I'm wonder about using seperate servers for different areas of hosting. For example, one server for mail, another for web hosting, another for SQL, etc. How does this setup work and is it beneficial? Also, can CPanel/WHM or other control panels work with multiple servers doing different things?

Why you do that? You have some extra money to spend?...want to know why you do that, because unless you have a good reason, it'll be waste your money:)

Well thats not the answer I was looking for, I was wondering about the concept itself, I never said I was going to implement it.

Actually, it is a nice set up as it will help balance the load when you have very active contents. Huge websites actually does that.

I was wondering how a person would implement something like that, what would I need?

You should look into the H-Sphere control panel... http://www.psoft.net

If memory serves me correctly, it does exactly what you are asking.

I am not sure about the Control Panel itself but you know web servers, mysql and any services on the web is accessed by an IP address amongst each other. So if you have 3 servers, each would have a unique IP address.

So like you could have the following set up :-

webserver (on server 1) -> 1.2.3.1
mail server (on server 2) -> 1.2.3.2
Database Server (on server 3) -> 1.2.3.3

In your Nameserver Zone file, you could set up as above.

Of course, this means that all your scripts which formerly was pointing to the database as 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1' must now be made to point to '1.2.3.3' instead. Everything would be on remote mode.

Supposed you set your mail server to be called mail.yoursite.com , it will resolve to 1.2.3.2 as per your name server zone files.

The only thing would be to find a control panel which can do something like that.

And H-Sphere does this, is it any good?

I've never set up a H-Sphere setup myself, however I have used one, and once you get past the learning curve, it seems like an excellent control panel. It allows you to have separate servers for Linux Web Servers, Windows Web Servers, mySQL servers, MS SQL servers, mail servers, and some other things I can't think of off the top of my head.

H-Sphere is very good for this purpose.
It is also a very powerful beast.

I'll have to look into it then. Thanks for the info.

Hmm....but CPanel can't do this, can it?

Can it be tamed? :D

I've looked at it some and it seems to offer quite a bit.

Hmm, I don't think that is the best way. The best way for load balancing in my honest opinion is the way google does it. They have 4 nameservers set to their domains each with different IP's. They have 4 servers or something and the DNS rotates every 5 minutes to point to a different server. Then goes to another. Each server runs all services. I personally think this is the best way to do it. However, I believe some big web sites do it other ways such as WHT. They have multiple MySQL servers and such that power this site. It's up to you and what your budget can afford :)

It certainly can be tamed.
Most H-Sphere owners love it.

Originally posted by cybexhost
Can it be tamed? :D

I've looked at it some and it seems to offer quite a bit.

The only thing I found that I didn't like about h-sphere was its built in billing and support systems. As a standalone control panel, I think it would be much much better than it already is.

As for cPanel supporting this, AFAIK you can't do this, but I stand to be corrected.

I can't see how the nameservers idea can work, if I sent mail to @google.com where would it end up, there would be 4 different accounts, wouldn't there?

Well no, you can set it so the mail server IP stays the same for every DNS setting...Then you need 1 account for it and it goes through that server. The load balancing is for like the HTTP and MySQL and stuff...

OK, I understand, thanks for all the info you guys.

Originally posted by RaineTech
Hmm, I don't think that is the best way. The best way for load balancing in my honest opinion is the way google does it. They have 4 nameservers set to their domains each with different IP's. They have 4 servers or something and the DNS rotates every 5 minutes to point to a different server. Then goes to another. Each server runs all services. I personally think this is the best way to do it. However, I believe some big web sites do it other ways such as WHT. They have multiple MySQL servers and such that power this site. It's up to you and what your budget can afford :)

That is not load balancing nor is it the way Google handles the large amounts of queries it receives per day. It uses multiple clusters. The method you are describing is round robin DNS.

I've used Round Robin DNS before on an IRC network I used to run, even though it's not considered load balancing, doesn't it preform the same function?

Hsphere is the exact product you seek. you can even get the licenses free if you have an in at psoft. PM me for details

If you have alot of accounts - splitting up your services this way is a great idea.

You could have 10 http machines - a seperate beefy sql machine and a seperate mail machine.

It also allows you to build and configure machines to their specific tasks - so everything is running faster and more secure.

This is definately an option and I think clients would benefit from it as well. Any success stories from you guys? I'm interested in seeing how this solution was actually applied in a real hosting environment.

Originally posted by 93.3
I can't see how the nameservers idea can work, if I sent mail to @google.com where would it end up, there would be 4 different accounts, wouldn't there?
No
You can create MX records to specify which server is the mail server :-)

Yeah, someone explained that little bit to me, thanks anyway for the info.

I don't know about that....
but school system does that and it seemt o run smooth...

CArdin

As a note:
You can do more than just round robbin DNS for ballancing server load , but it is the most commonly implemented because it is the easist .

I've seen on Dell's site and a number of others "load balancing solutions". What are these solutions and I'm guessing they imploy hardware based load balancing. What solutions are these exactly?