Attachments
 

How do large boards handle attachments? Right now I have about 7GB of attachments in my file system. I was just curious how others deal with this issue. Especially if you have more than one web server... :confused:

We have about 1.5 GB in the DB, but i do get the feeling, that we should change that.....

during the normal process that's not a problem but during upgrades that table is most of the time responsible for the timeouts

I have attachments on a separate server with some minor hacks to the attachment php files and templates.

Anyone with more than a few hundred MB of attachements should move them out of the DB and into the file system. Personally I would always use the file system anyway, I don't think attachments belong in the database (the only time it's useful to have them in the DB is when moving server)

I guess... the next question would be, how did you come across those minor hacks to allow you to run the attachments from a different server? :surprised:

Given some of the hacks he's released, its pretty safe to assume that he meant that he figured out how to mod the files accordingly. There is no publically released hack that tells you how to do it.

<a href="http://mysqldump.azundris.com/archives/36-Serving-Images-From-A-Database.html" target="_blank">http://mysqldump.azundris.com/archiv...-Database.html</a>

This is a very good read for anyone that would like more "exact" information on why Files stored in Database for a busy site is not a good idea; as well as a compromise.

Keep the master storage in the Database, while providing a local cache in the file system.

It's actually easier than it looks - make sure subdomains are included in the cookie, then have an attachment server that runs a strip down vbulletin with just attachment.php, global.php and some include files, modify attachment.php, modify the attachment templates to point to the subdomain for the attachment server, and you're done.

I would be interested to know how that is covered by the licence since you are running two copies of vb ?

well if the forum powered it all (on the backend) it wouldnt be a violation it still would be 1 copy (just not in the directory structure they supplied)