Do I have enough memory?

[LarryJB]

I have Dell Optiplex GX280 with 512meg memory. I was wanting an opinion as to whether this is enough memory for my server.
I will be using the server to stream video which will probably involve transcoding. It seems to me that I do need more memory, but I don't want to do it unless it will help performance.

[Ian]

Hi Larry,

My advice would be "suck it and see". If you install a VNC frontend then you will get an equivalent of Windows Task Manager where you can see exactly how hard your server is working. If you find that it's maxing out on memory and/or stuttering then you can buy more memory. A quick bit of googling suggests that you can pick up an extra 1GB for around £15 so it won't exactly break the bank if you do need it

Ian.

[Wingsigmortic]

My gut instinct says you will need more that 512. When I SSH into mine, my "landscape" shows me using ~1.5 gig after 2 days ( minimal usage, no transcoding..etc. ) if you do manage to run with 512, you should probably make sure the Boot disk has plenty of storage for Swap.

I'm not saying it's not going to work, but you might have some slowness with somethings. ( could also use "top" to view the Swap and Mem usage )
* Top Might say it is using more than it is actively using, Making this hard to accurately track down, but SWAP number might give a good idea.

~Wingsigmortic