What are the server specificiations required for a fullstack website?

Question

We currently have a DDR3 16gb RAM, a Intel Xeon E3 1241 3.50GHZ, and few HDDs and looking for an upgrade. I think our bottle neck is the RAM hence I suggested an upgrade to 32gb DDR4 and replacing the HDDs with SSDs because why not. But the problem comes with the CPU. My supervisor suggests to upgrade the CPU too as he thinks this is not enough by current standards. But our server hosts 1 website(express backend and react website along with a sql database) which serves around 8000 people at peak load which is rare. Any advise on whether the CPU upgrade is needed or not? I am asking this here as I am now knowledgeable enough to make a decision.Edit: Is a threadripper even recommended in this case?

t312227 · Accepted Answer

hello,i suppose, you do have a graphing solution running for your system!?so just look at it - and learn to "read" / interpret it -, please ...nobody can tell you a lot about your own server-systems performance / resource needs and therefore "best" areas of investment to achieve improvements than you as the person who runs the platform ... using decent (monitoring)tools.if you don't have such a graphing-solution in place - install one right now() ... seriously ;))... nobody really cares if its "good old" / (ancient) munin - very easy to install - or something "more modern" like prometheus plus a dashboard like grafana.what counts is the insight you get from such a solution into your system / application / service(s) ...just my 0.02&euro;ps. imho. in doubt invest in ram / io / cpu ... in that order and in a "balanced" fashion & new hardware also improves the availability of a system.pps. and for example: reuse the old hardware as your monitoring system ... if you have none.

wmf · Answer

Measure, don't guess. https://www.brendangregg.com/USEmethod/use-linux.html