Question

I’m creating for my web application (PHP) a feature of images sharing between users which means all users can upload their images to my server.
so,
my first assumption is that I need a dedicated server to my “images sharing” feature.
the problem is that if the server will get many requests – bottleneck will be created.

• I learned about caching (memcached, varnish, squid…)
  do you think one of these technologies is suitable for me?

• what is the best/ideal architecture for me? I assume only one server is not enough in some point.
  so I guess I will need cluster of servers (master and slaves). right?

I will be very glad if you could give me some orientation about the right technologies & architecture.

Answer 1

Everything depends on how big traffic you will have. Can you estimate it ?
Cashinig solutions are good rather for samall images. I’ve some experience with image sharing/voting website and quite big traffic (12mln fullsize image downloads a month).