Hi

Could someone please explain the difference between front-endservers, backend-servers and normal/regular servers ?

Consider this setup: webservers -> proxies -> database. Here the webservers are the frontend servers because they interface with the network and handle external requests. The backend database server gets contacted only by the frontend servers (or by the proxies if they can't fulfill requests from their cache). The key here is that because you have something that has the "flat" task of handling requests (the other parts being "hidden" inside a LAN range) you can cluster servers behind it for those other tasks (bring one cluster member down for maintenance w/o trouble). Only the webservers are exposed to a hostile network. This spreads risk and load (performance), reliability, availability and allows you to have wack network architecture like servers in different subnets or like hop to a database server multiple firewalls away. Look for the Linux HA site or "carrier-grade Linux" docs and you'll get the idea.

hey, thanks for answering, i at least understood a little more about these kind of servers, but will try to find more detailed information about what it is. i did get a nice overview of what is was