If someone wishes to provide affiliate program to an enormously large affiliate and customer base, the recommended server specs are as follows:
APPLICATION (WEB) SERVER CONFIGURATION
- Processor: Intel Dual Xeon X5650 (12 cores) 2.6Ghz per Core
- RAM: 64GB DDR3 RAM
note: to handle high traffic loads you may need even higher amount of RAM
MYSQL DATABASE SERVER CONFIGURATION
- Processor: Intel Dual Xeon X5650 (12 cores) 2.0Ghz per Core
- RAM: 64GB DDR3 RAM
- Disk: 4 SSD drives in RAID (64-128GB each)
NOTE: The application server and database server must be running on separate machines.
The above mentioned configuration can handle 10.000+ tracking requests (click, sale, impression) in a minute, however, it is essential to understand that in order to maintain the performance it is convenient to archive (export) old data (clicks, impressions, transactions) in another instance of database.
What is old data? Data for which the affiliate already got paid (payout has been executed) and you do not need to watch it anymore. So it can be data older than 2,3 months or half a year.