Re: [PHP] Scalable Site Architecture

On Wed, May 9, 2007 2:10 pm, bruce wrote:
> In looking for what's required fo a site, I'm trying to find
> docs/overview/mentors to talk to/etc,...
>
> Basically, I'm considering what's required in terms of
> hardware/apps/functionality for each server to be able to support a
> site/system of ~100,000/day

100,000 hits, page views, or people?

Very different numbers there.

And what is the site DOING On the back end?

Rocket science?
Lots of DB writes like an auction site?
Mostly DB reads like a 'zine?

Serving up images like Flickr?

Or just text snippets?

You have to define a lot more to get down to useful info about the
"best" architecture, and even then, you'll be listening to
diametrically opposed ideas from "experts" on which direction to take,
so be prepared to do a lot of small-scale testing and thinking and
make decisions with your gut and...

> i'm considering:
> http server
> app server (single/multiple)
> db server

Presumable http server versus app server means "static" versus
"dynamic"? If not, add "static server" in for images as well.

Make sure that you can scale each of those out into multiple machines
for each -- a pool of http servers behind one IP, a pool of app
servers behind another IP, a pool of sync-ed database servers behind
another IP.

That way, if it turns out that you simply can't handle the volume with
one computer, you can just buy more hardware to throw at it. :-)

> Is there someone I can actually talk to who's actually been involved
> with
> the architecting/implemenation of this kind of structure.

If you are paying, there are probably lots of people. :-)

If not, there are probably very few people. But LOTS of articles, and
books, and white papers, and...

There's the Flickr site book, for example, which is buried under
papers on my desk, but might be of use.

You could also check with this company:
http://hostedlabs.com
who has an interesting model of taking care of most of the nasty
infrastructure for scalable sites for you, while you focus on the app
code, mostly.

It's not "cheap" but it's far more affordable than hiring a full-time
IT guru.

Disclosure:
I'm a satisfied customer of hostedLabs at my day job.
YMMV

> Any really good pointers that someone can point me to to get well
> versed in
> this area.

The thing is, you probably can't absorb all of it and make sense of it
in a short amount of time...

That's kinda why they call it "experience" :-)


You also want to look at what tools developers use to test their
performance.

Rasmus swears by valgrind/callgrind.

Others love Apache benchmark (ab).

Still others love SuperSmack. (I am not making this name up)

You definitely are going to need to invest in duplicate hardware for
your QA server / production server, if nothing else.

--
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