[eluser]IgnitedCoder[/eluser]
Awesome thanks for sharing this, I love to hear things like this... More folks should know about this because I've seen debates and questions asked about CI's overall ability to handle a heavy load.
I setup nginx+php-fpm and mysql on a server with 1 gig of ram in the cloud for a client and it can handle 12000 requests per second, in fact in the first 7 days it had nearly 6 million hits after their re-launch.
Considering that Nginx powers several high-visibility sites, such as WordPress, Hulu, Github, Ohloh, SourceForge and TorrentReactor. And scaling's a piece of cake.