Even though issue 03.05 is not out yet, I am already deep in thought about my next article for International PHP Magazine. I’m planning to tap my experience architecting and building scalable web server farms for PHP/MySQL applications to bring you an overview of the issues involved. Combined with the forthcoming issue on Enterprise PHP Coding Standards, this should flesh out some of my thinking and experience implementing PHP solutions for business-critical applications.
Some of the issues I’m considering tackling in my “Farming PHP” article include:
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Load Balancing versus Round-Robin DNS
Web Log Aggregation
Separating the PHP and SQL layers via a private network:
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Configuring multiple interfaces
Naming the network via /etc/hosts
Hardening the network
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For failover using heartbeat
To offload read-only reporting
For backup
For local read-only operations
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Similarities to a compiled model
Establishing homogeneous user/group permissions and root trust
Setting up incremental, periodic file push when necessary
Optional encoding
Maintaining versioning on source code for possible rollback
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Redundancy
Scalability
Mantainability
Sound interesting? Stay tuned for more as I flesh out my thinking, prepare diagrams, and otherwise sift through my experiences bringing best-practice scalability to the powerhouse web development combination of PHP and MySQL.


5 Comments
The editors of PHPDeveloper.org have pointed out that this is probably way too much ground to cover in one article. I agree. I’m looking at the most PHP-relevant components, consolidating and trimming in hopes of giving a solid overview. Comments welcome.
http://www.phpdeveloper.org/index/3008
Yes, that sounds very interesting. Keep writing!
How is the article coming along?
Issue 04.05 of PHP Magazine just hit newsstands all over Europe with my article about Farming PHP on the cover. My preview of the subject generated considerable interest from the community, making me realize what an important and far-reaching topic this r
Issue 04.05 was just released with this article on the cover story!
http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/86-Farming-PHP.html