We are currently running roughly 40 sites on 1 server using Kentico. We do not appear to be running into too many issues as yet with regard to performance - we were for a while but after configuring our caching a little better and tuning several queries things appear to be quite solid.

However, what we are now wondering is whether there are any metrics available or best practices relating to deployment. We are experimenting with various configurations based upon the following:

1. the number of IIS websites
2. the number of IIS application pools
3. the number of databases

We are also beginning to experiment with various hardware configurations.

We have requirements which mean that our user-base is shared, and although we are already beginning to plan a Web Farm we are hoping for recommendations in the meantime.

Should we be worried about the number of users contained within a Kentico database? Is 5,000 too many? 50,000? 500,000?

Should we be worried about the number of documents contained within a Kentico database? Is 5,000 too many? 50,000? 500,000?

Should we be considering a SQL cluster for the Web Farm? At what point would you recommend this?

Is there anything we should be considering when planning to move to a Web Farm?

While we will know the answers to these questions soon enough, it would make things a lot easier, and far more efficient, if we could gather some advice prior to experimentation within a production environment.