Cluster Requirements

[Codelizard]

Hello,

I manage a large sized vbulletin installation that actually sits on multiple web servers behind a load balancer. I'm wondering what would be the best combination for optimization of our forums, including your vbOptimise product. Since we have many servers, each server has its own instance of vbulletin and they share session information in common database.

In our setup, what would you recommend we use with your product? xcache? memcache? filecache?

I'm looking to pitch a full solution to my boss, so i figured you guys would be able to give me the best recommendation that would give me the best bang from your product.

Thanks...

 

[Fillip H.]

I would definitely recommend going with Memcache - it was created with your setup in mind
In fact, using Memcache on a single-server setup is actually a detriment to performance compared to other opcode cachers like XCache or APC.

If you had APC on each of your web servers, you would need the same amount of extra memory to store all your cache objects on all those servers even if you don't actually cache more data, vs. simply storing it all on your central DB server (or indeed a new server dedicated to Memcache).

vB Optimise is really our only product that focuses on pure optimisation of the forums, for other products you might find useful I'd recommend using the recommendation categories on our front page


PS: We use the same licencing terms as Internet Brands do with vBulletin; if your forums display separate content (e.g. hiding forums on a per-domain basis or similar) then you'll need one vBO licence per forum in your network same as you'd need one vBulletin licence per forum in your network.
You can PM Cosmic to inquire about bulk discounts if this applies to you, and your network is huge

 

[Codelizard]

Thank you, that was exactly what I was looking for. I'm going to put this together for my boss.

And yes, understood about the licensing on a per-domain basis. Each server in our cluster has identical contents, so Im assuming, as with vbulletin, that having a forum of "forum.website.com" on 10 servers, for the sake of load balancing, is still considered 1 website installation since serving only one actual "installation".

 

[Fillip H.]

Correct, it is indeed considered 1 website installation with that configuration