Hardware and performance

Daniel, when you say "cable modem" do you mean running your server on a cable modem? That might be okay for small-scale testing (assuming your provider allows it), but isn't likely to be satisfactory for production use.

You are probably better off using an commercial hosting service than building your own server if your server's connection to the web is a cable modem.

If you want to run your own server from your office or home, I'd suggest first getting at least a T-1 (or at least something with at least 5mbs upstream), then shop for a server.

768 kbs upstream, you might as well use a used old P2 for the server, because you won't be able to deliver enough content at that rate to tax a P2 (heck you'd probably be ok with a P1. Certainly a $499 rack server would be alot more than plenty for that.

We ran 5 or so courses ~100 users, on a G3 400, without taxing it, when we started with Moodle 1.1 a few years back, but that was on a 10Mbs connection.

Many commercial hosts will lease you your own server with 100Mbs or better connections, for ~$60/month, which is probably a better route to getting started with (or just do a shared host for ~10-$20/month, ezoshosting.com for instance has been fairly decent for a few recent projects).

Dear Daniel,

I agree with others that your connection is most important, not the server hardware itself.  That said, for our university (using 10mbs LAN) we just built a server from parts and found we could do it very cheap (under USD$1000) and very fast.   Here is what we used.  Keep in mind there are only **TWO** important components for a server--memory and processor.  We spendt 70% of our money on that.

-  Intel 3.2ghz Pentium    $300

-  2 GB RAM memory    $400

-  DVD-RW  (for daily backups)    $60

-  80 GB hard disk    $60

-  Fast Motherboard (sorry forgot spec here)    $120

-  Case and miscellaneous stuff   $80

Adding a used moniter, keyboard and mouse, we are very happy with this setup for the past two months.  We can handle 1000 users in the school or over 200 users online simultaneously.  Note also, we used LInux but no PHP accelerator, which will improve performance significantly.