best dedicated server settings for speed and performance?

[zoldos]

I'm now running a fully dedicated server with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Plesk Obsidian 18 with the below stats/settings:

8 core Intel Xeon CPU E3-1230 v3 @ 3.30GHz
32GB DDR3 RAM
2x2TB Raid SATA III
PHP 8.0.28, Dedicated FPM app served by nginx
1GB bandwidth

PHP FPM Settings:

Max Children: 75
Max Requests: Default
pm: dynamic
pm.start_servers: 10
pm.min_spare_servers: 5
pm.max_spare_servers: 20

I also use ngnix and op cache.

It's very fast, but sometimes takes 4 or 5 seconds to load a page, or post an animated GIF. Is this normal? I can understand on a shared server.

What can I do to make it respond faster? Thanks!

 

[rdn]

$47 per month for an HDD is not cheap

Here's what I got from https://eco.ovhcloud.com last month

• CPU - Intel Xeon E3-1245 V2
• Memory - 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (4x8)
• Storage - 1.9 TB SSD (2x960)
• Public bandwidth - 1Gbps upload & download (normally just 100Mbps, just got lucky to have 1Gbps)
• Price - $15.99 USD per month

And now running:

Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Nginx 1.24.0
PHP 8.2.6
MariaDB 10.6.12
ElasticSearch 7.17.10
Redis 6.0.16

 

[fly]

Yeah, that's pretty pricey these days.

 

[TPerry]

Here's what I got from https://eco.ovhcloud.com last month

Honestly... at the "prices" of many of the SSD offerings... I'll simply stick with my VPS from Hetzner (even with shared CPU) for a "whole' $16USD a month (4vpu/8GB RAM/160GB storage).
The SyS prices (and offerings) are much better than the base level KimSufi (which usually suck).
The base NVMe offerings are WELL beyond that $16 USD a month cost that I pay... and honestly... I'm not going to waste the money on spinning platter personally, when I can simply pay that difference for R2 storage.
If my site ever gets "big"... yeah, I'll be willing to invest $250-$300US a month into a server as a hobby... but honestly, for me, I don't see that happening anytime soon since my niche is so small. A decent SyS instance is almost $50 a month... for about $20, I can easily use R2 and gain more than adequate storage and still be around $20 ahead.... the simple fact is, not everybody needs dedicated hard iron. Doing sufficient research and deciding on a VPS (shared or dedicated CPU's) can frequently provide what one needs.

 

[zoldos]

$47 per month for an HDD is not cheap

Here's what I got from https://eco.ovhcloud.com last month

• CPU - Intel Xeon E3-1245 V2
• Memory - 32 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 (4x8)
• Storage - 1.9 TB SSD (2x960)
• Public bandwidth - 1Gbps upload & download (normally just 100Mbps, just got lucky to have 1Gbps)
• Price - $15.99 USD per month

And now running:

I didn't see any server for $15.99 there. The cheapest US dedicated server with an SSD (NVMe) is $58 with 2x450GB RAID and 250 meg connection......

 

[zoldos]

Anyway, I have everything tweaked, and the site is much faster and more responsive, even with the standard HDDs.

Thanks for everyone's help!