At 08:21 AM 20/04/2004 -0700, you wrote:

> We run a website which uses ISAPI dlls to access a firebird database.
>Right now it is all on one server. 850mhz, 256meg of memory (IIS,
>windows 2000) with a 300mb database. This is through a dedicated
>hosting provider. Our traffic is getting high enough that things are
>starting to bog down. We definitely need more RAM. But our only real
>option is to move to a larger server.
> So, I would be interested in opinions on whether we should move up to
>a 2.4 ghz server with 1 gig of RAM, or add a second 850 mhz server with
>512 meg of ram and run the firebird server and database from that
>machine and the web server on the existing server. (The second option
>would be cheaper, but money is not the deciding factor.)

256 Mb of memory is waaay not enough, even for the db server by itself,
unless the query rate is pretty low. Vendors are practically paying you
take extra memory these days.

Choose the latter option, with a single CPU, preferably running on Linux,
if the provider can do it. 300 Mb isn't a big database, but a database
server loves to have the server to itself (and it deserves it!) 850 MHz is
plenty of clock speed. Get fast disk. Give the web app a clean channel
for database traffic. Let the IIS server get on with its laborious job of
churning out html and handling the requests. It needs more RAM, too.
/hb