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jpv, you can indeed do this. There are several advantages to setting things up this way even if one given server
can handle the load. This is especially true
if you are hosting with places like servermatrix where a
given server with 1200 GB is really cheap, but overage
is expensive.
1) if one of your servers has a hardware failure you still
have the other one in operation and can direct all
the load to it.
2) when your traffic does grow you already have
a plan in place on how to scale.
There are some disadvantages though.
1) you'll need to keep your content mirrored across
the two (or more) servers. rsync over ssh is probably
the most common method of doing this and is
quite fast.
2) if you are using DNS round robin to distribute the load
you can run into some unsual issues if you have approx
23 or more servers in your rotation. The DNS system
normally uses UDP packets to communicate. However,
if the response from the DNS server is over a certain
size, the communication switches to TCP. Now,
this shouldn't pose a problem, but for some reason
it does. I found that when i exceed 23 servers in
my rotation that some people would start complaining
that they couldn't reach my site. I never figured out
the exact cause though and why it only occured on
some computers and not others.
3) 2 or more servers means more server administration.
As for your question regarding TGP/MGP scripts... to the best
of my knowledge, i have never had a gallery rejected
because it is on a load balanced system.
- jpoker
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