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Simple question on using multiple dedicated servers

I'm a bit confused...

         

gfidan

6:18 pm on Jan 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi,

I will be launching a site that contains 2 components: A database and a bunch of static articles. I want to keep the database on a seperate server so it doesn't slow down the rest of the site.

So my question is...

I would like the database and all of it's info to reside at a URL similar to:

www.mysite.com/database

and then all of my static articles will just be part of the www.mysite.com domain.

How can I do this using 2 seperate servers? (I would rather not use subdomains, but I will if you guys suggest that is the best way to do it)

thank you,

stajer

6:33 pm on Jan 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



For security reasons, you do not want your db server to have a web server running. www.mysite.com/database is a web address. The database does not run on top of a web server such as IIS or apache or connect on port 80, it is its own server with its own port.

Therefore, it doesn't make sense to connect to your db through a web address. You can assign a subdomain to your db server, that combined with a port address funnels requests to the db, but it is not necessary. I recommend just using the server IP for the connect strings in your web app.

Hope that helps.

stajer

11:28 pm on Jan 20, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I just re-read your question and realized I didn't understand your question.

Putting the database server on its own physical server is enough to get the performance benefits you want. Your web application (which uses the database) will physically reside on your web server, not the database server.

Thus, on your web server you will have some files that are static html files (for your articles) and some files written in a dynamic scripting language (php, asp, cfm, etc.) that query your database and display different information depending on what is pulled from the db.

It is not necessary to separate the static files from the dynamic ones onto different servers. The database server handles the queries, parsing and information retrevial back to the web server. That is the load you don't want on your webserver. Your webserver will be focused just on serving readable pages to your visitors as fast as possible.

gfidan

12:42 am on Jan 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



so what you're saying is that it really doesn't matter where my database is hosted? Which means I can go ahead and have the database and static articles on one server, then if that server starts getting overloaded, I can just export the database to a new dedicated server and everything will look and act the same way?