First, I'd like to address the problems in the past week.... we had a log running on the server, which wasnt supposed to be running.... this file finally built up to about 80 gigs which caused the primary drive partition to be full... thus causing some major problems with the database. It ends up that it was this same thing causing other similar problems within the past month, but I didnt realize exactly what was going on. This issue is now resolved and shouldnt happen again.
As a result of the problem late last week... I ended up having to do work on the DB to make sure everything was OK,.. however, although it said it was... it seems over the last few days (while I was away) the DB was having 'connection failures'. Usually when this happens, if it happens, the DB and the webserver just need to be shutdown and restarted.... and I just did that about 20 minutes ago... so far, no 'connection failures', so unless I start getting more email from the DB (yes, it sends me email for EVERY error)... we should be good to go.
On the issue of the new server.... I said it then, and I'll say it now... when we set out to replace the old server, I also said that once tour time approached we made need to add another additional server (not a replacement) because of high-traffic times. This still maybe the case.
There is no magic bullet. The more infrastructure we have, the more it will be used. This is, and has, always the case.