> 2. Confederated - Completely distributed. Each machine is its own monolithic platform with everything from DNS to database, including web server on that node, but a cluster of nodes gives you scalability, and workload is distributed across the cluster. (I'm not aware of any examples of this, which is why I'm building Nirvana.)
It looks like Tumblr is doing something like what you're describing, at least for their dashboard. [1]
If you go down to "Cell Design for Dashboard Inbox", it seems like the architecture is to have one (maybe a cluster) of machines function as an independent platform and map users into individual "cells". Their "Dashboard Inbox" is the true meat and potatoes of their product.
It looks like Tumblr is doing something like what you're describing, at least for their dashboard. [1]
If you go down to "Cell Design for Dashboard Inbox", it seems like the architecture is to have one (maybe a cluster) of machines function as an independent platform and map users into individual "cells". Their "Dashboard Inbox" is the true meat and potatoes of their product.
[1]: http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architectur...