What is most cost effective?

[siliconfinance]

I current operate two servers. One is an opteron powered server while the other is a xeon powered. I think I have more than enough performance and I think I upgraded too fast. I am looking to save some money and go to one server if that is possible.

I believe that I have 750-1000 concurrent users between the two servers during peak hours. I don't think I am close to being financially optimized at the moment and I am looking to get some feedback as I mentioned.

Currently running a few vbulletin sites and a few blogs on each. The largest forum on one of them will have 450 active users online at once. This forum is on the server with phpadsnew. It occassionally spikes to 1.5 load but generally stays below 1.0.

Edit here are the specs:

1 Dell \ 1066/1333FSB Dual Xeon \ PowerEdge 1950/2950
2 Intel \ 2.0 GHz 1333FSB - Clovertown \ Xeon 5335 (Quad Core)
2 Maxtor \ 146GB:SAS:10K RPM \ Atlas 10K - SAS
4 Generic \ 2048 MB \ DDR2 667 FB DIMM
1 Dell \ 9G Drive Controller - SAS/SATA RAID \ PERC 5/i

The other server's largest vbulletin forum spikes to 200 from time to time but is generally at 165 online users. The server runs a few other vbulletin sites that never have more than 30 max users online. It also has a few blogs. This server's load averages .70 and peaks at 1.5 rarely.

2 AMD \ 2212 - dual core - 2.0 ghz \ Opteron 22122
Maxtor \ 146GB:SAS:10K RPM \ Atlas 10K - SAS
1 Dell \ 9G Drive Controller - SAS/SATA - budget raid \ SAS 5/iR
1 Dell \ Dual socket next gen opteron - 1u \ PowerEdge SC1435
4 Generic \ 1024 MB \ DDR2 667 ECC Reg

Neither server has been optimized either. Bandwidth has never been much of a problem. Usually the servers have needed more power in the past which led to splitting to two servers from one, but I can't really justify the financial expense to maintaining two servers like this any more.

I have been reading a lot, but I still may be able a little green behind the ears. I hope that I can go to a single server driven my AMD opteron processors running some of the faster scsi drives with 8000+ mb ram (even more if I can get it).



Do you have any thoughts, tips, advice, feedback or recommendations?

[royo]

Depends how much you're currently paying and how much you think you can save. You could go with a dual quad core, running 8-12gb ram, and 4/6 SAS disks in RAID10, plus some management on the server that can optimize and secure everything.

[wolfstream]

Honestly, you're going to want to stay with a dedicated server for each forum. At some point, you're going to need to split the larger one up a bit more, just because you'll find traffic will load the server down.

At some point the original (larger) forum will hit 1k+ visitors and you'll be thankful you stayed with the individual server for each setup.