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3:42 pm
October 4, 2012
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Financial Samurai
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Howdy Folks,
For those of you who love hardware, know about servers, and enjoy the subject, what do you think of the following specs for a dedicated server?
Intel Xeon X3220 @ 2.40GHz x 4
4GB of RAM
2 x 250GB hard drives
6TB of monthly bandwidth
10 IP addresses
What do you think would be a base case dedicated server spec? How would you measure the capacity of the server as well as its uptime reliability?
Obviously more RAM, a faster processor, larger HD, and more monthly bandwidth is better, but I'm trying to figure out what is "good enough" at handling say 1 million pageviews a month, and what would a reasonable pricing range be?
Thanks!
Sam
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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3:51 pm
October 4, 2012
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Investor Junkie
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Hi Sam,
The hardware spec is ok, but it that IMHO is only one factor. It's not the only thing to consider. The question always comes down to:
- Who is going to manage it? System Administration? You? Unlike shared or most Virtuozzo VPSes someone keeps the software updated. A dedicated server does not.
- Is it enough resources? I donno the amount of CPU usage you have now. It should be able to handle most 120k visitors/mo with ease.
- Is there a control panel?
1 Million a month? You more than likely will need multiple servers and/or redesign back-end parts of your site.
pingdom.com is an option to monitor at the basic level.
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3:54 pm
October 4, 2012
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Investor Junkie
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IMHO if you are going this route, cloud providers are more likely a better option (that are Xen based), than going with a dedicated server.
Linode, Amazon's EC2 and my service HostCube are some options.
Though with the first two you have to manage (or find someone) to manage the server.
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4:00 pm
October 4, 2012
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Financial Samurai
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Hi Larry,
Thanks. Good question on managing the server.
Any thoughts on pricing? These specs are for an older dedicated server around $130 a month.
I'm concerned you use a 120K/month figure to highlight what the server can hold. What was the thought process behind this number? I'm way over that, so I'm trying to look for some specs that can allow traffic to grow without needing to change/add an additional server.
Finally, is switching servers as easy as snapping the fingers and having the host do so w/out any downtime? I just don't want to lose hours or a day in the process, as well as data.
Thx, S
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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4:15 pm
October 4, 2012
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Eric – PersonalProfitability.com
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Sam, for what you need a dedicated server plus a CDN is probably the best way to go. Do you have a lot of readership outside of the United States? Even within the US, a CDN can serve up static resources from a more localized server to speed up load times and reduce your server load.
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4:31 pm
October 4, 2012
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Investor Junkie
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| Member | posts 168 |
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Financial Samurai said:
Any thoughts on pricing? These specs are for an older dedicated server around $130 a month.
For a low end server sure.
I'm concerned you use a 120K/month figure to highlight what the server can hold. What was the thought process behind this number? I'm way over that, so I'm trying to look for some specs that can allow traffic to grow without needing to change/add an additional server.
Based upon what I see typical Wordpress based sites and the type of hardware you are using. It's not speed daemon. Wordpress by default is a CPU pig. Which means it's CPU bound first.
What scales to X does not scale to Y. You typically need hardware, and software configuration changes. Including use at the application level which means the plugins you use.
Finally, is switching servers as easy as snapping the fingers and having the host do so w/out any downtime? I just don't want to lose hours or a day in the process, as well as data.
No off hours and on a weekend is the smartest idea.
Thx, S
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4:55 pm
October 4, 2012
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Financial Samurai
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Post edited 4:57 pm – October 4, 2012 by Financial Samurai
Thanks again Larry. Very helpful. Now I've got to go ahead with the decision on whether to go w/ this sever or not.
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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8:00 pm
October 4, 2012
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Jeff Rose
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Check out WP Engine (aff link). They specialize in WP blogs and do all the self-managing on the backend. My site is MUCH faster since I switched. BUT I do pay for it. I currently pay $250/mo and can have 10 domains on that package. Between my blog and my wife's (just moved hers) we get about 500k PV's a month.
WP Engine has a different way of counting "visits" so there counter is much higher than that.
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8:50 am
October 5, 2012
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Financial Samurai
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Larry,
Do you think these specifications make any real difference. Current package is newer than the older package and the only thing I see is the Xeon X3430 chip, but the price differential is double. Worth saving money?
Current Package:
CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 @ 2.40GHz x 4
Memory: 4G
Raid: No
Disks: 250 GB x 2
Bandwidth – 6TB per month
10 IP addresses
Vs
Downgrading to Package:
Intel Xeon X3220 @ 2.40GHz x 4
4GB of RAM
2 x 250GB hard drives
6TB of monthly bandwidth
10 IP addresses
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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8:53 am
October 5, 2012
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Investor Junkie
| | New York, NY | |
| Member | posts 168 |
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I see one with RAID the other one does not.. At least from what you have listed. HD is the #1 thing that fails.
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8:24 am
October 6, 2012
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Financial Samurai
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Just checked. Neither my existing server or this new old server has raid.
Worth paying $40-50 more a month for a RAID HD and 4 more GB of RAM to 8? The uptime has been fine without Raid and 4GB….
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Regards,
Sam
Financial Samurai - Helping you achieve financial freedom sooner, rather than later.
Yakezie Network Founder
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8:30 am
October 6, 2012
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Investor Junkie
| | New York, NY | |
| Member | posts 168 |
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Post edited 8:31 am – October 6, 2012 by Investor Junkie
Financial Samurai said:
Just checked. Neither my existing server or this new old server has raid.
Worth paying $40-50 more a month for a RAID HD and 4 more GB of RAM to 8? The uptime has been fine without Raid and 4GB….
Just because it hasn't happened before doesn't mean it won't. The question you have to ask is can you live with say 5-6 hours+ of down time? And then will everything from a backup get restored? Is it possible you lose more than $600 (annual cost) in income from that amount of downtime?
Statically is HDs are #1 failed device, by a HUGE margin. It's also the most time consuming to recover from. Especially if not everything is backed up.
That's NOT to say RAID is a backup. It's not. RAID is for hard drive failure and to minimize downtime from when one fails.
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