Multiple servers for 1 domain name?

["Jason Lim" <maillist@jasonlim.com>]

Hi All,

I was wondering if you guys are aware of any solution for multiple servers
to server 1 domain name?

That is... like those big ISPs that have "user" webhosting.

http://members.isp.com/joe/ (goes to server no. 5)
http://members.isp.com/jane/ (goes to server no. 3)
http://members.isp.com/someone/ (goes to server no. 2)
...etc.

In this case, some users have MySQL database, some don't.

I'm at a loss of ideas. I thought of doing
http://members1.isp.com/username/ and http://members2.isp.com/username/
but it specifically needs to be all under http://members.isp.com/

Basically the reason for doing this is because the existing single server
is overloaded, and need to split the workload to 1 or 2 more servers.

I've been looking at Apache's redirect function, so that it could be set
so a single server receives all requests, and redirects the request to the
server with the user on it. But the problem with that is that it
introduces a single point-of-failure.

Do you have any suggestion or any documentation I could read related to
this?

Thanks in advance :-)