Slightly dated, but I recommend Cal's book on the lessons we learned scaling Flickr, http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/059610235

Slightly dated, but I recommend Cal's book on the lessons we learned scaling Flickr, http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applications/dp/0596102356 http://www.amazon.com/Building-Scalable-Web-Sites-Applicatio... Also remember that premature scaling is one of the leading causes of failure.