Followup on my web server

Just a followup on this post I made a little while back about my plans for replacing my web server. I replaced it about 2 weeks ago now and I am only now getting around to writing about it. What can I say? I've been busy.

I used old parts I had laying around because I really couldn't justify spending money on a new server at this point in time but still felt I needed it. This was a compromise. I ended up with this:

• P4 2.6ghz with hyper-threading
• 1gb (2gb soon) DDR-400
• 40gb system drive
• 160gb data drive

It seems like only a modest improvement over what I had before, but it is definitely noticeable. The improvement is most apparent with VMware Server, which I am using to host 4 virtual servers concurrently to handle other websites I host. I am still running my own sites on the hyper-visor.

The coolest thing about getting the new server though is that I now have a fully redundant backup in the old server. I use shell scripts and cron to keep the web root, Apache configuration, and databases synchronized. I could have used MySQL replication, but in the end I determined it to be of little value to me relative to the difficulty of setting up and maintaining it. I'll post my scripts below for others to use, should they have similar ideas. Sorry, had to gzip them, Drupal was throwing 403's with the shell files.

In conclusion, I didn't end up with a shiny new server, but at least this one is newer, and outperforms it's predecessor by a healthy margin.