H-Sphere Scalability, Domains & Servers

[uaziz]

I am scoping H-Sphere as a probable candidate for my WHM project.
I would like answers from some experienced users in regards to what kind of a setup I require for the following setup.

Phase 1) Initially start up with 500 Domains (each domain provided 20MB space and 2 Email accounts). Basic php, cgi access and maybe mysql /postgresql.

Phase 2) Support 1000 Domains with similar setup
Phase 3) Support 5000 Domains with similar setup
Phase 4) Support 10000 Domains with similar setup
Phase 5) Support 20000 Domains with similar setup.

1) How many Servers do I need for each phase?
2) Realistically how many domains can I support for just a standalone installation or a 1 Control Panel + 1 WEB+DNS installation.

- Please keep in mind that 80% users will be using websites for personal use with minimal web and mail traffic.

3) Control Panel can only be installed on 1 server. How many concurrent users can use without experiencing performance degradation on a PIV 3.0 Ghz with 1024 MB Ram?

Any other advice / suggestions will be welcome.
I am still scoping and formulating my plans. If you think H-Sphere is the way or is not the way to go for this project please advise reasons and alternatives. I appreciate all the help I can get from this forum.

Thanks

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

There are H-Sphere providers who host close to 2,000 Web sites on a single physical Web server.

Should your environment be similar to their environment, then you would look at the following infrastructure:

One control panel server

One to x mail servers (this will be dependant on the email you send out)

Zero to x database servers (depends on your database needs)

One to x DNS servers (based on your needs)

Then take the number of domains / 2000 compared to the disk size ((disk size - room for all system files, temp files, et all / 20 MB) to come up with the number of physical Web servers you would need.


NOTES:

You can run a number of logical services on the same physical server thereby reducing the number of physical servers you have to manage.

For example, the control panel and one of the DNS services can be on the same physical server.

Based on your projected growth rate, I would recommend the CP server have 2 GB to 4 GB of RAM.

Thank you.

[uaziz]

1) How many hosts should be allocated to a DNS Server?
2) What would be recommended specs for a Control Panel, Mail Server, DNS Server, Web Server?
Can celerons / PIII perform the job of a DNS server?...how much bandwidth does each server require?

Thanks

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

Specifications, in terms of mathematical proofs of what you need, can be contracted by a network engineer.

H-Sphere DNS servers can handle tens of thousands of DNS entries.

DNS servers typically don't have to be high powered.

Thank you.