Server problems?

[ICT_GUY]

Just a quick one, and I am pretty sure this is a yes.

Our soon to be replaced server is very slow when 30 kids hit a picture folder with loads of photos. This is while the kids are looking at thumbnails. Current server has only got 1gig of ram

Would more memory help with caching when viewing pics from a client as thumbnails, and how much memory should I get for the new server?

(new server will be quad core, I am thinking 4 - 8 gigs of ram)

Thoughts?

[powdarrmonkey]

The bottleneck is probably disk transfer - you're not using IDE still are you?! For photos make sure it's at least SATAII with 7200rpm drives. If you're keeping both servers, you could use distributed file system to spread the load too.

[dan400007]

I'd say either HDD or Network Bottleneck, unless you're out of RAM and the servers doing a lot of paging.

Suggest setting up some performance monitors on the server and see whats causing the problems.

As for how much RAM it depends on what you want the server to do really. Our SAN front end has 2GB but I've yet to see it using more than 1Gb.

[ICT_GUY]

Thanks, our local area guru said the same.

We have scsii disks (mirrored for the shame) probably 10k on a zeon 2.8 (512k cache!)

Raid 5 and 15k discs for the new server then.