Need a lightning fast server
 

I've been on a dedicated server from The Planet for 2 or 3 years. Here are the specs:

QTYHardware Component
1Dell \ Single socket 1067FSB - Quad Core Capable \ PowerEdge 8401Intel \ 2.4 GHz 1066FSB - Conroe \ Xeon 3060 (Dual Core)2Generic \ 2 GB RAM \ DDR2 667 ECC4Western Digital \ 250GB:SATA2:7200RPM (x4) \ WD2500JS13Ware \ 4 channel SATA2 \ 9550SX-4LP

Installed Software
cPanel, Inc. cPanel STABLE- Urchin Urchin 5- CentOS Enterprise Linux - OS ES 4.0

Even though it's pretty hefty, I think it's sluggish. I need pages to load instantly (using broadband, of course). Does anyone have any suggestions for a lighting fast server for $300-$400/month?

You can check out my site speed here:
www.churchmedia.net

Thanks! :)

You should drop that cpanel crap.

I had that same machine running lighttpd and it went really fast until our traffic forced us to upgrade.

What do you use? Plesk? Ensim? I'm not married to cPanel.

I suggest you start by posting in the Server Configuration forum on vbulletin.com.

Greetings Churchmedia

It does seem a bit sluggish switching between topics...not terrible but not the quickest. There was a recent topic about using caching that would probably speed up your site quite a bit.

2MB RAM? I would think that is 2Gigabytes of RAM :)

Are your 4 SATA drives in a RAID configuration?

If you have quite a few visitors you may want to consider doing a server cluster.

cPanel is very full functional but at the same time, it eats up a good amount of RAM.

Do NOT get rid of CPanel. I have tried the others and CPanel is the easiest one to get around in. And CPanel is the only one I have not have probelms with email after setting up the accounts in it.

Why would you need cpanel if you run a 1 server -> 1 forum?

I'd understand that if you hosted more sites but if the only account is admin's, then you could tamper with configuration yourself via SSH.

I have a few more smaller personal sites on the server.

True, but updating or adding modules is a snap in CPanel. On the old server, I reset MySQL a few times when we were having problems. CPanel made it all easy to deal with.

I've used Ensim and cPanel. I've been really happy with cPanel. I like the structure and features better than Ensim. I'm only an intermediate when it comes to server management. When I get in over my head there is a 16 year old kid from Seattle that helps me out. :)

As far as server optimization, I've already done that through vBulletin.com.