Hosting VB on Multiple Servers, are these servers suitable?

[donnacha]

***
I have also asked this question in the hosting section of Vbulletin.COM but as I've learnt so much by reading vbulletin.ORG, I'd very much appreciate input from the folks here too, especially since you guys are used to messing about beneath the hood and might have insights regarding my OS choice etc.

***

Hi,

I'd be very interested in hearing opinions on the 2 dedicated servers I'm planning to buy from ServerMatrix, to host what I expect to become a fairly heavily-used VB site. In particular, I'd like to hear if you think I could spend the same money more effectively in a different way. For instance, should I be thinking about Xeons rather than P4s?

I'll be spreading the site over 2 servers, connected to eachother via a crossover cable, synchronized via Mysql replication.

2.8 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 800FSB, with HT
2 x 80GB Hard Drive
1024MB RAM
1000GB Bandwidth
5 Usable IP's
FreeBSD
Floodguard Protection ($10 per month, worth it?)

NO Cpanel/WHM

Per server $99/setup, $139/mth
Total for both $198/setup, $178/mth

I'm going for FreeBSD because these servers will be hosting ONLY VB and FreeBSD seems to offer better integration of the core services that VB needs. In that very lean configuration, I gather that it tends to be somewhat more efficient that Linux. FreeBSD's CVSup system also seems to offer a less time-consuming way to upgrade and keep my servers synchronized. RHE would cost exactly the same.

I have decided to avoid CPanel/WHT because, going on past experience, while it makes account and name-server creation easier, it seems to mess up quite a bit and I feel that editing the relevant configuration files by hand will give me a better grip on things.

I'd love to hear what you all think, Thanks.

[filburt1]

It would be an extremely powerful setup, but (no offense, of course) many think that their forums will be explosively popular but it does not take off. In either case, it would likely be months until you need the power, storage, and bandwidth.

[donnacha]

Thanks Filburt,

Originally Posted by filburt1

It would be an extremely powerful setup...

So, no need for Xeons, you think?

Originally Posted by filburt1

... but (no offense, of course) many think that their forums will be explosively popular but it does not take off. In either case, it would likely be months until you need the power, storage, and bandwidth.

Well, it's for an anything and everything discussion board, heavily modded to include selling/buying, dating, journaling and anything else that's useful to normal, everyday people living in and around Edinburgh city, UK, population c. 500,000.

There will also be a sister-site, geared towards younger Edinburgh-dwellers, featuring the arcade mod but sharing the same buy/sell database, hopefully giving them their own site will protect the level of discussion on the main site.

There's nothing similar already in existence despite fairly high broadband penetration in the area. I'm planning to buy a color laser printer, produce some nice, professional posters and flyers, all promoting the site as a good way to connect with people in the city and surrounding area, plan to put in a month or two full-time, getting the posters onto every supermarket, library and church hall notice board. It would be a bit of a tragedy if, after all that effort and expense, my server set-up couldn't cope with the traffic.

In effect, the whole thing will be non-commercial, I won't be bothering with ads, maybe I'll introduce Google-ads at some point but, initially at least, it'll be ad-free, should make it faster. My priority is to make it as pleasant an experience as possible for the user, hopefully build up a large enough userbase to be the defacto board for Edinburgh.

Although I figure that's a good investment in the longer term, it's obviously going to lose money now, so, I need to keep my server costs sane. What I'm worried about is that my 2 servers might not be sufficient to deal with a successful, city-focussed, multi-purpose board and that I'll end up still making no money but having to buy more servers.

Any thoughts?

BTW, I feel that, with VB3 about to go gold, the time is ripe for this; from what I've read here, VB3 is a lot more efficient and, hopefully, that means you get more bang per server.