hummm.. okay. I dont need this one. I looked at the device that binds two connections, so even if one goes down you are still up with the other one.
Yes... the reason I got two of them is one can be used as a hot spare (if something happens to the primary, the hot spare automatically takes over).
Just doubled my donation (not that it amounts to much, but anyway ). Must be frustrating to sit with all that hardware and no RAM
Goodie. How much users do you think the forum will be able to hold without server problems (under new servers)?
Hard to say for sure since the forum is a small part of what the servers do (ad network, geo visitors, keyword tracker, etc.) If the ratio of all the services being used stays the same, I would guess we will have 10-15x more traffic across everything without any problems. For the forum, that would equate to being able to handle 25,000 users on the forum at once and 70,000 posts/day... so I think we should be good for quite awhile.
Shawn, I'm very curious about this. If I understand corectly, you will use this to balance load on your web servers. In this case, am I right if I say that all those web servers will use a single mysql server (or a cluster) ? I mean, the way I imagine it is having multiple web servers that will reduce php's load and the connection nunmber but will use the gigabit or 10 gigabit link to connect to your mysql cluster/server... Please clarify this for me.. and also tell me if it's not a secret an average price for that equalizer..
Right... it will be a bunch of web servers using a single database server (well actually in my case, I'm going to setup a cluster of database servers). So yes... you can ultimately serve out more requests for a single site by routing stuff through a load balancer, and then to whatever web server is least loaded to handle the request. As far as cost, it depends on the load balancer. The one I purchased (this one) says it can handle 8,000,000 concurrent connections/users. So that certainly should be enough for me. You can find cheaper ones that handle less of course too. The list price on mine I think is $8,000... so $16,000 for 2 (I got 2 so the 2nd one can be configured as a "hot spare". If the load balancer goes down, the 2nd one automatically takes it's place.). I found them for cheaper than "list price" though. I paid $10,709.37 for 2 of them (that includes shipping and all that).
That looks like my basement where I store my bazillions of christmas lights ... ;-) Yes, that is a DELL box above an HP box in front of the HULK pictured below and I think the Sun-280 box is hidden to the left of those. That deer likes to hang out with Christmas flamingo's. Note also the Century Car Seat Box ... and thankfully we no longer need to buy Pampers!