UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads 7 Version 7 Support Running UBB Threads 7xx on load balanced servers

We've outgrown our single server we were using for our forums. Our site now uses 4 web servers and 1 Database server. We found that when we run UBB 6.5 on a load balanced server for the most part things are ok. All posts are contained in the database. But when we do things like edit templates or users attach a file it's luck of the draw if you are on the primary server or not. If you are not on the primary server any changes get wiped.

We will be upgrading soon to the latest version of UBB. But does the latest version have any features for working across multiple servers?

We have a work around in place right now. We did an NFS share to our database server so that all of the files are on one share and each web server thinks they are local. This works for now. But as we grow this will no longer be a solution.

I'd be interested to know of the latest version addresses these issues or is anyone has any good workarounds.

Some quick stats about our forums.
Over 50,000 users
Over 800,000 posts
Our Max users online is about 3800.
http://www.markeedragon.com/u/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php

Currently, the NFS share option is the only real solution. In our latest version we're still writing things to the file system itself. Eventually we need to definitely look at making a true load balanced option on the script side of things.

Normally, your database is where you'd see the most benefit from load balancing. Where you'd have a master/slave and all of the writes could be done on one and all of the reads on another. We'll be putting an option in to specify a master/slave probably in our next major release after 7.3 is out.

Rick already responded to your post, but thought I'd just say that is a nice looking site for as much information as you have packed in there.

Well we did it. We have our UBB installation going across 4 web servers. We tried replication and that did not work very well for admin functions. Worked ok though for avatar uploads and such as it would distribute to all servers in less than a minute. But when it came to changing admin settings if you were not on the master server (luck of the draw with a load balancer) we had a large chance that the changes would not save.

So we ended up doing an NFS share at the top level forum folder. It seems to work ok. It's not the best solution in my opinion but it's what we have at the moment.

Also. Since upgrading from 6.5 to 7.2.2 we've seen double the page views and a crap load of thank yous from our members. We are at over 1,000,000 posts now and 60,000 members with around 150 new members per day. Oh and about 8,000 page views per hour.

So UBB can work on a large scale. We're proof.

Congrats on all that traffic.