OMG - as I was reading your post, I starting to think you must be one of my developers - we had the identical configuration and issues with Superdudes.net.
It got to the point where the slave servers (P4, 2GB RAM, Hardware RAID) could not keep up with the Master replication _and_ service SELECT queries. The data was too big for RAM (filesort) and the drives were not fast enough (2 drives mirrored). The Master is dual PIII 2Ghz, 2GB RAM , and fast RAID 5 hardware.
I ended up solving the problem with a hardware upgrade. I replaced all 4 servers with 1 Quad-Opteron 1.8GHz, 16 GB RAM, and _VERY_ Fast RAID 10 across 9 fast drives.
Please feel free to check it out. For the first time in a long time, I'm not affraid that the MySQL server will be the bottlenect in this very dynamic web site.
We use Linux, Apache 1.3.x, MySQL 4.0.x, and PHP 4.x to build the pages and generate XML to our Flash MX applications.
Check out williamshatner.com for a list of public appearances. Iron chef and Mind Meld video release all in one week. At lease Mind Meld (with Leonard Nimoy) looks cool.
[Full disclosure - my company provides co-location services for williamshatner.com.]
I would have agreed with you completely until I saw the G4 based Titanium PowerBook. Obviously there are ways to mange the heat other than with big fans.
Slashdot Mirror
It got to the point where the slave servers (P4, 2GB RAM, Hardware RAID) could not keep up with the Master replication _and_ service SELECT queries. The data was too big for RAM (filesort) and the drives were not fast enough (2 drives mirrored). The Master is dual PIII 2Ghz, 2GB RAM , and fast RAID 5 hardware.
I ended up solving the problem with a hardware upgrade. I replaced all 4 servers with 1 Quad-Opteron 1.8GHz, 16 GB RAM, and _VERY_ Fast RAID 10 across 9 fast drives.
Please feel free to check it out. For the first time in a long time, I'm not affraid that the MySQL server will be the bottlenect in this very dynamic web site.
We use Linux, Apache 1.3.x, MySQL 4.0.x, and PHP 4.x to build the pages and generate XML to our Flash MX applications.
Superdudes.Net
Flash heavy signt. Free registration required to access the coolest features (those which beat up the MySQL server).
[Full disclosure - my company provides co-location services for williamshatner.com.]
I would have agreed with you completely until I saw the G4 based Titanium PowerBook. Obviously there are ways to mange the heat other than with big fans.