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[nutballs]

I am looking to get a dedicated server for my php/linux monkeying.

I currently just finished upgrading to a VPS from a shared host, but I am planning ahead for a launch of something that has at least a bit of potential to get slashdotted.

currently I am hosting on the lowest VPS that 1and1 offers.
10g of space
500g bandwidth
128m ram burst to 256m

I could of course just upgrade to the biggest VPS if I needed to and might just be what I do.
50g space, 2tb bandwidth, 512m ram burst to 1024m

The question is though, the lowest ded server on 1and1 is $99/mo
Single Core AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2.2 GHz
1g ram
2 x 160 GB (RAID 1-Software NOT HARDWARE...)
2tb bandwidth

the question is not if that is a good deal or not. I am staying with 1and1, so thats not really up for discussion. unless perk wants to rent me out a small chunk of his cage if the time comes otherwise if it really hits, I will be jumping to Rackspace probably.

The question is, could that server handle a potential slashdotting of a graphically minimal site, but which does tend to make quite a few database lookups. The lookups are fairly effecient (i think), but there are alot of inserts/updates going on. the selects are not a big deal i think.

I am trying to think of an example that might be on the same potential level for load per user. and the only one I can really think of is something like rememberthemilk.com

my gut is that the server is enough. for windows I would be able to say it isnt, because of the ram. the speed is fine, ram is not. for linux, im not sure.

[perkiset]

The question is though, the lowest ded server on 1and1 is $99/mo
Single Core AMD Athlon 64 3500+
2.2 GHz
1g ram
2 x 160 GB (RAID 1-Software NOT HARDWARE...)
2tb bandwidth

That's a reasonable machine for a Linux app. I personally would go with 2 procs and 2G, but that's because of how I use it. For what you are describing I think you are *way* fine. And posting here with QQs we can help you get nice and efficient with that little box. I have (in a couple places) less than that box doing considerably more.

unless perk wants to rent me out a small chunk of his cage if the time comes otherwise if it really hits, I will be jumping to Rackspace probably.

I can help with this when the time comes.

The question is, could that server handle a potential slashdotting of a graphically minimal site, but which does tend to make quite a few database lookups. The lookups are fairly effecient (i think), but there are alot of inserts/updates going on. the selects are not a big deal i think.

Again, I think you're fine. If you don't do things in a nice way you could potentially bog the box down... but with a nicely designed site-support system you'll be fine for quite a while - perhaps forever.

/p

[nutballs]

ok cool. I figured as much. I might just go 1 up on the server, but i will cross that bridge when I get there.

[georgiecasey]

in my experience, ram seems to be the most important feature for dedi servers under heavy load. the more ram you have, the more mysql can cache queries with. php scripts are compiled once and then stored as bytecode i think, basically they're not much of a load, so it's just queries. i had servers going really slow and made the n00b mistake of thinking the connection was maxed out, turns out the server only had 256mb ram!

[perkiset]

in my experience, ram seems to be the most important feature for dedi servers under heavy load. the more ram you have, the more mysql can cache queries with.

More RAM == true, but not for MySQL queries, which are not cached by default. There are ways to do that, but that is not a automatic on feature. More ram means more Apache processes and more grease for the wheels. MySQL will use more RAM for queries, making them more efficient, but it will not cache them per se.

php scripts are compiled once and then stored as bytecode i think, basically they're not much of a load, so it's just queries.

This also is not true by default - if you use an optimizer like APC or the Zend Accelerator then this is true. I highly recommend APC because it is virtually a plug-and-play massive increase in machine capability.

[nutballs]

im not to zend or apc yet by any stretch. The more ram is better rule has always been the case in my opinion, and ram has always been lagging behind proc speeds.

in this case since caching wouldnt really be of much value anyway i think because of the types of queries being run. well maybe at the individual user level.

meh, whatever. I will probably go 1 up, and hope that I actually have the problem of server response being slow...

[perkiset]

im not to zend or apc yet by any stretch.

This single thing (APC) can help immensly, is free, requires no intervention, additional skillz or code to make from 5-100x speed improvements on your box and I can help. Won't even take that much RAM. Lemmee know if you wanna go that way.