WordPress MU

Hello

Currently I have 200,000 users, I have my own blog system, i am planing to change the engine into wordpress MU

My question how to setup multiple apache servers and multiple mysql servers

I already have hardware load balancer, how can i scale db? replication? master slave? or multiple servers. for example users from A-F use sever1 users G-P use another server etc..? or there is other setups?

for apache, how can i distribute user files? should i use file servers? seprated from apache and install lighttpd since its better for static content

I need to show on the homepage, most viewed blogs, most commented posts, new blogs, new posts. how can i do it? since each blog has its own tables, this will make db very slow to do aggregation and caclualtions

Thanks

1. Use multi db setup (search forums, have a look at premium)

2. Forget apache - go with lighttpd only - you'll be looking at 30-200% performance gain.

3. Use rsync to keep files synced across servers

I will not comment on Wordpress MU related issues, since I am relatively new to this particular solution.

As for 2 and 3 if you need any help let me know - I do have quite a bit of experience :-)

Forget Apache and lighttpd, go with Nginx, what wordpress.com uses.

currently i have master slave setup for mysql where i have one master server and multiple slaces.(load balanced)

would that work with wordpress mu? or should i use hyperDB? I just read its the most recommended for wordpress

but rsynch will kill servers. when we have alot of files. I already using it for backup sometimes it kill the server.

as you know unix handle up to 32k files per folder, does workd press create a folder for each user, or all files under one folder, is there module for that?

Thanks

Multiple databases setup (without replication) generally is recommended, but I haven't seen any performance comparisons to back up this solution.

A proper rsync configuration would not be that bad.
There are other options as well including NFS mounted to all servers (not recommended - creates yet another single point of failure), unison (since sync will be in most cases bidirectional, no longer developed or supported :/)

As for file no limit don't worry.