Multiple web servers

[prashman]

Hi,

I'm hosting vbulletin in the cloud where web servers are auto scaled. But there are certain features of vbulletin that I'm concerned about like avatar, images, smileys etc. that are uploaded using the admin pages. When there are multiple web servers, obviously these will get uploaded to one server. Anything stored in the database is fine because there is only one.

How do we get around this problem? Are there any other vbulletin features that can cause web server file system to be updated? I believe that session management is done on the database and not by files which is good.

Can the users do anything that can cause web server file system to get updated? (image upload, profile pictures etc) Or do these get stored in the database?

Is there a documentation page on hosting vbulletin on multiple web servers?

Thanks.

[DivisionByZero]

if you're not experienced with webserver administration, best thing to do is serve attachments, pictures, and all those things from the database.

On load-balancing scenarios, you'd have to rsync the filesystem to make sure those images and attachments are the same, and rsync is a waste of server resources.

[prashman]

Webserver admin is not a problem - have done that for years. I don't have vBulletin specific knowledge. Can vbulletin store all the images and files on the database? If it can then it solves all my problems.

The problem is that my webservers are auto scaled from an image depending upon the demand. These are load balanced. I want to understand what features of vbulletin can cause the filesystem to change? For e.g. admin can upload smileys, avatars etc. I can probably control what the vbulletin admin does by doing a controlled software release and reimaging.

But if normal users can upload and alter the filesystem then this will be a huge problem. What features of vbulletin can cause webserver filesystem to change?

[prashman]

Any thoughts anyone?

[vbresults]

Prashman, there isn't anything else unless you have third-party add-ons installed which alter the file system.