Question on architecture

I am in the middle of writing a business plan and trying to figure out what front/back end systems to use.
The site will eventually have the traffic of a hotjobs/monster,etc...
(yes, hopefully...)

This sounds huge, but it will take 1-3 years to build up to that traffic.

Now, at first, I want to use open source software and after 6-12 months, upgrade to commercial. ie. Oracle, RedHat Enterprise.

Here is what I was thinking:
2 Application servers running Debian and php (1U - 1 HT cpu - 1 gig of ram)
1 Database server running mysql (4U - 4 HyperThreading cpus - 2 gig of ram)

If (I mean a big if) my site is programming with some intelligence, how many users could I expect on this architecture? I estimate 80% read and 20% write to the
site.

I'm sure I'm missing some more information but I had one Venture Capitalist that he doesn't want to see a plan where after 6-12 months, we would have to spend more $$ on re-tooling the site. But I think if the code is written correctly, then moving to Oracle shouldn't be that hard.

Comments? Thank you for your time.
-Eric

I was just today in a meeting where someone was trying to sell us on a tool to assist in automatically posting our jobs to a plethora of job listing sites. If you are forward thinking, you will consider this from the start that companies will want to send you FTP files to upload directly rather than going through a manual form and have the billback be centralized as well, so you send a monthly invoice instead of collecting $5-50 upfront per list by credit card.

The one we were being solicited today was Job Viper (http://www.jobviper.com/) but there are several others such as one by Trustar and other names that aren't coming to mind.

Presently we send FTP files directly to Monster nightly. My company lists from a few hundred to over 1,000 jobs monthly to Monster in this way. You can probably see the dollar signs now.

This is your competition and your customer base. Research them thoroughly.

Thanks for the reply. My site will be something different than the regular sites but I do appreciate your feedback. So, I assume your company has a 'all you can eat' contract with Monster. Can I ask how much that costs? You can also contact me offline about this.

I have some more questions for you if we could take this offline.
I could also make it worth your while.

Eric - natter5@yahoo.com

I'm not at liberty to discuss any contract specifics. Just giving you a general idea of how bigger companies interact with job listing sites.

Ok, cool, thanks for the info. It seems Monster/Hotjobs are just resume warehouses. Pretty sad.

Any feedback on my systems question?

Thanks.

you will want to try to crash the system with mysql's benchmark suite. It will be instructional in showing you at what point you are meeting system load or not. Mysql and others have a crash-me script somewhere. This is also helpful in troubleshooting db code bottlenecks. Perhaps one code change can make a substantial difference, who knows. Here's a quick link for crash-me comparisons:

http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/crash-me.php

Also check the mysql/php newsgroups about efficient use of mysql. I'm sure some tips are floating around here too:

http://www.faqts.com/knowledge_base/index.phtml/fid/52


I don't want to cause a db flame, but given the huge cost differences between Mysql and Oracle, are you sure it will be worth it to change? I'm guessing it will depend on ROI per customer that you can achieve. Regardless, please don't go by way of SQL-Server Anyway.. might it also be cheaper/easier to hire the administrators and other staff from the mysql universe?

cheers
sf2k

sf2k, thanks for the reply. I bought the mysql performance book and am amazed at the things it can do now. Especially the Innodb tables. They are a few years behind Oracle but for the price, you can't beat it.