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Have read how large scale sites use different servers for different purpose. Here's what I have in mind:

  • Main app - 1 server
  • Database - 1 server
  • Static files - Cloud hosting (e.g. AWS)
  • Backup - 1 server

    1. What is the industrial arrangement for good load balancing, speed and performance?
    2. What setup is used for each of the above server? E.g. nginx is best for static server.
    3. What hardware is recommended for each server?


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closed as not constructive by Lucas Kauffman, Tom O'Connor, womble, kce, Iain Apr 3 '12 at 6:52


As I quote @Iain: "How long is a piece of string?" –  Lucas Kauffman Apr 3 '12 at 6:17
Also, TripIt.com beat you to it. If qhuen.com was the Large Site you mentioned? –  Tom O'Connor Apr 3 '12 at 6:27
@Tom O'Connor - I did not say I own large sites. I just want to know what is the industrial practice. Please stop being sarcastic. –  Victor Apr 3 '12 at 6:27
I'm english. It's a natural response. –  Tom O'Connor Apr 3 '12 at 6:33
This question is off-topic. It's overly broad, theoretical and lacks the sufficient detail required to give a good answer. Please review the FAQ. –  kce Apr 3 '12 at 6:51
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1 Answer

I can't (and won't) make recommendations on hardware or software specifics.

What I will say is that for a truly redundant and resilient cluster, I like N+1 redundancy. Ideally N+N.

So, that's 2 routers. 2 firewalls, 2 switches, 2 load balancers, 2 database masters, 2 database slaves, 2 memcached nodes, 2 NoSQL nodes, 2 webservers, 2 storage NAS heads, 2 SAN switches, 2 FC disk arrays (and so on).

Ideally replace 2 with 4, 6, 8 and so on.

Not so much how long is a piece of string, but how expansive is a web of strings?

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