Hardware and performance

This is the process I used (fill in your own values for YourUserName, YourDatabaseServer, YourMoodleDatabaseName and SomeDumpFileName.dump )

1. Backup mysql database:

• mysqldump -uYourUserName -p -hYourDatabaseServer YourMoodleDatabaseName >SomeDumpFileName.dump

Connect to mysql using command line client:

• mysql -uYourUserName -p -hYourDatabaseServer YourMoodleDatabaseName

Update the database's character set:

• alter database character set = 'utf8' collate='utf8_general_ci';

If you're not sure of the values to fill in, you can get them from your old config.php

Good luck!
-Nate