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[smack323]

I am wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction. What type of server architecture is capable of supporting 2000 simultaneous users, where there is a great deal of dynamic content and almost all requests to the server involve database access. Email support will also be required.

Ballpark:
1.Server hardware: amount of RAM and Hard Drive capacity?
2.Server Operating System?
3.Internet Information Server Configuration?
4.Number of Web/Application Servers to support the current users with room for growth to up to 6000 users?
5.Number of Database Servers and type?
6.Number of Email Servers and type?

I am guessing I could run a few powerful servers with VM also to save some on cost.

Any info would be helpful to help me get a starting point on research- Money is not a issue for the configuration

[Apoptosis]

Just curious, butwhat site are you working on that has 2000 simultaneous users? That is one very big website!!! I'm jealous! (feel free to PM me if you'd like to keep it private).

Sounds like you are going to need multiple servers and load balancing. For e-mails... how often and how big is the mailing list?

Are you wanting to purchase the servers and do a colo like what I do with LR or are you wanting to rent servers (if rent.. managed or unmanaged?)

[smack323]

its more of a "what if" for a company. I am just trying to get some general info for them. They will buy the equipment outright. It seems when i start researching fo rsomething this large the waters get muddy fast. I suppose it all about optimization when it gets that large

[Kattenkrad]

With that kind of requirements, I think it would be good idea to get a colocation set up with say, Level 3 or Cogent and rent some rack space at one of their data centres. Then some other questions you might need to ask are:

1. Are these 2000 users on same VPN? Corporate intranetwork? Just Internet users?
2. What kind of database requests are you using? Ex, are you making a lot of queries, inserts?

I'm going to venture to say that you're going to need multiple servers, multiple fibre lines, and at least a router or two to direct traffic to the right server with that many users at once. I can't really say much more without knowing the specifics of the situation and even then, I'm a SDE with networking experience rather than a systems engineer. (But it might help other people reading to know!)

[smack323]

Yeah - these are all great questions, at this point they are in the exploration stage and have asked me to just research some general information pertaining to the questions i asked in my first post. Doesnt have to be spot on perfect info - just some plaec for me to start and get my hands dirty. I'll assume its about 80% internet traffic, 10% intranet, 10% extranet... for the sake of argument I can say 100% internet. email would be internal only, say 500 employees not something like hotmail or anything like that.