Need some server deployment advice

[Mnemonic]

Hey guys,

I run a website i programmed myself. It is an online trading community.On a busy day, i'll get roughly 4000 unique visitors and 50,000 hits. The website is only two months old, and growing.

My current setup is 3 Dell PowerEdge 2500's. One for Web & DB, one for mail, and one DC.

Let me just focus on the web server. Obviously it is not good practice to have the web server and the DB located on the same machine. I didnt think the site would grow this quickly. The current HW spec on the web/DB server is 2x P3 Xeon 1.26Ghz, and 3.5GB RAM, and 5x 72GB HDD RAID 5.

I did some web server stress testing, and about 1 response out of 75 will return a 500 internal server error. I assume it is because of the load i am putting on a single server. This is not good :-\

I just bought a poweredge 2650, with 2x Xeon 2.8Ghz, 6GB RAM, and 4x146GB HDD in RAID 10. I plan to deploy this as my DB server.

Now, the question i have is, what can i do about my web fronts? I have 2 HP Proliant DL360 G1's, both with dual P3 Xeon's 1.26Ghz, and 1GB ram. Would it be better to use these as a clustered web front? I would have the same CPU power, but less on the memory than the PE 2500.

I know the ideal situation would be get faster web fronts, but with the budget i have, i have to work with what i have...

Any suggestions?

[~ServerPoint~]

I think that you shouldn't economize on that and use the one which suits you most.

[transilvania]

It's better to use one company for good price than many cheap ones.

[~ServerPoint~]

It's better to use one company for good price than many cheap ones.

Exectly, unless you need web hosting with different C class Ips for SEO.

[alemcherry]

You seems to have a very resonable traffic. may be something to do with your scripts and database? For me it looks like one decent dei should be good enough for a web/db server.

[Bobby]

alemcherry, agree with you I think that OP need to optimeze script ha wrote himself.

I have heard that some companies provide optimization. Think SiberName.com is good in it and they'll be helpful for you.