One of the advantages of internal management vs. hosting is that "massive 
overkill" on hardware isn't a lot more expensive, in the scheme of things, than 
"barely good enough." What are those Dells going to cost, maybe $6000US each if 
you stretch it? An "adequate" server would only save you $2000US. And you want 
something that's going to last 3-5 years so you're talking about a difference 
of $400-$600/yr.

You and your team probably make a lot more than that annually, so the 
difference is not worth quibbling over. If you're committed to bringing the 
servers inside, which it sounds like you are, I vote for massive overkill. Make 
them twice as powerful, even.

Matt


On 1/29/09 11:10 PM, "JonathanC at ag.nsw.gov.au" <JonathanC at ag.nsw.gov.au> 
wrote:




[Sorry if you receive this twice. I sent it 24 hours ago but it still
hasn't appeared.]

I'm the website manager at a mid-sized art museum (220 full-time staff,
1.35 million physical visitors pa) in Sydney, Australia. Currently we host
our websites externally (in a hosting facility in the USA, for cost
reasons) but it is clear that our server is now underpowered. So, we are
considering hosting internally on TWO, more powerful servers, one for the
application and one for the database. The company that provides support for
our content management system (Squiz.net) also manages our server in the
USA remotely, so they could continue to do that. We would just need to
upgrade our Internet connection.

The question I have is this: How powerful a system do we need?

Squiz.net have quoted for 2 quad-core dual-Xeon commercial-grade servers,
running at 2.0 GHz (detailed specs below). Our network manager believes
this is "MASSIVE overkill". I COULD ask Squiz.net to provide details of
other, comparable organisations and THEIR web server specs, but since
they'd probably all be their clients too, this may not be a strong argument
for management.

So, I would actually appreciate answers to ANY of the following 3
questions:
1. From your own experience, do these specs seem reasonable, allowing for
some room to grow?
2. If your institution and/or websites are comparable to ours, what are
your server specs... and are they adequate?
3. If your hosting setup is similar to what we were recommended, how big is
your website (or websites)?

To give you a better idea of our needs, here's what we have now:
* Total web traffic: approx. 150-200 GB per month
* 1 main website + 8 smaller, CMS-driven websites + 9 static HTML websites
* 2 content management systems (1 phasing out the other) + collection
management system customised web interface
* Monthly email newsletter: approx. 150,000 subscribers
* Online video: New content (~ 25 minutes, 55 MB) weekly, currently hosted
on internal server
* Online audio: currently 2 audio-tours, but set to expand, currently
hosted on internal server

And here are the detailed specs we were recommended for each server:
   Dell PowerEdge 2950 Dual Xeon Commercial grade server
   Dual Xeon 2.0 GHz (1333MHz Bus) Quad Core (8 Cores Total)
   Memory: ECC Registered DDR 8GB
   * Application server: 2 x 73 GB SAS/SCSI Hard Disk - RAID 1
   * Database server: 6 x 73 GB SAS/SCSI Hard Disk - RAID 1+0
   Intel 10/100Mb Network Card
   Intel 10/100/1000mbps TX Network Card
   Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Thanks.

Regards,

Jonathan Cooper
Manager of Information / Website
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

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