Sites across Multiple servers

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
[quote author="RS71" date="1237630070"]Please excuse my lack of knowledge on the subject but phil, when you're talking about having two connections, would it be to the same DB server?[/quote]

Phil was describing a scenario using two databases.

I'm coding a web app/site at the moment and I expect to have traffic at about 29k to 180k daily accesses within couple months.

You're right - it depends very much on a bunch of things you haven't told us, and you probably don't know yet. Other Big Things include - page size, number of db queries per page, how excellent (or not) your code is, etc.

180k access a day works out to less than 3 a second. A laptop might be sufficient.

Also, how often (or how do I determine how often) should I backup my database?

The question can be answered with another question - how much data can you afford to lose?

[eluser]philpalmieri[/eluser]
RS71, if you are expecting that much growth in jst a few months, what are you expecting in a year? I would suggest that you just get one decent server Dual Core, 2-4 Gigs ram, 100gb etc. And fine tune it to run your site. A properly setup machine with php5, mysql5, apache2 etc.. can handle A LOT.

Then when you are ready to grow, buy your second machine, get a load balancer, and setup DB replication (which you can practice on test machines until you get to your big growth).

Scaling is very important, but i learned a while back, no matter how much you plan you will still need to re-write some code, and tweak some things. - so don't worry about it now until you have the traffic/revenue to support it since you can get a $150/m server from places like server beach tthat can handle everything you need for a whil.

As to backups. 1) RAID. 2) develop with version control (no need to backup your deployment among other huge benefits. 3) rsync down any user files (makes it easy to mirror too) 4) learn about mysqlhotcopy and mysqldump - and then rsync it. Also for your mysql install setup logging. Takes a lot of room, but allows you to ebuild query by query from and to any point (has proven invaluable)

Sorry, this is a long post. Some thing we started doing recently, is go get a mac running 10.5, set it up to rsync down on 6-12 hour cycles (or daily) and let it do Time Machine backups hourly so that you can always pull up incremental backups, and you dont need to worry about scripting that.

I know its a study guide, but it is written well, and teaches all the ins/outs of running mysql server(s) and replication/backup/recovery etc. worth every penny MySQL 5.0 Certification Study Guide

[eluser]brianw1975[/eluser]
Seriously? A Mac Mini to do rsync?

Here's my suggestion:

Grab any x86 machine laying around, install Ubuntu, install one of the half-bazillion free backup programs on linux and configure as needed. FlyBack and TimeVault are popular comparisons to Time Machine.

Or you can use different scripts to do different tasks.

I use http://sourceforge.net/projects/automysqlbackup/ for backing up my MYSQL database

(Note that if your company has a Linux or windows server go and get VMWare server OR Sun's VirtualBox *both of them for free* and install Ubuntu into a Virtual Machine)

Total cost: x * the cost of your hourly wages.