[TECK]

$2500 for the CS enterprise license. You pay two and half larges but you save the cost of 3 servers, 2 grands a pop... go figure. For sure it is worth every penny. The real solution is to use an Oracle database, Microsoft SQL is simply insulting. So I guess for me the solution is to stick with the upcoming PostgreSQL support in VB4 and hope that a miracle will happen related to performance... unless there is a new piece of software that truly focuses on that important part.

I agree that the best thing CS does is to focus on code performance, not on useless "gadgets".

That's the reason why many people will pay a high price tag for CS. I will pay in an instance a high price like that for an equivalent piece of software based on PHP and PostgreSQL.

Let's don't forget that Facebook is run entirely in Unix/PHP. Only their memcached web cluster has 200 servers with 16GB of RAM per box. So there is room for a good product written in PHP language that is scaled for performance, not crazy options.

Edit: But I don't blame the vBulletin developers, really. The guys work their asses off day and night to satisfy the masses who come up with stupid requests and don't have not even an ounce of experience on server maintenance or programming. If some kiddo starts a trend and wants to have a new facebook on his site, a million others want it also. Those people never think what is the result of their request.

The devs sleep like 4hours/night (sometimes) just to code a stupid profile gadget, because it was requested. I respect them a lot for their white nights... I know that because I passed through this also. That's also the reason why I get mad at people here, because it makes me go ballistic when I see the total lack of interest for code efficiency and server performance. I remember when people used to release hacks here at vb.org that generated 70 queries per page.. simply insane. Heh, what do you expect, those people run vBulletin on a shared account with 5 users online. I want to see them dealing with a farm of 20 servers, while the disks are almost getting on fire, due to the intense MySQL reads.

Those people have no idea what is that an unix box and how hard is to maintain it properly... but they are the first ones to request a ton of crap features... just because they find it "cool".

How many people install here products or code modifications without even asking one second: "Wait a minute, is this thing I just installed good for my server performance?" No, all they care is that it looks good. But they never wonder why none (or maybe 2-3 of them) of the hacks available at vb.org are installed by vBulletin developers or serious programmers.

AWS, I know exactly where are you coming from and I understand totally your frustration.
It justifies totally your move to CS... and your money are well spent, because I know you are a Server 2003 guy, not like me... a CentOS lover.