Thread: Dedicated server advice

How many active users do you see at peek time?

phpbb but an older version, any reason not to upgrade ?

Whether it's enough or not is hard to tell, but if sql is a problem get a 10 or 15krpm hard drive and 2GB RAM.

Do you have a set budget or do you just want to get something that "works".

As Tim says, I would definately opt for additional RAM where possible and this should be pretty affordable (where as 10k-15k disks will be more costly due to like move from SATA to SAS/SCSI etc).

Originally Posted by Denny

I want to try to stick to around £70-80 pm inc vat. Something that works pref.

Reason for not to upgrade is due to allot of modifications on the forum.

Ah okay, well that's the hard drive upgrade out of the question then.

Well I'd definitely try and go for the 2GB RAM as a starting point.

Also if you need a control panel that's going to push your cost up as well.

Otherwise you can have a hunt round here or post a request in the request for products and services section and you will get quotes from people here.

Originally Posted by Denny

Does the HDD speed have allot of impact on hosting ?

It has a lot of impact on the performance of your database, but if you've got a decent quantity of system memory and are prepared to look a mysql tuning for in memory caching/indexing and possibly memcache for profile pics and similar potentially considerably less important.

Originally Posted by Denny

Does the HDD speed have allot of impact on hosting ?

Faster disks have a lower seek time which makes them good for anything that spends a lot of time reading small amount of data off the disk from random locations (so the head is having to move around a lot) like databases.

Some fine tuning and a bit of extra RAM should negate the need for faster disks for your average forum.

Originally Posted by Denny

I want to try to stick to around £70-80 pm inc vat. Something that works pref.

Reason for not to upgrade is due to allot of modifications on the forum.

TBH 60 max simul is nothing, it's only just over what we advise on our Virtual hosting platform, so any decent modern dedi is going to blitz your current shared performance.

RAID / Firewall / Few Gigs of RAM are all preferable, but on your budget you're not going to get that on modern QuadCore Xeons unless you're prepared to commit for a few years upfront.

Still, the world is your oyster, and I'm sure you'll find some people willing to do you some deals to get their monthly bills paid.

J

There is one organisation on here that you could jsut about squeeze that from, but the cpanel license is knocking it top end of budget. However they are notoriously "sold out"...

However if you whizz over here > Web Hosting and Related Offers - Web Host Chat there are two I can see in the right kind of price range with recent postings and even up-specced I think you can still get in on / under budget..

Originally Posted by Denny

How does:

Dual Core 2.2Ghz
2GB Ram
160 GB 7200RPM HDD
CenOS 5.2
CPanel (WHM)
4,000 GB M.BW transfer
100mb port
Almost £80 Inc vat.

I'd say Ideally you want to get RAID so that your HDD data is mirrored in case of a hardware failure, it's also performance enhancing too as you have twice the HDDs to Read from / Write to.

The Core2Duo tech isnt really modern these days, whilst it will certainly be more than you need for now, given the prevalence of QuadCore Server chips these days, you may be better trying to get one of those instead.

Do you need cPanel given you are only running one Forum on the box? or are you planning to try and host other sites on the box to recoup some money? If so, you should definitely upspec the box if you plan to take money from people!

You also dont seem to mention security? are you planning to run a software firewall? if so do you have hands on experience of securing a box, or are you going to learn on the fly (read get hacked and or locked out of your own box)

J