Right now it doesnt seem like there is any standard way to run IPB using multiple web servers. Using one web server and one database server is easy, but once you start needing to use two web servers with a load balancer, things get complicated.

I recently had to start using two web servers and a load balancer, and the only way i could figure out how to do it was to copy the ipb files to both servers, then set them both to use the same database.

This type of setup isn't very good because it caused me to have to disable avatar uploads and attachment uploads since whenever members upload an avatar or attachment, it would only go to one of the web servers so their avatar or attachment would only work 50% of the time. Also, it doesnt work well with the cache files because every time i make a skin or template bit change in the admin cp, i have to erbuild the cache files then upload the cache files to the other web server.

I think it would be much simpler if there were options in teh admin CP specifically for people who have large forums and need to run off multiple servers. Im seeing more and more people that are having this type of problem as their forums get bigger, and as of now there doesnt seem to be a standard way to deal with it.

We have a very large site setup on two webservers - we have a custom script running that mirrors the files from/to one another I believe.

As for uploads, you can set a cache url, which may be useful in your situation.

Thanks for the info.

About the cache url, it only lets you plug in a local path which would mean it would still stick the cache files into a local directory on one of the servers, not all of them.

I was looking into using rsync to synchronize the files but it's a pain

Is there any chance that IPB will support multiple servers in the future so that people don't have to worry about figuring out how to get a programmer to write custom scripts, etc, just to keep everything working? I think enough people have large forums now where this is an important issue.

Having support for multiple webservers by default would be a great feature

actually. not only the uploading is a problem. It is also hard to have multiple database-servers off-the-shelf with IPB.

I have a huge site running and thus had to use InnoDB due to table locking issues with MyISAM. Of course this is no good for searches, huge tasks, etc.

In the end I've customized IPB search/db-class to be able to use multiple servers for different kind of actions.

I now have 1 main DB-server for the forum and 2 DB-servers (slaved) who are being used for fulltext searches, recounts, IP-searches, etc.

Support for multiple servers by default is great.