Choosing between Xeon and i5..

[ozaidum]

Hello,

I'm trying to consolidate all my accounts from all my reseller hosting into one server. They are about 100+ serious business brochure/catalog and portfolio sites with minimal traffic but uses fairly high amount of disk space. Now I'm deciding whether to get a XEN-PV (RAID10 HDD, 4vCPU Xeon, 4gb RAM) or a Dedicated Server (Software RAID1 HDD, 4Cores i5-2400, 8gb RAM)? Which do you think would best suit my needs?

The only factor that confuses me is the HDD RAID. I'm not sure whether it can handle my cPanel + Cloudlinux + Varnish Cache planned setup and whether it is stable enough. Please tell me your opinions and suggestions below.

Also, I'm alright to move now with this environment since I can have better control with the server and I have a bigger room for growth. Fortunately, I have enough budget for this and I've already sorted out who the providers will be as well as the sysAdmin company. So, that leaves me the hardware concerns.

Thanks for your time

[wswd]

I'd say the dedicated server, simply because it's 100% dedicated resources. The hardware is better on the VPS, but you're also going to be sharing that hardware with at least a few dozen people.

The RAID is just fine for your configuration. All RAID1 is, is 2 mirrored drives, for a certain amount of redundancy. That drive setup isn't going to be as quick as RAID10, but again, you're sharing that RAID 10 with a lot of other people.

Not sure how much you plan on paying for the i5, but if you can afford to move up to an i7 (i.e. i7-2600 or so), you're going to see a considerable performance increase.

[ozaidum]

Thanks for your response! I would highly consider the i7 upgrade since it's only a $10 difference.

Also, I saw another offer recently, do you think an i3 server with SW RAID1 can fit up to 500 cPanel accounts? But this one only has a 10mbps bandwidth port speed.

[wswd]

You're welcome!

An i3? Eh...depends on what kind of sites you're hosting (i.e. are they static, WordPress sites, database heavy sites, etc.), but I'd be willing to guess probably not. The RAID1 is going to be a chokepoint with that many accounts, and quite possibly the 10mbps as well. That's VERY slow these days, particularly with multiple people hitting the server at once. My guess would be that the processor itself could handle a pretty good amount of sites, but the RAID and bandwidth might possibly be the limiting factors.