Multiple web servers sharing a db server

I am contemplating migrating to mosso to have several cheap app servers.

The goal is to have a dedicated database server, however, does it make sense to have one database server that hosts the database needs of many different website servers (each having different websites on them)

Thanks.

Its a very common way of doing it. It makes sense in number of ways

• All databases are on the same server so backup is easier
• You can have a secure, back-end database server, not connected to the internet directly and only accessible by the the web servers
• You can specify your database server so that it is big enough to handle your data processing, whilst leaving your front end servers light and just processing web tasks

It makes sense. That is the way we have it in our College, and that's the way many people/companies have it setup too. We have dedicated SQL servers, the same way we have dedicated web servers, etc. Mosso doesn't seem too cheap thought...

IMHO, so long as the server can handle the load I prefer to centralize as much as possible. It tends to make my job easier and when that happens I can react faster and more efficiently when necessary.

There are downsides, especially in a shared environment. Of special note, consolidated environment downfalls include

• higher security risks
• higher risk of failure
• a single failure can mean an outage for a larger percent of your userbase
• for a consolidated db server, disk IO quickly becomes of paramount importance (ok, not necessarily a downfall, just a point to keep in mind)