Template or FAQ to building a successfully loaded server?

I know there is no perfect blueprint to building a server to handle large loads...

But could people share their experiences with how they got to where they are and what pitfalls to look out for?

I don't have a large site... 260,000+ posts and only 4100 members, but it's only been a bit over a year really, and it's really starting to grow faster now every day.

I'm a speed freak, so I've tweaked my site to run fast. Doing all the right things, xcache, etc.
Or so I think.

At what points in your growth did you make major changes?

Go from a single server, to a server with a separate database server?
Then go from a two server setup (one being the database server) to a shared load setup?

And even before all that... did you have to shut off searching? What extra tweaks did you make that many of us might not think of, but you found to be the saving grace of the community.

Knock on wood... so far so good... But I know those next steps will eventually be coming. I don't exactly know when... but when it does happen, I want to be ready for it. Or even better, beat it so it doesn't happen.

[TECK]

This is one place where you cannot use copy/paste, unfortunately.
It should take your few months with 4-5hours/day reading to learn the basics.

Setting up properly a server is not a howtoforge tutorial.
Let me ask you this: on your server... what is the port SSH is serving as we speak?
That will be a good test, for starters.

[CBrown]

My port? Not on 22 if that's what you're asking.

Also, there is no root access for ssh. I'll be honest, once upon a time I did do it all wrong, and have learned over the years, but it HAS taken me years to really learn and understand what I'm doing.

Personally I still consider myself a novice, and probably just over paranoid. 3 years ago, I had many down time issues because I was either too cheap, or didn't know what I was doing. As I said... Learned the hard way.

[CBrown]

I see that this is too hard to answer for folks around here. Interesting. You would think people would be more interested in knowing these things or do most people run small sites?

If was forced to go from 1 server to a 2 server setup, 1 web hosting, 1 database server... How many people were they getting on average? How many posts did the database have? Million? More?

Sure processors get faster, and more RAM available... But if that was the case, wouldn't someone drop their two server back to the one?