upgrading a server...

me and my team are thinking about upgrading our webserver to improve the speed of accessing the database.. we are using xampp as our PHP server.

these are the current specification of the server: http://www8.hp.com/emea_middle_east...rs/product-detail.html?oid=5261023#!tab=specs

what should we first upgrade to have a noticeable difference in speed? should it be ram, CPU or something?

thanks for taking time to read!

Edit: added some notes

if we upgrade the RAM or Processor will it speed up when selecting 1 million database entries? and if upgrading RAM will solve the dreaded "PHP: Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of 134217728 Bytes Exhausted"? Thanks!

btw, just for added note, i've already optimized apache to accept maximum memory allowed (ini_set('memory_limit', '-1'))...

Upgrade the storage.. which is not listed (optional). What drives are in there? Try 15k sas drives.

Network if the drives aren't the problem.

EarthDog said:

Upgrade the storage.. which is not listed (optional). What drives are in there? Try 15k sas drives.

Network if the drives aren't the problem.

Click to expand...

I'm gonna be back with the specs of the drives when i talk with my team leader..

if we upgrade the RAM or Processor will it speed up when selecting 1 million database entries? and if upgrading RAM will solve the dreaded "PHP: Fatal Error: Allowed Memory Size of 134217728 Bytes Exhausted"? Thanks!

btw, just for added note, i've already optimized apache to accept maximum memory allowed (ini_set('memory_limit', '-1'))...

That would have been great to know in the first post.....any other info we should know?

Clearly if you are maxing your ram, you need more. If its a high I/o environment, you need drives that are fast too. There is cpu over head but one thing at a time.

EarthDog said:

That would have been great to know in the first post.....any other info we should know?

Clearly if you are maxing your ram, you need more. If its a high I/o environment, you need drives that are fast too. There is cpu over head but one thing at a time.

Click to expand...

sorry about that, i have just edited my initial post. thanks

so RAM and drives will make a huge difference right? maxing the RAM would be very expensive, what would be the minimum size of ram to for us to see a noticeable difference? 32gb?

How much can that query use? Try doubling it and see (as I never said maxing it)

a query of 250k data in 4 different databases that are JOINed together uses about 4-6gb of ram ( the database schema is unoptimized and there is no chance that the scheme be optimized in the near future )... we are currently talking to our superiors/bosses right now on how budget they're giving us lol.. but do you think adding a processor and maxing the ram will be a huge difference? (i just hope they give us enough budget to max the ram)

I like Apples and oranges, you?

As for speeding up database queries.... What about an RAID 1 SSD setup JUST for the database, then the mechanical drives for storage? That should speed it up tremendously.

Beyond that, if you want to speed things up for clients, check out a Litespeed license, it is far faster than Apache (there are other alternatives of course).