Using a central database server for many sites: plausible?

Question

Basically, I need some parts of database data synchronized on up to several dozens of sites. The perfect solution would be creating a central server to host that data.

Each pageload will have to fetch data from both database servers - the local and remote one and writes to the remote server will be quite common too.

While the db server can be as fast as desired hardware-wise, I'm cautious of the bottlenecks:

• Multiple database connections must be established on each pageload.
• Latency of the signal traveling between two physical locations.

Am I right to worry? Would it be wiser to synch the databases with cronjobs or other technologies?

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Along with assigning a bounty, I'm adding to the question hoping an expert with real life experience of this comes along:

What other technologies are there (besides cron) to sync MySql databases?

Answer 1

This questions is really down to your situation and I believe you've identified the main two problems with the central DB solution - so yes, you are right to be concerned.

I would personally opt to sync the data to the servers using a cron (or whatever method you chose) - cutting down on hardware costs and page load times. This to me is the more technical solution but in terms of its benefits (faster page loading times, no dependency on the central DB, lower costs) is the correct solution.

Alternatively, you could always set up a small MySQL database on a remote server and create a few test websites and run some benchmarks, this would give you some data on whether you are happy with the loading times.