Scaling Ain't So Bad, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Traffic

Track: 
Implementation and Config
Experience: 
Intermediate

In this talk, we'll take you from the shallow backwaters of shared hosting all the way up through n-wide, multi-tier, fully-redundant solutions, with a stop along the way for all the significant steps in between.

We'll compare shared, cloud, VPS, and dedicated options, while always examining the whole solution with an eye towards the bottom line. If you've ever had a scaling nightmare, or if your dreams are filled with the screams of your visitors unable to reach your site under peak load, this is the presentation for you.

Intended audience: 

Solution architects, systems administrators, and anyone running or coding a site that runs fine now, but who wakes up at night in a cold sweat wondering what will happen if Ashton Kutcher tweets their URI.

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: 
When's the right time to exit a shared ($8/month or similar) hosting environment? What new responsibilities am I taking on when I commit to doing so?
Question 2: 
I'm on one server now; am I better off buying a single, better server, or adding a second, dedicated DB server?
Question 3: 
What's the difference between VPS, cloud, and private cloud? What Drupal-specific "gotcha"s will I encounter in each?
Question 4: 
What the heck am I supposed to do with the "files" directory now that I have eight Web servers?
Question 5: 
It's 4:30 in the morning, something's gone terribly wrong, and the only person who understands this setup just got hit by a CTA bus. How could I have avoided this conundrum?
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