Hardware requirements for a small webserver???

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rsnellma

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Jul 17, 2002
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I am new to the web designer scene. I am in the process of developing a site using Dreamweaver MX 2004. I have two options for machines to host as a webserver.

Option 1:
1) CPU: AMD Athlon 2000+
2) Memory: Crucial 512MB (2x256MB) PC2100
3) HDD: Western Digital 80GB SE
4) NIC: Nvidia 10/100 (onboard)
5) Bandwidth: 1.5Mbps down / 384Mbps up
6) OS: Windows XP Pro - using the built in IIS


Option 2:
1) CPU: Celeron
2) Memory: 160MB (1x128MB / 1x32MB) PC66
3) HDD: 4GB
4) NIC: 3Com 10/100
5) Bandwidth: 1.5Mbps down / 384Mbps up
6) OS: ClarkConnect Home Edition (Customized RedHat Linux 9)


My question is....Can Option 2 host a small website just starting out? I mean by small is probably no more than 50-100 hits a day and very little pics, no multimedia stuff, mostly text with CSS. Thanks in advance.

Bob2001
 
That's plenty. Keep in mind that just a few years ago, that would have been top of the line hardware, and people would host busy websites on it all the time.
 
rsnellma said:
I am new to the web designer scene. I am in the process of developing a site using Dreamweaver MX 2004. I have two options for machines to host as a webserver.

Option 1:
1) CPU: AMD Athlon 2000+
2) Memory: Crucial 512MB (2x256MB) PC2100
3) HDD: Western Digital 80GB SE
4) NIC: Nvidia 10/100 (onboard)
5) Bandwidth: 1.5Mbps down / 384Mbps up
6) OS: Windows XP Pro - using the built in IIS


Option 2:
1) CPU: Celeron
2) Memory: 160MB (1x128MB / 1x32MB) PC66
3) HDD: 4GB
4) NIC: 3Com 10/100
5) Bandwidth: 1.5Mbps down / 384Mbps up
6) OS: ClarkConnect Home Edition (Customized RedHat Linux 9)


My question is....Can Option 2 host a small website just starting out? I mean by small is probably no more than 50-100 hits a day and very little pics, no multimedia stuff, mostly text with CSS. Thanks in advance.

Bob2001
Click to expand...

What kind of celeron?
Personally i wouldnt go for anything much slower than 1Ghz, but thats not what you need, thats just because i like to overspec things for the future. Have you got both of these machines already?
If its between buying one and using the one youhave then use the one you have.
If you have them both lieing around then use the better one.
If its a case of buying either, then id ask your self how serious you are about being professional, then if you are go grab one of the sc420s from dell, cheap, and will save you money when clients start wanting things like php/perl/sql etc. down the line
 
With 50-100 hits per day of static content (IE - no PHP/CGI/etc) it doesn't really matter what you use. Webserving is a lot easier than renderng pages. As long as it has enough memory to run the OS & your webserver, you're fine.

I've done some light PHP/MySQL development using a P233mmx with 64MB of RAM laptop as a server and had no issues.
 
Option 2 is plenty. For comparison, up until a couple months ago, my webserver specs was:

Celeron 300A @ 450Mhz (remember those? :eek: )
Abit BH6 motherboard
2MB PCI vid card
192MB PC-100 RAM
10G IBM HDD
Netgear 10/100 network card

When i finally retired it, it was running Win2k, Apache 2.0, PHP, MSSQL Server 2000
i have quite a few pictures and the entire site is done with PHP scripts. While my website is mostly for family and friends, it would get a few hundred hits/day every time i sent out an email saying there were new pictures posted on my website.

That box served me well for over 5 years, it started out running NT4/IIS4/ASP and went through several iterations, but the hardware basically remained the same (except for a couple of RAM upgrades). the only reason i even retired it was because i had a bunch of "newer" old hardware lying around, and i was bored that weekend. :)
 
Thank you all. You have confirmed to me what I was hoping and suspecting. I will be using option 2 , which I believe is a Celeron 500Mhz and eventually will be putting more ram in it. I am just starting out and will probably dive into PHP scripting later on. Thanks again. This is fun and exciting stuff, can't wait to finish the site. Later.

Bob2001
 
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