Should I use a 32 or 64 bit server?

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What are the limitations of using a 32-bit linux server?

Is it worth the trouble to setup a 64-bit server if the site will not be huge?

Just to clarify, this would be a dedicated server for running askbot.

We're talking about roughly 1,500 users (not concurrent!) and maybe 10K questions.

I suspect that 32-bit would be fine for my particular scenario

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Benoit

updated 2010-09-30 07:26:54 -0600, asked 2010-09-29 14:21:59 -0600

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I frankly don't know at how many visitors per day you absolutely need the 64 bit. For a small team you won't need the 64 bit server.

Evgeny (2010-09-29 14:50:13 -0600) edit

You can try on 32 bit, see how it works and if necessary - transfer data onto a bigger server. There is nothing in the askbot code that requires 64 or 32 bit so it will work fine on both.

Evgeny (2010-09-30 12:12:35 -0600) edit

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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.