Goal:
Local web development server for two people.
Server Purpose:
Developing framework-sized PHP sites.
Technology:
PHP/PHP-FMM, Postgres, Nginx/Apache, Composer, Symfony, WordPress
Context:
tl;dr: Do I put money into number of cores or core processing speed?
Virtualization is nice but I've ran into performance issues with larger projects. My current project had to transition from Vagrant to setting up some Ubuntu servers that run 1-3 devs/sites a piece. The performance was out of this world.
Eventually this project will end and we won't get to keep the boxes. Another dev and I have been toying with the idea of building our own. The company we work doesn't care so that's not an issue. The thing is we don't know where to best spend our money for the best PHP performance.
Originally, the plan was to build a box with basic desktop parts. A quad-core i7, 16GB RAM, and a SSD. Then somebody pointed me to servermonkey.com and I realized I could get a couple Zeon quad-cores for the same price but a lower GHz.
We had hoped to stay at or under $500 and run Ubuntu since that's what we know the best. Security isn't much of an issue as it will be an internal-only box. Backup/RAID isn't either since everything we code lives in Git. We are basically looking for the most horsepower for our money. Yeah, a super original request.
I figure it comes down to one of two things:
- Number of cores
- Clock speed
So, is the a general guideline where PHP (and the other technologies) gets the best return?
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