Hi, i am starting a social networking site, and it is nearly complete and now im starting to get the server situtation taken care of. I dont know very much about servers, and everything so i need some help, and i have a few questions. Basically i need help deciding how the database structure should be set up to get the best performance. I expect my site to grow very fast within a few months so i want to be able to add on new database servers, and web serves pretty easily. Heres what im planning on doing now for the servers: Purchasing 3 dell poweredege 1950 dual core servers. I will use 1 of them as a database server, and use two as the web servers. I will have these colocated at a datacenter (have not decided which one) and i will have 100mbps bandwidth/connection. This is what people have suggested for me. Does this sound like a good set up? This is what i plan on using right from the start, and is it prety simple to add more servers on, such as web servers and database servers. Also would i need any other special storage devices to store all the mp3's, pictures, and videos that the users will be posting on the site? Or would i just need to get servers with a bigger hard disk? If you can help me in any way, id really appreciate it. Thanks, Alot
Well I think you already have prepared very well. I don't know how big this site is going to be, but I think these 3 servers should be enough in the first stage of the site. Also read some articles about 'database normalization' if you haven't done already. A harddisk with more storage space isn't really expensive so I should go for it. But keep in mind the structure of your site and the quality of your code can help a lot.
Somewhere between you and Atlantic City, is a hosting company that uses almost exclusively Dell equipment. The main data centers they use are in the Washington, DC area. They have 24x7 tech support staff. If you are interested, shoot me a pm and I will put you in touch. .
Nice! I like these along with the 2650's. We have hundreds of these that work very well without any major issues. You might want to consider those extra hard drives as a data centre might charge you for extra space if it came to using external storage.
The current load balanced solution you have will be more than enough to start out with in terms of performance, assuming you have an enterprise type database on the backend. You will need several large hard disk drives possibly setup RAID 1 or 5 for redundancy. Then later move to a larger NAS type solution for storage needs. You might want to read the casestudy about the technical requirements myspace.com faced and the various milestones.
Just start with one hi spec server. That'll be less overkill to start with. Hire a reputable server management provider, and have them prepare migrations and conversion setups. This will save you some money - and if you don't know anything about servers, you'll need management. Especially for backups and security. Concerning media storage: consider SCSI drives - at least RAID1, and no IDE drives. BTW: colocation is expensive. Perhaps you should consider rent to own ... or simply leasing these at a datacenter. And... is it a dedicated 100Mbps uplink or shared? There is a big difference - but I am sure you are aware of this.