: Site hosted in DREAMHOST, planning to add additional servers or 3rd party webhost to handle huge traffic Our company site is hosted from a VPS server in Dreamhost. The site is created in Drupal

@Speyer207

There are a plethora of options to improve the performance of a php based website. Here are some options I use:


Cache, cache and cache. In the performance and usability options, make sure that you ticked the option "cache pages for anonymous users".
Install and configure varnish. Either install it in your present server or install it in a new server (depending upon the amount of RAM you have in your present server for caching). Varnish act as a reverse proxy and it cache content. It reduces load on your server by reducing the number of requests apache will have to handle.
For Drupal per se, reduce the number of modules. Try to use modules with a broad idea, such as "Views" to replace functionality offered by specific modules such as "related content".
Use APC to reduce load that php generate on the server.
Use advanced css and javascript aggregation to reduce the total number of files per pageload and hence total number of requests apache will have to handle.


For additional information on how to improve the performance of a Drupal website, please read here.

The success of all these depends on a number of factors, such as the type of your website, number of page views per day, amount of RAM available, etc. If all the above did not help enough, you should consider upgrading to a dedicated server or adding additional servers to redistribute load.

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