

How Many Machines Do You Need To Run Your Site? - aaroneous
http://highscalability.com/how-many-machines-do-you-need-run-your-site

======
staunch
Servers are so damn powerful these days that it's a bit misleading to use the
number of servers as a measurement. The standard a few years ago was dual
processor PIII ~1Ghz machines with 1-4GB memory. These days it's a 4+ core
monster with 8GB+ memory.

Steve Huffman of Reddit posted on their latest server stats, which is
interesting: <http://reddit.com/info/2gdcv/comments/c2geky>

Most of the sites these days with a ton of servers just have Google envy or
investors who want money to be "put to work". Server and network gear is a
really easy way to go through money.

------
chmac
HighScalability is an insane site. Their stuff on how Google's datacentre
works is crazy! <http://highscalability.com/google-architecture>

------
palish
I'll let you know after we launch if this works, but we just have a single
dedicated box for 99/mo.

~~~
aaroneous
We launched our site with only one machine (dedicated host I think we paid
about $100/mo for it as well) and had stories about us on the big blogs
(TechCrunch, Gigaom, etc) - it performed like a champ. I guess it depends on
what your app is like though.

~~~
palish
Awesome, good to know.. I was a little nervous that I didn't have a massive
cluster ready to go ;) I'm just going to make sure my database indices are in
the correct places and see how launch does.

