I could not agree more. But I have learnt, not many clients have the money for a hardware solution. But one thing I too have learnt .. stay away from pound etc, just stick to LVS.
A solution that involves other-than-software is not automatically buy-vs-build, nor an appliance.
Broadly, to me, it's usually about choosing the right hardware and assembling/configuring it in a "custom"[1] way. This is usually significantly cheaper than trying to get anything off-the-shelf to scale.
stay away from pound etc, just stick to LVS
I've learned to stay away from anything with heavy dependency on kernel code. My preference is HApoxy.
[1] Optimized for the problem at hand, which, usually, is remarkably commonplace, just nowhere near as commonplace as a lowest common denominator web server.
