Currently having problems with long download times and occasionally pacsone becoming unavailable if several people are trying to download at the same time. We are trying to decide if it would be better to upgrade our current pc or if a new computer with a dual or quad processor would be a better investment.
Current pc: CPU: Pentium 4 3.0 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 144 GB Hard Drive. I have looked at FAQ #15 for suggested hardware optimizations for MySQL Database and we could increase the RAM on our current system (to 3 ($96), 5($254) or 8 GB ($507)), however it does not support EEC memory. We could also add a RAID disk (2TB, $1100).
Alternatively, we could purchase a new computer with dual or quad processor, at least 4 GB RAM and a RAID disk. What would make the most sense?
Hardware upgrade versus new computer pruchase
PacsOne actually uses very little CPU or RAM resources during the network (Dicom) transfer of images to remote AEs, so if you find the bottleneck is during the Dicom network transfer to/from remtoe AEs, then it may be more worthwile to invest in network upgrade instead of server upgrades, e.g., upgrade the LAN to Gigabit Ethernet or even 10-GigE, etc.
PacsOne becomes CPU/RAM intensive when users click on the <Download> button from the PacsOne web pages to download patients/studies/series/images into zip files. If you suspect the bottleneck is during the web downloading of zip files, you can verify this by watching the CPU/RAM usage on the server during the downloads. If the CPU/RAM usage approaches 100%, it'll be worthwhile to upgrade the server hardware with the following general guidelines:
1. Multiple CPUs are always better than a single CPU
2. For each CPU, multiple cores are always better than a single core.
3. Faster CPUs are always better than slower CPUs.
4. Faster RAM is always better than slower RAM.
5. More RAM is always better than less RAM.
6. ECC RAM is better than non-ECC RAM.
7. Faster disks are always better than slow disks.
Given the above guidelines, quad-CPU, 4 GB of ECC RAM should be sufficient and the server should perform much better than the current Pentium 4/1 GB of RAM.
PacsOne becomes CPU/RAM intensive when users click on the <Download> button from the PacsOne web pages to download patients/studies/series/images into zip files. If you suspect the bottleneck is during the web downloading of zip files, you can verify this by watching the CPU/RAM usage on the server during the downloads. If the CPU/RAM usage approaches 100%, it'll be worthwhile to upgrade the server hardware with the following general guidelines:
1. Multiple CPUs are always better than a single CPU
2. For each CPU, multiple cores are always better than a single core.
3. Faster CPUs are always better than slower CPUs.
4. Faster RAM is always better than slower RAM.
5. More RAM is always better than less RAM.
6. ECC RAM is better than non-ECC RAM.
7. Faster disks are always better than slow disks.
Given the above guidelines, quad-CPU, 4 GB of ECC RAM should be sufficient and the server should perform much better than the current Pentium 4/1 GB of RAM.