Here's the question:

Let's say I buy two Linodes. On the first one, I want to run all the services, eg. Apache2, MySQL. On the second, I want to host all my large files.

Is it possible to set the first Linode up so there can be an alias or 'shortcut' on the first Linode so that I can access all those large media files from the first Linode's Apache2?

They're on the same datacenter.

Cheers,
arm

Same datacenter, so use the private network and nfs/smb.

Thanks, but can you elaborate more? Maybe the steps needed to get started?

Basically, NFS allows you to mount a directory from another server as if it were a local hard disk. Once the remote directory is mounted on (i.e. attached to) a local directory, you can put files in there just like it were part of the local filesystem.

There are plenty of tutorials out there on setting up NFS between two servers. Google a bit and pick the one you find easy to follow.

Honestly though, if you're going to use two linodes, why not put the MySQL on the second server and keep the Apache and large files on the same server? It takes no more than a negligible amount of CPU or RAM to serve static files over the web (as long as the server is properly configured), so your fileserver is just going to sit idle most of the time. In addition, Linode allows you to pool your bandwidth allowance between linodes, so it doesn't really matter which server uses more bandwidth.

Have you searched at all? NFS is the standard network file system protocol. Export a directory from serverA to serverB, mount it on serverB, bam serverB sees the files.