Hi, I have may I say complicated task to solve end implement.

I need to setup a server far not that big, 10 servers maybe 15. This farm will server video content to clients similiar to youtube site (I know not very original ).

I must have in mind these things:

- Load balancing
- Server failover
- Security
- Performance
- Backups


For the loadbalancing I thought HAProxy.
For the Server Failover. DRBD.

three other things I dont have nothing special in mind.

Can you help me a little bit on that.

And what do you think about hardware?

The setup MUST serve 600 - 700 requests per second.

Thank You

Ah, forgot to mention web serving of video content is written in MYSQL/PHP combination.

You might consider using nginx web server to address load balancing and performance. Also keep in mind DRBD is intended for block level replication (middle layer). You might find more appropriate using either shared storage or high level mirroring/replication (like rsync for example).

Security is quite a wide subject: from physical security, proper system setup, firewalling, all the way up to application level security, so there's no turn key solution.

For backups you might take a look at Bacula - a nice peace of open source software for network backups.

Hope this helps.

linux virtual server is pretty good at loadbalancing, i used this and it worked awesomely. Managed few webservers and squids.

Thanks for Your answers. I thought a little about back up. Which configuration to use for backup? How to set hard drives, which RAID? Or no raid?

What about hardware part, which servers do you suggest, with one thing in mind, keep it cheap and simple .

RAID level depends entirely on your requirements: RAID10 for more intensive loads and RAID5/6 for more storage. As for manufacturers, we've got good experience with LSI and Adaptec SAS controllers (NO Adaptec HostRAID!). Also spend some time reading on stripe sizes, as it's quite important for the performance.

For server manufacturers you could check out Dell and Supermicro, as they both provide mainboards with integrated LSI (1078 if i recall correctly) controllers. I'm sure HP and IBM also have good configurations, but I don't have experience with recent models.