Web server sharing

[JBB]

I work for a company which runs a fairly trafficked group of e-commerce sites and we're having occasional trouble with server overloading.

Aside from general site optimization, what are the best hardware methods for reducing server load? We currently run a fairly high-end Opteron machine but adding another server to the mix is a possibility. What are the options for sharing load between servers? (Keeping in mind that, being e-commerce sites, it's important that the client maintains the connection with the machine they originally reached.)

We run Apache, MySQL and PHP on Linux.

[lwithers]

You could move the d/b backend to another server and keep the apache and PHP stuff on the original server. Should be easy to set up and, of course, you should see an immediate improvement in speed.

[tomthewombat]

Putting the database on another server would probably be the standard action.

If it seems like your hardware should be able to handle it, then you may want to try to locate the bottleneck. Databases tend to munch on RAM.. maybe your hard disks just aren't fast enough (need more raid or scsi).. yadda, yadda.

Lots of complex MySQL calls can really bog you down. Especially complex searches through large tables. If you haven't spent some time getting things right, someone may be able to point you to a good site. Of course a good server might be cheaper than a good programmer! At least for a small business.
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[kashani]

Completely agree with the two previous posts, splitting the database off will give you the most performance increase.

In fact I just did it for a customer of ours resently. They went from 3 web servers with the mysql db on server #3 to the 3 servers and a dedicated database. The performance increase has been immense. They ran a very large db and it was constantly fighting Apache for the same resources.

kashani
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Will personally fix your server in exchange for motorcycle related shop tools in good shape.