title: Geographic redundancy and MySQL replication
body: <p>I has a fairly simple site getting 200K hits/day (3-5 hits/sec) using a LAMP configuration.  The host is somewhat flaky (read: cheap), so we want to add a 2nd host for guaranteed uptime (I wouldn't call this mission critical, but more annoyance-prevention).</p>
  
  <p>MySQL is idling at about 200 qps, spiking for 450 at times.</p>
  
  <p>I have some experience with master-master and maatkit setup, so I was going to duplicate the site in a 2nd location, use master-master replication, and validate the data with maatkit and monitoring slave-lag, etc.</p>
  
  <p>However, in reading all the dire warnings about this setup, I'm trying to assess if this is the right move.  What's an alternative architecture?</p>
  
  <p>Additional question:  Say you have 2 servers, one on the east coast, and one on the west coast.  What's a reasonable strategy for load balancing the database for those?  Would you have the west coast apache server access mysql on the east coast?  Is that really an option?  I thought the latencies would kill the performance...</p>
  
  <p>Any thoughts?
  TIA
  Mike</p>