Server for PHP and MySQL: CPU, RAM, IDE/SCSI
So I want a usual CPanel/WHM Server.
At the moment I share a PIII 1,133 MHz, 1GB RAM, IDE 7200 rpm harddiscs (normal + backup) with 3 other guys. But on the long run I'm looking for a more decent machine.
The current offers often have 2,4GHz P4, but 512MB RAM and also 7200 rpms. Sometimes I had the feeling that the limitting factor of our old server was the harddisc.
For istance DedicatedNow offers a 3,06 GHz P4 with hyperthreading with 512 MB Ram and a 7200 rpm IDE disc. Is this a usefull configuration? Or is the P4 bored all the time while waiting for free memory and the slow disc?
I assume additional RAM (1GB) is a good investion. Although our server only uses about 200 MB RAM. The rest is used for buffers. (caches?).
But what about RAID 1 IDE (mirroring)? Reads are faster (but reads should be cached anyway if there is enough RAM?). Writes are not faster. But there are writes on every page access: logs, counters, who's online, ...
On the other hand I do not trust the IDE drives anyway. They are usually not built for server (24/7) operation.
What about (faster) SCSI drives (10.000 rpms, 15.000 rpms?)
or with RAID 1, 5 or 10? But with RAID 5 you need at least 3 SCSI drives and an (IDE) Backup drive.
So what is in your experience a well balanced server configuration?
An interesting configuration I could think of could be: 2.x GHz P4, 1GB Ram, 2x36GB SCSI RAID 1, 1x40/60 GB IDE Backup drive. But nobody has such offers. So they are custome built and therefore quite expensive.
Another question: Does a Linux Webserver use hyperthreading? And is it usefull?
Thanks for comments!
Hannes
