I just found this site and it looks great.
I'm looking for some advice/recomendations from you server gurus:

We currently have a site which is mainly a vBulletin message board site. We typically have around 250 people active on the boards at any given time. For those of you unfamiliar with vBulletin, it is a PHP/MySQL forums software. Unlike UBB, every page is generated dynamically.

We currently host on a dedicated machine with the following specs:

Dual PIII 700Mhz
2GB RAM
2 X 18 HD
Linux/Apache
Use about 150GB/month bandwidth
Load typically around 2.

We are growing quickly and are looking to move to a new host & server. One of the hosts we are talking with has been suggesting moving to Sun boxes. They suggest Netras or Ultras (440Mhz). I am not very familiar with Sun systems. I've been told that these two systems are fairly old processor wise. I'd love some knowledge comparing the processor power of Intel chips vs. Sun. Can I expect the Sun processors to be faster than Intel? Are there newer Sun systems which are much better? Am I better off moving to two Intel boxes (1 database, 1 httpd) than a single Sun? Will I need the same (or different) ram in a Sun box? Are there other questions/issues I should be thinking about?
Thanks!

JohnnyQuest,

You might notice this board is a V-Bulletin as well. Right at the bottom it shows it's hosted by Wizards Hosting. You might want to talk to them regarding your needs. That's a pretty big board you have running there so if it's too hot for them, they should at least be able to point you in the right direction.

Greg Moore

Hi Jonny

This Board is hosted on a Dual PIII 600, 512MB

IN this same machine, we have about 10 other boards running vBulleting that are VERY active (and a bunch of other ones that get .. 1 visitor a day .. hehe :D )

The loads are never more than 0.4, for a board the size you talking about, I would recommend this:

Dual PIII 866
1 Gig of RAM
HD .. your choice .. these things don't take allot of space

And this would be a system good enought to host several boards like yours, just giving you room for expansion (allot of room)

The Main deal here is RAM .. lots of it .. vBUlleting chews on RAM like a 5 yeard old on gum ..

If you need any more help, please let me know, I'll be happy to assist, as well as point you in the right direction to buy the hardware you need so you can get yourself a nice d-server :)

have you considered going to a clustered solutions?

i think you'd be surprised at the performance that three medium servers would give you compared to one large server.

you're already using the 2GB patch on linux, have you upgraded to 2.4? that's going to give you a performance boost.

anyway, consider a cluster. we managed to solve the load problems for Porsche's deaerlships by moving them from a high end dedicated server to 3 medium dedicated servers with our RAILs product.

As an added bonus, you'll get the reliability and failover features that the cluster offers.

HTH