If you're in trouble and cannot find an answer to a question which goes beyond Stack Overflow...
If you have a not-so-usual solution for your problems but need to justify it to your boss...
If you like to think on your own rather than blindly follow "common wisdom" and "profound truth"...
...then 'No Bugs' Hare on Soft.ware might be the right place for you.
Your mileage may vary. Batteries not included

System Architecture (and it’s subfield Software Architecture) is a discipline which is surprisingly poorly covered. In a sense, it is still more an art than a science, and usually requires somebody intimately familiar with practical systems, to tell what’s to do and what’s to avoid when building a system.

IT Hares have lots of experience in both Software Architecture and more general System Architecture, and are trying to share their knowledge (and more importantly, their feelings) about them.

All Musings on System Architecture, page 6:

MMOG Server-Side. Eternal Linux-vs-Windows Debate

Quote: “Each server is only as secure as its admin”
Another Quote: “For cheaper servers, the difference between Windows and Linux can eat as much as 50% of the server rental price (though for those servers which are more or less optimal price-performance-wise observed difference was closer to 20-30%).”
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Server-Side Architecture. Front-End Servers and Client-Side Random Load Balancing

Quote: “[about Round-Robin DNS] one of these returned IPs can get cached by a Big Fat DNS server, and then get distributed to many thousands of clients”
Another Quote: “As a rule of thumb, Front-End Servers are a Good Thing™”
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Server-Side MMO Architecture. Naïve, Web-Based, and Classical Deployment Architectures

Quote: “If you disrupt the game-event-currently-in-progress for more than 0.5-2 minutes, for almost-any synchronous multi-player game you won’t be able to get the same players back, and will need to rollback the game event anyway.”
Another Quote: “However, keep in mind, that all fall-tolerant solutions are complicated, costly, and for the games realm I generally consider them as an over-engineering (even by my standards).”
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Client-Side. Client Architecture Diagram, Threads, and Game Loop

Quote: “To have a good concurrency model, it is not strictly necessary to program in Erlang”
Another Quote: “Most of developers agree that FSM-based programming is beneficial in the medium- to long-run.”
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Client-Side. On Debugging Distributed Systems, Deterministic Logic, and Finite State Machines

Quote: “After your logic has failed in production, you can “replay” this inputs-log on your functionally identical in-house system, and the bug will be reproduced at the very same point where it has originally happened.”
Another Quote: “You can implement your Finite State Machine as a deterministic variation of a usual event-driven program”
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MOG GDD (a.k.a. Business Requirements)

Quote: “You don’t “make” a violin. It is barrels and benches which are “made”. And violins, just like bread, grapes, and children – are born and raised.”
Another Quote: “The very first step should be to understand what exactly you’re going to achieve.”
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