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xenji's avatar
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xenji
answered 2010-09-30 01:37:53 -0600

This decision depends on a few aspects of your goals on running a server.

  • What kind of service will run on the server? How much RAM will this service consume, even in a scaled scenario (10, 100, 1000, 10,000 concurrent user). Do you need more than 4 Gbytes of RAM? -> 64bit or use a 32bit PAE Kernel if available (Ubuntu and Debian both have a (PAE) BigMEM Kernel available)

  • What kind of math operations will be present? Do you need a high precision or calculate complex things? -> 64bit.

  • Do you need to run a database server? In most cases, DB server do a lot of their work in your RAM and they do complex math ops. Go 64bit, be ready for the future.

BUT!

  • Be sure that everything you need is available in 64bit version. Combining both worlds leads to a disadvantage. If anything is not available in 64bit, check the consequences.