Deployment Environment for Web App?

I am not sure if I am posting on the right place. Currently I have a java web application ready for deployment. It is supposed to be a dot com project, targetting for public access.
Recalling Google started by deploying on a server farm composing of machines with average performance. My question is shall I imitate this strategy or to adopt one machine with high performance?
If the later option is recommended what should be the system configuration in that case?

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