G'day all,
(If this's in the wrong area - let me know and I'll repost it elsewhere)
First-up, this is at first going to sound like a somewhat stupid idea, but after exaplaining it a bit further, I'm sure you'll see where I'm coming from (Or at least I hope yas will)
The Idea - One MySQL Database connected to several copies of one forum board (We're looking at using smf)
The reasoning behind it: Where I'm working, we've got access to several old and slow computers that we plan to use as servers (P2s, couple of Celerons etc. etc.) that will be serving up pages etc. for up to some 550 people, as its an internal site.
With these older / slower computers in action, they obviously won't be able to hold as many people per PC as a newer / faster one would, so what I'm thinking of is to put the MySQL database on one server - Say it'll be a dedicated DB server - and the other web servers will have smf on them, all pointing to the same database.
What I'm trying to acheive here is a central database-run forum that'll hold info on topics etc. etc. but the actual viewing of the forum itself can be spread over several servers.
Is this possible? Or am I just walking into something that's gonna take years of development / effort / money that I don't have?
Thanks in advance,
Cheers,
Pottsie