This chapter is a tour through the setup of a single robust Plone server. Very large sites might need to spread across a cluster of machines, but the single-server configuration herein will suffice for 95% of deployments. As a guideline to whether you're in that 95%, here are some approximate performance metrics we're aiming for:
800 anonymous requests per second (of cached content)
40 authenticated requests per second
As always, premature optimization causes premature thinning of the hair, so, unless the web statistics from your old site show a strong need for more, start with a single server. It's easy to expand later.
The earlier numbers are within easy reach of relatively modest commodity hardware: for example, two 2.4-GHz, dual-core Xeons and 8 GB RAM. Plone will happily eat all the processor you can provide, performance scaling fairly linearly with CPU speed. RAM is the second most important consideration—and cheap—so don't skimp on that either.
The basic service stack...