Sizing a web / email / forum server

[JCardina]

I'm looking at moving our 3 websites (plus their email servers) and a separate forum server to a single self managed windows 2003 server here at ServerBeach and I'm a bit stumped on how to determine the level of hardware we will need.

Is there any kind of rough guide or pointers on the net I'm unable to find?

(we're asking our current host to give us a quote as they do self hosting as well, but I want to be able to sanity check it before we decide ultimately what we're going to do)

[tsuehpsyde]

What kind of traffic do these sites generate roughly? Do you have a count of page hits and unique IPs per day? Bandwidth used? Are they static pages (html) or dynamic (php)?

[JCardina]

I don't have that at my fingertips, but I'll get it. I'm mainly looking for a good resource to learn more about this stuff. You've given me a good start as to what info to gather, thanks.

Cheers!

- John

[JCardina]

What kind of traffic do these sites generate roughly? Do you have a count of page hits and unique IPs per day? Bandwidth used? Are they static pages (html) or dynamic (php)?

Ok, I worked out some stats over the last 15 months of all three websites combined, they are all static, no php or asp.net, we are a software company and most of our bandwidth goes to downloads of our trial versions and updates:

Avg bandwidth per month 17gb peaking at 22gb no upward trend noticeable.
Average distinct IP address visitors per month 3500
Average hits per month 12,731 (does not include hits to any images or .js files)
Average hits to home page per month 3174

The hits have been steady for 13 of the last 15 months then started rising dramatically in the last 2 months and for last month they were quadruple normal and this month seems on track for quadruple again, but it's not a trend that I expect to go much beyond that.

The forum site is not included in the above, it's a smallish asp.net forum we use for tech support with very light traffic, maybe at most 10 simultaneous visitors at any given moment in time, mostly posting questions and searching the forums. It uses a ms sql server backend and we can go with sql express when we move it.

[tsuehpsyde]

Avg bandwidth per month 17gb peaking at 22gb no upward trend noticeable.
Average distinct IP address visitors per month 3500
Average hits per month 12,731 (does not include hits to any images or .js files)
Average hits to home page per month 3174

Well, I'd break that down into something like this:

~560MB of traffic per day
~116 unique visitors per day
~424 page loads per day

Plus the dynamic traffic added by the asp.net forums. The real question you have to ask yourself here is "Is this all my server is going to host?" or do you have plans to add more hosting to this server in the future?

Also, how responsive do you want your server to be? You can host anything on a 350MHz Pentium2, it just may take awhile to load. ;) The main CPU killer will be your forums, but from how you describe those, those don't sound too awfully intensive to me.

The end result (what server to get) is something you'll have to decide for yourself, but I can't imagine seeing the sites you need hosted using all that much power.

[DXD]

I would agree, one of the middle Windows Power Servers with a gig of ram and enough drive space to your liking should be effecient.

I'd go with a 100mbit port since you say your customers download software this way you don't max out the port speed and make your customers have to download your software slowly.

[JCardina]

The real question you have to ask yourself here is "Is this all my server is going to host?" or do you have plans to add more hosting to this server in the future?

Also, how responsive do you want your server to be? You can host anything on a 350MHz Pentium2, it just may take awhile to load. ;)

All good info, thanks.

I am considering hosting an asp.net application that we sell as a live online demo version on the site down the road, but we would likely opt for a separate dedicated server for that, no there wouldn't be much else on there for the foreseeable future.

We need the site to be ultra responsive within the bounds of affordability and sanity, this is our entire business and we can't afford to annoy any potential customers with delays, but there's no sense in breaking the bank for hardware that won't effectively make a difference either.

[JCardina]

I'd go with a 100mbit port since you say your customers download software this way you don't max out the port speed and make your customers have to download your software slowly.


Ahh..good to know, I'll take a closer look at that. All our sales, support and product distribution is via the internet so downloads and email are hyper critical for us.

Actually I had read *somewhere* on the SB site about some service that sounded like it might be beneficial to our software downloaders, something about automatically switching users downloading media to the closest server, but I don't know if it applies to downloading applications or if it's prohibitively expensive, will have to look into that further.

[tsuehpsyde]

If all of your sales are via downloadable software, I also agree with DXD and suggest getting a 100Mbit port. :)

[JCardina]

If all of your sales are via downloadable software, I also agree with DXD and suggest getting a 100Mbit port. :)

It sounds good and I finally found it under upgrades (shouldn't it be standard these days? Where do you even get 10mbps ethernet adapters in this day and age?) but there is a "metered" and unmetered version for wildly different prices with no explanation which is a bit troubling.

[DXD]

It sounds good and I finally found it under upgrades (shouldn't it be standard these days? Where do you even get 10mbps ethernet adapters in this day and age?) but there is a "metered" and unmetered version for wildly different prices with no explanation which is a bit troubling.

Your server will have a 10/100 nic card no matter if you pick 10mbit or 100mbit port it's controlled at the switch.

As for metered or unmmetered it's exactly that Metered bandwidth is tracked and your server is allowed normally either 900 GIGS or 2000 GIGS a month depending on the server you get.

Unmetered is unlimited. But there is always a rule to unlimited which is basically your server can not use so much bandwidth that it causes network issues for others or SB themself.

[tsuehpsyde]

It sounds good and I finally found it under upgrades (shouldn't it be standard these days? Where do you even get 10mbps ethernet adapters in this day and age?) but there is a "metered" and unmetered version for wildly different prices with no explanation which is a bit troubling.

The standard offering is 10Mbps with a 2000GB limit per billing cycle (30 days). If you were to completely max out your 10Mbit port and use 100% all 30 days, you would indeed run past this limit. The upgrade to a 100Mbit port just means that, while you have the same 2000GB limit on how much data you can send/receive, you can send more data at once, helping to eliminate the bottleneck of a lot of customers downloading from your server at once slowing each other down. For reference, most cable providers offer at least 5Mbit for their download speeds. That means if two cable users were downloading off of your 10Mbit server at the same time, they would be using the server's entire connection. If two more people jumped on, they would have to split the speed to 2.5Mbit each, and your email services would probably feel a slow down. With a 100Mbit port, they would all get 5Mbit, and your email service would respond normally. The same bandwidth would be used in both situations, it'd just be getting to everyone faster with the 100Mbit port. :)

Unmetered is exactly as DXD described it, you get a port speed (10Mbit or 100Mbit) and you have no limits. With a 100Mbit port, you can send a lot of data over a 30 day period, hense the high price tag.

If unsure, just start out with a 10Mbit port, and upgrade to the 100Mbit port later. It's easy to do (you can do it from inside of MyServerBeach) and is an instant upgrade. Just make sure you get at least a 2200+ server if you're considering the 100Mbit port, as the 2100+ and lower do not have the 100Mbit option.

[JCardina]

If unsure, just start out with a 10Mbit port, and upgrade to the 100Mbit port later. It's easy to do (you can do it from inside of MyServerBeach) and is an instant upgrade. Just make sure you get at least a 2200+ server if you're considering the 100Mbit port, as the 2100+ and lower do not have the 100Mbit option.

Ok, cool, thanks to you both. There's no way on earth our bandwidth will approach even 50GB per month for the foreseeable future so no worries there.