I am not able to answer all of your question, but here is some information that might be useful.

Each node of the cluster has identical hardware and software:

--Two, 2.26Hz Quad Core Intel CPUs (a total of eight cores, no hyperthreading)

--24GB RAM

--Two, locally-attached RAID 1 arrays (array 1 holds the system files and SQL Server binaries, and array 2 is used to make local backups, before they are moved off the server)

--Two, RAID 10 SAN arrays (array 1 holds the MDF files, and array 2 holds the LDF files)

--One, RAID 1 SAN array (used exclusively for tempdb)

--Windows 2008 (64-bit)

--SQL Server 2008 (64-bit)

In regard to the process that invokes the first two queries, essentially it is any page view on the SQLServerCentral.com website. I am not exactly sure what invokes the last two queries, but I will ask our web developer (who did not write this code) to see if he can figure it out.

In regards to server load, the webserver get about 120,000 to 150,000 page views during a typical business day, with most of them occuring during the day.

Here are some stats on the number of rows in some of the key tables:

AnalysisLog: 1,651,589 rows

cs_posts: 24,671 rows

cs_Sections: 97 rows

cs_weblog_weblogs: 89 rows

In regard to a "budget" or timeframe for making improvements, I am not going to disclose this, other to say that we do have a full-time developer for the website (who has a lot of work already on his hands), and that adding to the existing hardware would be difficult (except RAM), as the equipment is under a lease. For the assumptions of the contest, assume the hardware will remain the same, although we might be able to get some developement time allocated.