wilkes

MyISAM or InnoDB?

Look into it.

Massive inserts vs massive reads.

Huh? Smoke is coming out of my ears.

Either way you go, thanks for all you do.

It's all about the benjamins! The GoWilkes website simply doesn't generate enough income to pay for a dual processor dual core. A single processor dual core is about the same price as a dual processor single core, but I simply haven't had enough experience with multiple networks to know which would be better in the long run.

The one I'm looking at is a dual processor single core, with Intel Dual Xeon 3.2GHz Processors and 2G of RAM, but I'll need to upgrade that to 4G of RAM when they build it.

You're right, I was thinking of replacing the server that currently just hosts the database, then moving the current db server over to the hosting rack (we've recently started promoting a new hosting plan, and I'll probably need an upgrade there, anyway). Technically speaking, there aren't any static HTML pages on this site at all; every single one of them access a database in some way, if nothing more than to show an ad.

The slowdown really is from the database, but the best that I can tell the bottleneck is the bandwidth. During peak times, we have an average of between 100 and 200 accesses per second, and the queries simply take too long to respond. I'm almost certain that the drag is the T1, but I can't afford to set up yet another T1. Like you said, I'm hoping that throwing hardware at the database will help, but I'm not sure just how much it will help until we upgrade the bandwidth.

I used to use MySQL, but it simply didn't allow for enough accesses at once. I upgraded to Intersystems Cache awhile back, and use MySQL as a backup and on less demanding things like the gas prices, but it still responds too slow. I can justify the one-time expense of buying a server through the revenue generated from hosting, since the hosting rack will get a new (old) server, too, so I'm hoping that this will help, but I simply don't have the monthly residuals to justify the third T1 just for GoWilkes. That's where I keep saying that I need more advertisers to cover the expense!

And before you say anything, keep in mind that I've been throwing hardware at it for about 5 years, and even though it always helps out in the beginning, as the traffic goes up it gets slower and slower. It was only a few years ago that I moved the DB to a dedicated server, and we had about 1/2 the traffic then that we have now.

FYI, the primary server has 2 x 146G HDDs, 10K RPM SCSI/SAS. The DB server only has a single 250G HDD, though (with 7 partitions), which used to be the primary server last year. This one should be great for hosting, though; I need hard drive space more than processing power for hosted sites, and this one is expandable to 2 x 250G HDDs.

Dual processor single core. Why not spring for dual core dual processor?

If it's for the GoWilkes server - why not keep the current server to push out the static html pages, and offload the DB to the new server? My cellphone can server HTML as fast as this thing when it's running slow. Most slow downs I've ever had to beat on involved DB optimization (sometimes it's just plain cheaper/easier to throw more hardware at the problem) or a bottleneck with the drives. If I peak under the hood, please tell me I'd find more than hd0 and hd1 installed on the primary server.

Which do you guys think would be better: a single processor dual core system, or a dual processor single core?