i found this article very well written. if you go a few pages in, you will see the hardware behind everything.

/me wonders if vdi's datacenter looks like that..

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1456

I agree with your comments. Anand has written a very informative and illustrative article about what it takes to host a very popular tech site.

I've been visiting Anandtech.com since the fall of '97, and it has been very interesting to follow that site's growth and changes. Always a lot of good information.