Master/Slave for Search

[weeno]

Hi there,

So, I run a large vbulletin 9 million posts, 900k threads, and have been using a Sphinx install for search. Two PHP servers, 1 DB server.

We've grown to the point where we need a bigger DB server or perhaps master/slave db servers.

While Sphinx has worked ok, it's definitely a hack, and I've been reluctant to upgrade vBulletin due to having so much dependancy on the Sphinx install. So, I was looking into the Master/Slave config to see if that's a viable alternative. There isn't much documentation on it, or even experiences that I've found. So can anyone tell me about using Master/Slave and how search scales on that setup?

Ideally, I'd like it to be a close to stock vBulletin install to make upgrades easier. I think a slave server will make DB backups easier, since right now it takes a long time to do a proper backup on the single DB server and takes out the forums while it's doing the hotcopy.

arn