[thelist] testing with a dedicated server

[Bob Meetin]

I'm mostly satisfied, as are my clients, with shared hosting at 
hostgator.  There are times, however, when I see response time go lean 
at least momentarily.  it could be 10 various variables having 
little/nothing to do with hosting, but it is what it is.  Dedicated 
hosting runs about $175/mo at hostgator, less at some others depending 
on what you get. 

Option A: I would like to be able to run some comparison tests to 
satisfy peace of mind without sacrificing arm/leg $$ which at HG 
requires a 3 month commitment.  Does anyone on this list have a 
dedicated server account where they would be willing to offer me a 
folder and preferably SSH access to run some tests for no more than 2 
weeks.  Of course I would share my results with the group.

Option B: If anyone has already done such tests with any of the common 
CMS systems such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla and has results on page 
load performance or can even point me to some nice comparisons that 
might also help.

Aside from my regular projects I have a looming project which is like to 
involve some substantial cpu processing in queries - searches through 
many thousands of db records - and I'm a little concerned with speed.

Bob