[Discuss] SVN server - What hardware do I need?

[greg at freephile.com (Greg Rundlett (freephile))]

I'm working on replacing an existing Subversion server.  Does anyone have
specific guidelines for the best hardware configuration for such a service?

http://www.svnforum.org/threads/41227-SVN-server-best-hardware says that a
fast disk and plenty of RAM for Apache are the chief concerns.

Currently running
SVN 1.7.5
RHEL 5.8
22 repositories
~30k revisions
~80 users
33.56GB total in repos
FSFS backend storage
file:/// access method, changing that to Apache over SSL

Of course I'm going to upgrade the OS.  And I'm going to update gcc

Many of the developers are remote, and use VNC to get onto the box, and do
their checkouts and builds locally on that one machine.  One
"performance" improvement may come from using NX instead of VNC, as I've
heard the former is even more responsive than the latter.  A checkout of
the source to do a build is non-trivial:  it's about 6GB of files.  But,
assuming that a developer has those files, the real performance drag is
waiting for that code to compile for 15+ minutes.  I'm not familiar with
performance optimization in building C code, so I'm all ears for those
tips. I'm even wondering if gcc can tell me what code is unused in the
project (and therefore could be removed).

By separating the build environment from the subversion host, I believe
that we can get better performance and manageability.
CollabNet SubversionEdge on Box A = Apache + subversion + repo browser
Jira Bug tracker on Box B (or possibly on Box A)
Build Server with more CPU+cores on Box C

Thanks,

Greg Rundlett