[kwlug-disc] low tech traffic splitting

Khalid Baheyeldin kb at 2bits.com
Wed Feb 17 14:12:36 EST 2010


Is this a dynamic application (scripting language + database queries)?

If so then: Caching, caching and more caching ...

The page that will be on Slashdot/Digg would ideally be a flat HTML, or
something similar (e.g. memcached). This bypasses all the dynamic stuff and
you can serve it in 10-20 milliseconds flat per request. Many applications
have a dynamic -> static automatic builder of one sort or another ...

The other part is traffic. If you are in a good datacenter, I would not
worry too much about it, since you already are connected to a wide pipe. I
have been Slashdotted on a few occasions and this is not a concern.  On the
other hand, if you are on a residential asymmetric link, your "upload" speed
would not be enough.

Syncing 2 web heads is more painful than just one server, and incurs
overheads in additional complexity and performance. So avoid it if you can.
KISS works best ...

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Insurance Squared Inc. <
gcooke at insurancesquared.com> wrote:

> If we're trying to preplan for getting slashdotted on our webservers,
> what's the best low tech way to handle that?  I've got two identical
> webservers I can light up, but don't know how to share traffic, sync, etc.
>  I suspect some type of clustering is the answer in linux these days, but I
> don't even know what that really is :).
>
-- 
Khalid M. Baheyeldin
2bits.com, Inc.
http://2bits.com
Drupal optimization, development, customization and consulting.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability. --  Edsger W.Dijkstra
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. --   Leonardo da Vinci
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