WordPress MU

We are under planning stage on the development of a multi blogging system using WordPress MU. I found a slide from Joseph Scott http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2008/09/01/slides-from-wo... on slide 48. Is there any other setup that can be done? Anybody can share some best practices on the scaling up and setting a redundant server for WordPress MU?

As planned, we want to maximized the the number of blogs and optimized the resources as possible, because we want to anticipate the number of bloggers for future comings.

Anybody had some ideas regarding the pros and cons for the types caching in maximizing the speed? that was discussed on slide 38. And what are the best practices in handling a multi blogging system on WordPress MU?

I think one of the best set ups for redundancy would be a set up on Amazon Web Services combining Ec2, EBS, and S3.

S3 for all the static files and user uploaded files.
Ec2 for servers with a Ubuntu/Debian Nginx, Php-FPM, Xcache setup.
EBS to store wordpress php and mysql database files.

Once you have your Ec2 server instances set up you can mount the Elastic Block Store (EBS) Volume with your Ec2 instance.

Elastic Block Store (EBS) gives you persistent, high-performance, high-availability block-level storage up to 1 terabyte in size.

You can take snap shots of your EBS volumes and back them up to s3.

If you EBS volume breaks you can relaunch the volume from s3 in a very short time.

If your server breaks you can launch another instance in seconds and have a new server up and running. If you need extra servers these can also be launched in seconds. No set up fees. Switch off any extra server as you need. Only pay for what you use in terms of cpu hours, bandwidth, and storage.

Also a lot of really big php sites just keep adding lots of cheap memcached servers with 2 gigs of ram.

Another idea is to give bigger promotion to Gears in your admin.

Hiya,

Is there a site actually running off of Amazon as mentioned above? I'm very curious about how many blogs it has and how well it's performing :)

Thanks,
Andrew

Well I know wordpress.com uses s3 for statics.

At the least everyone should proxy to s3 or some other service like that for static files.

I only have a modest site of just over 500 blogs and 20,000 to 25,000 page views per day.

The main benefit of Amazon is the ease of starting and shutting down new servers. It literally takes seconds. And you only pay by the hour.

1 db server and 1 file server will still get your pretty far though.

I'll have to agree with what Andrew was hinting at.

I don't think relying strictly on Amazon is the best option.

While it's true that wordpress.com is using S3 (or was, anyway), they
also have everything internal as well, and every time S3 goes down (which it will), they have an immediately available fail over.

IIRC, they're not storing everything on S3, either. Only the frequently accessed stuff. Kind of using it like a cache, if you want to think about it in that manner.

While Amazon has some decent options, if it were me I certainly wouldn't base an entire site on it. To me, they haven't proven the solid reliability for something of this nature, and spawning mini-virtual servers for a large network deployment just isn't the best idea IMHO.

I can see it as a supplement to a network for certain things, but not as a full solution for much more than a hobby.

I'm not sure what you're basing your opinion on Lunabyte.

Have you actually used and tested their services in production yourself?

As far as your comment about mini virtual servers go:

1. They have instances as big as 15 gig ram and 4 dual cores and 64 bit.

2. Launching multiple cheap 2 gig memcached servers is proven strategy to help with scaling for large fast site growth. It's exactly what sites like facebook and wordpress.com do. Amazons service is pretty much ideal for this with somebody on a budget. You can simply create an image of your memcached server set up and launch these as you need them.

One of my servers on Amazon has been running for a year.

If it stops it breaks it takes me seconds to launch a new one which is an exact replica.

Obviously I'm not saying that its services are the only ones you should use for a set up or redundancy but it can be a compelling option when you look at the costs of the alternatives and you're on a budget.

Yep, know what they have. Well familiar with it.

But, as I said, it's fine for supplementing a network, but if it were me I couldn't suggest building an entire offering from it.

Oh, Thanks guys! I've now coming up with more alternative solutions. As of now, we are now setting up the servers and on going development.

Looking forward for other suggestions.

Thanks!

Jed, what exactly suggestions you need?

On our resource we have 1 redhat server (Apache 2) which will serves as balance loader and 2 windows 2003 server as web servers to balance the load.

Any suggestion on how to mirror files best practices?
In Addition to this, Is ok that the balance loader to have 2 functions as another replicate muwp site server?

Thanks

Hey Jed, not sure if you are still around. But we are still looking into similar solutions.

Did you ever come up with anything?

Thanks,
tom