by etones
ooo.. 128mb ram.. naa

250 users... you'll ned minimum 1gb otherwise you'll get crashes almost everyday once its starts getting loaded.

Upgrading RAM is fairly easy. You can save money by going with 250 MB or so at first and when things start to slow down, schedule a maintenance window to put some more sticks in. Popping in the extra RAM should only cause 15 minutes of downtime at the most and could be pulled off at odd hours.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

I would suggest at least:

PII 800Mhz, 256MB ECC SDRAM, Intel mainboard T440BX or GX series is better; Tyan mainboard would be just fine too, 9 gigs SCSI HD, 20 Gigs IDE HD for backup purpose.

Originally posted by sodapopinski
I would suggest at least:

PII 800Mhz, 256MB ECC SDRAM, Intel mainboard T440BX or GX series is better; Tyan mainboard would be just fine too, 9 gigs SCSI HD, 20 Gigs IDE HD for backup purpose.

Actually, I would suggest investing in a tape backup drive. It is a lot slower than a backup hard drive, but a hard drive will not protect you in case of hacker attacks or a situation were a server is physically destroyed.

Best regards,
Frank Rietta

One of my consulting clients uses Sun equipment to host their web site. Their web servers are Sun Enterprise 250's with 2 CPU's, 2 GB of RAM, and Ultra SCSI RAID drives. They have 4 web servers, and total capacity of the load balanced system is around 1200 simultaneous users.

So that works out to about 300 per box. Now, this site is fairly dynamic, so with strict static pages, you could do better.

So using these numbers, depending on how busy the sites were that you hosted, you could determine the "sweet spot". If your average domain has 2 active users at all times, then you could expect to be able to handle 150 domains with this kind of hardware.

The thing is though, that traffic is not usually uniform like that, usually it has peaks and valleys, so you would want to be able to handle the peak traffic for all of your domains. Maybe this means you can only handle 100 domains with 1 server.

I hope this is helpful,

Brian

Originally posted by bteeter
One of my consulting clients uses Sun equipment to host their web site. Their web servers are Sun Enterprise 250's with 2 CPU's, 2 GB of RAM, and Ultra SCSI RAID drives. They have 4 web servers, and total capacity of the load balanced system is around 1200 simultaneous users...


Sun server is the expensive one.
If you have limited budget, you'd better go with built a box by your self.

Not exactly true anymore about Sun being expensive the new Netra X1 is around $1000 for the base spec.

Does anyone have any ideas on how many sites you could expect to fit on one?

Absolutely true that Sun equipment is expensive. It is great equipment, but for the cost of one fully loaded Sun E250, you can get 3 comperably fully loaded Intel Linux boxes. My bet is that those 3 boxes would outgun the 1 Sun box. Plus, you have less risk in case of an outage. (1/3 of your servers going down vs your 1 server going down.)

It seems that no matter what OS or hardware platform you choose for web hosting, the more RAM the better. Fast disks help too, but if you can cache a few hundred MB of static pages, you'll never have to hit your disks. I'd advise maxing out your RAM if you are planning on 250 sites per box.

Brian

I would Suggest :-
Dual 933 MHZ Pentium III,
256KB cache
1 GB ECC RAM
18 GB SCSI Hard Drives
:uzi: flamethrow :agree:

Originally posted by kunalsood
I would Suggest :-
Dual 933 MHZ Pentium III,
256KB cache
1 GB ECC RAM
18 GB SCSI Hard Drives
:uzi: flamethrow :agree:



What I believe that that box could handle about 1000 accounts. Especially if you put gigabit ethercard