We want to set up a WordPress 3 with the multi-site option enabled in order to have several (2-3) sites for news, photos & video. The expected audience is around 10-15k visits/day.
One of the problems is that we know that we will have big, exclusive news which will generate Slashdot effects generating spikes reaching to 50-70k visits/day. These spikes will be rather rare: let's say one-two spikes / quarter. Each spike will last 1-2 days and after this will fade. But it is critical for us that during the spikes the site(s) will be online AND responsive.
Another problem is that (at least) one of the sites will stream video. It is our video but we think to put it on a CDN (more on this later). ~250 episodes, each episode will be between 35-47 minutes. This gives us approx. 150 MB x 250 = ~ 37 GB. We plan to post two episodes / week. No, we don't think that all our audience will look at these. Let's say that we'll have at most 2-3k streams in the first day of a new episode. Also, even if we consider that the video is good (isn't it? ;-) - we don't think that this will generate any slashdot/digg (etc.) spikes). We think to use Amazon CloudFront for this.(or another CDN? suggestions please...)
Giving the above what hosting solution do you recommend?
We look at the following values: speed, uptime, budged, tech support - yeah, I know, the Paradise is in Heaven not here, on Earth :-). FTR, most probably we need a VPS, that's why I put the question here.
TIA for any comments