I'm looking to build a flash based yellow pages directory and have at my
disposal four dual P3-550 IBM servers (plus a number of Celeron 400 class
old workstations if necessary). I'd really welcome opinions regarding the
ideal way to architect the hosting setup

Unless vehemently deterred otherwise I plan to run Win 2003 Server and IIS
(which supposedly has load balancing capabilities built in) and Cold Fusion
6.1 MX on one machine (or group of machines) and MySQL 4.1 on a separate
machine (or group of machines). My goal is to follow best practices as
closely as possible and though there may not ever be a need to handle
exponential traffic growth (which I know could be solved in the short-term
with better hardware) I would nonetheless like to plan for it in advance (a
girl can dream can't she?).

In terms of scalability and performance is it better to load balance among
multiple machines the webserver/coldfusion or the database or both?

In terms of performance for site visitors from various areas of the country
is it better to separate the database geographically (i.e. New York area
records in a NY based database and LA records in a California based db -- if
this is even possible)??? How about breaking the database into multiple
parts (i.e A-E on machine 1, F-M on machine 2 etc.)

Also, what are thoughts about using the old workstations for firewalls
and/or a mail servers?


All feedback is welcome as well as any offers of code/components/forms that
could be used on such a site (fee or equity to be negotiated) if anyone is
interested.

Thanks in advance,