I have a server running CentOS 4.2 that works as a web/email with very heavy load. It runs Directadmin web gui which is like Cpanel. It runs on a cheapy mATX motherboard(ECS 741GX-M) with socket A 2800+ CPU and 2Gbyte DDR. The OS and data are on a 300Gbyte PATA maxtor drive and data backups are run weekly to another PATA drive. The server is overwelmed and data backups take over 5 hours to complete. I have a Tyan(K8E) server board now that is socket 939 with SATA support. Maxtor makes a utillity that will copy there drives so I bought a second identical PATA drive and plan on copying it so if I screw something up it will be a backup copy and not the critical original.
My first question is can I simply plug this drive into the new faster
motherboard and have it just boot up and run?
Next, should I get a dual core CPU or just a fast single core? Most
of the load on this server is due to Spamassassin dealing with about 2000 email accounts. Although it also serves up websites that is pretty minor load I beleive since they do not get all that many hits.
I was told up2date will update this server too 4.4. Problem is that
the Directadmin GUI is a bit touchy. Any modifications to the services its married to could be bad. I really need to talk to there tech support on this.
My new server motherboard is socket 939 and supports DDR 400. It was
a bargin off ebay but appears to work fine. Would I be better off getting a socket AM2 that supports DDR2 or will that make much difference in performance? The 939 motherboard supports a max of 4Gbyte DDR too.
I also purchased a Seagate SATA 500Gbyte drive. The 300G PATA drive
is just under half full. I imagine mostly email. Mailboxes for the most part have 50M cap but there alot of them and still adding more. Is there anyway to copy the OS installed on the PATA to a larger and faster SATA drive? I am doubting this since the drives place/mnt in /dev will change. I know the best solution is to install CentOS 4.4 on new box, install Directadmin, and then backup and restore to new server but that will result in substantial downtime that I am trying to get out off. Plus a lot of work. The Directadmin install has been heavilly customized and I will need to remember what I all did to it. Actually I may still do that but I would like to move to a faster motherboard first so just maybe the backups run faster. Thanks for any help or advice. Matthew _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@xxxxxxxxxx http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
