I am creating this thread to get feedback and professional opinion. I would appreciate it if all comments were kept in a professional manner and relative to my post. Thanks.
I have posted in the appropriate forums other related topics such as logical and physical network design. I have planned for redundancy in every aspect.

Now, I would like to address some ideas I have been researching and see what I can learn. I would like to design a cluster which utilizes some of the best technology and can provide wonderful results. The cluster will consist of the following:

Minimum:
2 Load Balancers
3 Xen hv hardware nodes (for HTTP)
2 MySql server (Using the load balancers for a failover mysql mgmt)

I am not opposed to using Direct attached storage, SAN configurations, and any other options. I am also not opposed to using high density blades. I saw that Cari.net has a 'Server Pod' and I would like something like that but not hosted by a single facility.

Our website will be mission critical and demands the highest uptime. We plan to disperse our presence across Eastern, Central, Midwest and West and utilize some sort of DNS load balancing.


I would like to see some possible implementations of Xen (or other open source software), some sort of manager like Ganeti, and if possible a way to manage all the different roles of the cluster and add more if necessary at the drop of a hat.


Please do not contact me if you are vendor or service provider. I already have both of which covered. Thank you.

Very interesting topic.
I'd like to hear the comments.

I think a bit more information would help. Is your application written?

If so is it a linux stack or windows?

How is the DB used? Does it capture user input? Is the data transactional?

I think a bit more information would help. Is your application written?

If so is it a linux stack or windows?

How is the DB used? Does it capture user input? Is the data transactional?


Sure!

We use PHP language on a linux environment. Our application is already in production (with new version in the works). We use MySQL and from my understanding it should be transactional. If you could help me determine this, I would appreciate it.


We use CentOS 5.5 64Bit currently.

I would like to accomplish something to the affect of: http://clusterlabs.org/wiki/File:Pacemaker-n-plus-1.png

I am creating this thread to get feedback and professional opinion. I would appreciate it if all comments were kept in a professional manner and relative to my post. Thanks.
I have posted in the appropriate forums other related topics such as logical and physical network design. I have planned for redundancy in every aspect.

Now, I would like to address some ideas I have been researching and see what I can learn. I would like to design a cluster which utilizes some of the best technology and can provide wonderful results. The cluster will consist of the following:

Minimum:
2 Load Balancers
3 Xen hv hardware nodes (for HTTP)
2 MySql server (Using the load balancers for a failover mysql mgmt)

I am not opposed to using Direct attached storage, SAN configurations, and any other options. I am also not opposed to using high density blades. I saw that Cari.net has a 'Server Pod' and I would like something like that but not hosted by a single facility.

Our website will be mission critical and demands the highest uptime. We plan to disperse our presence across Eastern, Central, Midwest and West and utilize some sort of DNS load balancing.


I would like to see some possible implementations of Xen (or other open source software), some sort of manager like Ganeti, and if possible a way to manage all the different roles of the cluster and add more if necessary at the drop of a hat.


Please do not contact me if you are vendor or service provider. I already have both of which covered. Thank you.

Built on Xen is fine, but building this infrastructure on a true, commercial cloud platform is not going to be completely free and open-source. You can have a completely scalable (both vertical and horizontal) platform with load balancing, high availability, redundancy, and even geo-redundant if you absolutely require it. LAMP stacks are pretty easy to configure this way and you can even choose the hardware you want from the provider if you like.

Depending on the needs of your application, that may actually be recommended as you can build it exactly to scale.

Well after talking to a vendor specific expert, I am considering VMware products.After today's discussion, I am impressed with VMware's software. I will be able to condense, manage, and utilize asynchronous replication geographically. I will post more updates and design concepts once I have them. I am thinking of creating a blog for this entire project. From what I have been finding, there isn't a lot of resources for those trying to start from scratch. I have found a lot of professional information, but how do you comprehend and learn the information without having some background.

This particular project has broaden my knowledge of several technologies, but I still haven't gained the experience. Any other out there in the same boat? Maybe there is an online group devoted to free learning and experience. In any case, I think I will publish my findings and experiences for others to share and use.

If you are looking into opensource Xen, make sure you look into Citrix XenServer as well. It's also free and if offers better performance than the opensource Xen, especially with Windows VM.

If you want free solution, consider Citrix xen for virtualization, if you want paid consider VMWARE virtualization. Go with a fully managed company so that they can understand your needs and setup the cloud exactly as expected.