I was wondering what most of you hosts do or think is a better idea. Also what are the advantages to both.

To have a 3 servers with 200 accounts on each or a big one with 600 accounts on it.

The numbers are just for looks but I am sure you get the point.

I know a host with over 1400 accounts on one box so anything is possible to do.

I wouldnt advise that.

ahh gotta love the question! :D :D

200 accounts on 3 servers would normally be the best option since each account would be getting a greater percent of system resources. but in the same light if all the accounts sit idle 99.9% of the time anyways then you're just wasting the hardware and might as well put them all on one box...

3 servers, if one goes down, you have 200 pissed off customers rather than 600 :). If your big daddy server breaks, you are in big doo doo :puke:

If I had 20,000 customers, I'd put them 600 to a box (assuming the box could comfortably handle them of course). If I only had 600 customers, I would sleep much better with three boxes. This is assuming I was making more than $1 a month on each customer.

Originally posted by phpjames
I know a host with over 1400 accounts on one box so anything is possible to do.

I wouldnt advise that.


If it was all dedicated IP accounts.... So does their server have
5 NIC Cards?

If it was all dedicated IP accounts.... So does their server have

You don't have to, we actually tested configuration with 4,000 ips on one box with one nic. This was done by using multiple logical
loopback-like devices in linux. And besides nowdays most of the domains are ipless and not require ips.

And we do know (actually host) company that has several thousand domans on same box, their setup is about 500 domains each one separate hard drive (on same ip) and they all run under its own apache process - so they have multipe simulaneous apache webservers on the same physical servrer.