Upgrading the webserver
Last week I upgraded the machine running my webserver. Originally, I had an Athlon MP 1.1GHz with 700MBytes of RAM. I bought an Opteron 165 (1.8GHz) dual core now running on MSI socket 939 motherboard and 1GBytes of Ram. The performance difference is dramatic. I learned a lot during this upgrade. The older processor was 32 bit, and the new one is 64 bit. Of course my first attempt was to install Debian 64 bit release. I downloaded the network installation CD, burned it and tried to install it. Everything went well till the end of the installtion when the script said “Cannot find a suitable kernel” !.
At that point, the machine has been down for at least three hours. I then decided to install Ubuntu, which is the closest operating system to Debian. I had some problems earlier with Ubuntu and at that point my choices were really limited. I had the 64-bit CDs of hoary, I installed a minimal installation and upgraded to feisty seamlessly and without a single problem.
I used apache2, fastcgi, php5 and mysql from the feisty distribution, and compiled postgresql myself. Soon in the future, I will be running all of them out of my own compilation, which usually provides the best results and makes it easier to keep with the latest minor realeases.
Technorati Tags: Opteron, Athlon, apache, php, mysql, postgresql, postgres, web, server, ubuntu, debian, feisty, hoary, amd, 64 bit, fast, cgi, MSI, 939, dual, core
