NYCPHP Meetup

[Mitch Pirtle]

I wouldn't call that horizontally scalable though, as you would also
need to scale at the load balancer / database layer.  This is when
things get really complicated - but with smart proxies like pound
(http://www.apsis.ch/pound/) and database-driven session storage such
as what is provided by ADOdb (http://adodb.sf.net/) it is not nearly
as difficult as it was in the past.

What I have seen in the past - working on high-traffic websites at
least - was that scaling the application layer was a piece of cake;
and scaling the database was complicated enough that instead of
installing many cheap/commodity servers (like at the application
level) they always ended up getting two monster machines.

And with quad-processor opterons as affordable as they are now, I am
thinking that is just fine ;-)

I remember running a very heavy site on a single mysql box, dual
pentium 333s with the DPT controller (slowest controller on the
planet); and that was when they were getting something like 10 million
visitors daily.  Man, how different life would have looked with a quad
opteron back there!

-- Mitch

On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 18:54:51 -0500, Matthew Terenzio
<webmaster at localnotion.com> wrote:
> So would this be an example of a legit type of set up:
> 
>                             LOad Balancer
>                                         |
>                                         |
>                                         |
>               PHP           PHP         PHP       PHP      PHP
> 
>                 |                 |             |            |             |
>                 \                 \                  |            /             /
> 
>                                         Database