Server hardware upgrade suggestions needed.
 

i currently have 1 pretty large site... www.ratemybottom.com i'm running my-huge.cnf I'm not having to many problems but at night things become slow and its not uncommon to have a mysql too many connections error.

My question is should I get more ram (go from 2gig to 3gig) or should I consider getting another dedicated server for mysql only? If so, what should the specs of that server be?

Should I

A)
- Dual Xeon 2.4Ghz
- 2 x 120GB Drives
- 2048MB RAM
- 20Mbps Unmetered Bandwidth
dual processor being the improvement

B) keep current server and increase to 3gigs
- 2.8GHz Pentium 4
- 2 x 120GB Drives
- 2048MB RAM
- 20Mbps Unmetered Bandwidth

C) get a second server for Mysql only with following specs... (please list)

I also have about 15 other small sites on the server as well. And the server load is showing Server Load 6.27 (2 cpus) (flashing red).

thanks in advance

..and how much traffic are you getting? doesnt look like much.

Definitely go for the dual xeons

On a side note we offer Mysql acceleration via db optimization with our hosting service, we can identify table changes that need to be made and rewrite slow queries.

We have MySQL based sites running at over 100Mbps on a single 2GB Xeon

Up your system memory. Then adjust these values:

net_buffer_length=8K
max_connections=1000
max_connect_errors=5000
key_buffer=768M
max_allowed_packet=2M
table_cache=2048
sort_buffer_size=2M
read_buffer_size=2M
thread_cache=64
thread_concurrency=8
myisam_sort_buffer_size=64M
wait_timeout=300
delayed_queue_size=10000
query_cache_size=96M
query_cache_type=1

As you get more memory up the key_buffer. It should be around 1/3rd your system memory. I would go for 4GB ram if you can and up the key_buffer to 1024M. To get it tweaked better I would need to see the "mysqladmin extended" info. Also if this is a custom design you should make sure you have proper indexing.

Brad