Hosting Server Requirements

[louie55]

I was just wondering what system components should be the best on a webhosting server. What's more important, CPU speed or amount of RAM? Is a fast system bus needed? Is a pentium 4 with Hyperthreading good enough or should you use a server processor like Xeon? I am talking about a server that will not be doing a lot of Server-Side Code processing such as PHP, but a little. And will be hosting only about 20-30 sites. Also, will it make that much of a difference between 5400 RPM HD and 7200 RPM HD? I think you can see what I'm getting at. Which high performance system components are desirable for web hosting and which ones don't have to be top of the line. Thanks.

Louie

 

[nobaloney]

We believe that all other things equal, memory is more important than processor speed, as it allows linux to keep important processes totally in memory rather than swap them out.

For example, a 33 MhZ i386 processor can easily saturate a T-1 line and most single servers don't ever use more bandwidth than that; that's equivalent to up to 500 GB of data transit per month, if running full speed 24/7.

We also don't see the need for anything more than a single hyperthreading P4.

In a recent ad hoc test (we moved a client from RHL7.3 running on a dual Xeon 1.6 system to WBEL3 running on a single 1.8 P4) we and the client perceived more responsiveness on the newer, though less powerful, server.

Drive speed is also important. We do not recommend 5400 rpm drives, but more because they're older technology than the actual speed difference.

Jeff