What happened to these forums? When they were at EV1 they had a ton of traffic. Did they move somewhere else?

Currently I'm with the planet
Server: Dual Xeon 2.8 GHz - Monthly Fee: $249.00
Primary HDD: 73 GB SCSI
Secondary HDD: 73 GB SCSI
Third HDD: None
RAM: ECC Registered 2048 MB RAM

I have a message board with 2.1 million posts that is 2.1 gb and is the primary load on the server.

Usually things are fine. With major events related to my sites traffic my message board gets bogged down a bit.

So should I just get a more powerful server or a 2nd server to balance the traffic? I'm open for any ideas.

Brooke, is 2GB the max amount of RAM for a dual xeon?

PS: weldonj, I'm in the process of replacing my old P4's with Conroes, so I've recently experienced exactly what you're going through.

No, there are three different chassis types that were used with the Dual Xeon 2.8. One can hold up to 4GB RAM and the other three can hold up to 12GB.

What is your customer ID weldonj (feel free to PM it to me if you prefer)? I can take a look at your specific server and tell you how much RAM it can hold.

Wow, this guy is in luck!

Weldonj, you should upgrade your RAM and see if your server can take the beating a little better. If that doesn't work, I'd consider either a more powerful box, or depending on how overloaded you get, two boxes with a load balancer (very expensive, last resort.)

I probably have the exact same box as you (PowerEdge 1600sc).
(Dual 2.8 Xeon, dual 73 GB SCSI)
I just moved from 2GB to 4GB during the RAM upgrade promo last month.
Made a world of difference on this particular server.

IF you're running a 32-bit RHEL OS, how much of the 4 GB of ram does the OS see on the 1600sc? Does redhat behave like windows where it only sees 3.x GB of the 4 GB due to pci and other mappings? Do you have to run a different kernel than the stock RHEL kernel to see the full amount of RAM? Or does RHEL just handle the full 4 GB of ram with ease?

I have a server (elsewhere) with 4GBs of RAM running 32-bit CentOS 5 and it sees under 4 GBs, but with the PAE kernel, it sees all of it.

How many pageviews does the forum get in a day, and what is the forum software? Those really are the big 2 questions when it comes to forums and servers

You may find tweaking of mysql settings, script caching etc gets you more out of your server than you may first think

True. Maybe a little PHP caching and seperating out any mail services to another server dedicated to mail.

Forums dont typically use much mail, the most it will be is new post announces. It may have 2 million posts, but most of them arnt going to be current. I seriously doubt mail is an issue at all unless theres a vast ammount of active users (the number of pageviews a day will help determine that)

I have 20 million forum users experience under my belt, trust meh

Though i shouldnt give other people too much advice or i may put myself out of my job hah

you'll be fine i think

I'll be fine with 4gb of ram or a 2nd server?

The forums get around 100-150,000 page views a day.

I use CyBoards PHP Lite v1.25. The index pages are the trouble and the writes for new posts. I cache the index page every minute.

Looks like I can pay $50 a month for 2 more gigs of ram (4 total) or pay $157 and get the 2nd database server (2gigs of RAM SCSI drives) or $207 for a 2nd server withg 4 gigs of Ram.

I guess is adding the 2nd server with its 2 gigs of RAM way more effective than just adding 2 gigs to my current server?

I dont know the forum system to know how efficient it is, but i know with ours on a spec like that, we would be able to get at least 500k pageviews out a day

what table types do you use? are the posts full text index'd? what mysql settings do you use? whats the key hit rate

those are probably the more important questions

What OS is the OP running? That makes a difference on where he can go with this.

I would consider more ram and 10k-15k drives. We're assuming the scsi drives in your server are 10k. Chances are they may not be.