Let's discuss server structures/configurations... What does it take to handle traffic like digg.com? For how much? What does it take to handle 20 requests/second? Is there a point at which you have to drop PHP? Or are there tricks to optimize it, may be precompile it? Should you have your database on a separate server and have like 2 or 3 front end servers deal with the visitors, having cached as much as possible? I'm trying to incorporate this in my business plan for mid term expansion. Hopefully the gurus around here can enlighten us n00bs on this.
Bueller? I suppose there are barely any people using dedicated servers having spare time to explain, let alone using more than 1 server for the same site.
I've got a site that uses a cluser of 5 servers. PHP and MySQL can handle the growth just fine as long as you build your code and structure your database for scale. Really the key to my setup is using one master sql server for inserts, deletes, and such while select queries are handled across the entire cluster. It makes sense because there are far for reads fro ma database than writes in most cases. Each site and situation are different.
What would be the right forum? I looked and this was the only place where I found people asking for what's a good dedicated server...