How much server to buy?

They have: 4 posts

Joined: Aug 2007

We are putting in a request for a web server that will run ubuntu. We are only using it as a web server. The IT dept. talked with Dell and gave them our sites' statistics and they suggested a $3,000 server. It sounded like it was over kill for what we would be using it for. I wanted to run this by you to see what you think and see what we should be looking for in a server.

Our 5 sites total to about:

  • 1,100 MB Bandwidth roughly per week
  • 1.4 GB of disk space
  • 19,000 page views per week
  • 6,100 visitors per week
  • 68,000 hits per week

Here are a few specs from the server Dell suggested:

  • 2- Dual Core 1.8Ghz AMD Opteron 2210 Processors
  • 4GB of RAM
  • 2- 250GB Hard Drives
  • 3yr Standard Support

This sounds like overkill to me. Do we really need this much? What should we be looking for?

Thanks a lot!

akopayan's picture

They have: 106 posts

Joined: Nov 2006

I think that you need find a company providing rich choice.
I suggest you have a look at a2hosting.com. They do run dedicated servers solutions, vps, and semi dedicated solutions as well. So I hope it would be easy to find deal on thir web site.

He has: 16 posts

Joined: Jul 2007

I personally wouldn't mind investing $3,000 on a server for those 5 sites, given that these sites will grow in traffic and other usages. Perhaps CentOS might be a preferred choice of operating system over Ubuntu.

James's picture

He has: 127 posts

Joined: Dec 2005

No, I think you'd be fine with a medium range server.

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