Setting up two servers (SQL and web) - how to decide (and are they enough?)?
My office currently has a single web/SQL server running WIN2K Server which handles a pretty decent size amount of traffic (FWIW, log files from IIS can reach 40+MB a day on high volume days with most of the visits requiring many queries to a db). The server is currently a dual 1.4GHz P3 with 1GB of RAM.
We'd like a little bit more security as well as performance, so we want to move our SQL db off of the server and onto another one, behind a separate firewall (giving only the web server access). We currently have an older server to use - a dual 600MHz P3 with 1GB RAM.
Some REALLY terrible 'benchmarking' tests (if you could call them that) which we 'performed' (if you could call it that!) showed a SUBSTANTIALLY faster query time on the 1.4GHz over the 600MHz (obviously).
Now we want to know how to best optimize our computing power. Should we move the SQL over anyways to the slower machine? Should we move the web to the slower machine (will it handle our demands at that speed?) and keep the SQL on the current machine letting it crunch out queries, should we upgrade the older box (it's a Slot 1, so I think we could go to 833Mhz) and then move the SQL over to it, should we upgrade and then move the web over, etc, etc?
As a last resort, we have a single 3.0Ghz, 512MB of RAM workstation running XP which could run something - but I'd feel more comfortable running something designed as a server to be a server and developing on a workstation designed to be a development machine.
Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks,
Ian
