Bob, you evil top-poster. ;) On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 12:14 -0800, Bob La Quey wrote: > I think the issue here is scalability. How many people do > you suspect it takes to keep a compute farm the size of > say Google or Amazon going?
If it's Linux and Apache, one because they are both flawless and never need maintenance. ;) (NOTE: As an educated guess, based upon my time at Akamai, I would say Linux/APache/Tomcat/MySQL based systems would take an average of one person per 100 servers. Windows/IIS/ASP/MSSQL would take an average of two people per server.) Well if something that has that kind of scale and power is needed from the start, then farming it out is probably the only option. > If I can lean into that capability > and focus my own energies and that of my developers on > what it is that gives us a specific uniqueness than it seems > to me to make a _lot_ of since to contract for generic services. For us - and myself - that kind of scale is not needed. If it ever is, a properly designed system will scale. Whether or not the system scales and the manpower it will take to support it when it does is something that must be included in the development process (e.g. - the requirements documents) from the very start. > > After all most of us don't provide our own electricity, though > we could, And we should, but that's another thread. > or take care of our own water and sewage, though > we could. Unlike data, you don't care about your crap. (or do you? ;) ) > How much of web oriented computing is really just > a commodity? I suspect most of the lower layers will be, if > they are not already, a commodity. Large companies would like every other company to think of their services as a commodity to be purchased from them. That's why, in the eyes of the corporation, we're all "Consumers". > > Why not provide your own tcp/ip, etc? Where in the stack is > it best to stop? We've actually done that too (OK, it's an embedded system.). :) All of our servers are here, in-house. We do not like the idea of our data residing on a computer under someone else's control. So, with that in mind we seriously look at our options for web services and what a third party package is giving us and potentially taking away. There are many areas of TCO that are not investigated or even thought of these days when it comes to many services. TCO goes way beyond the obvious monthly monetary cost of a service. TCO includes cost of upgrades in time and money, cost of problems, cost of lost data, stolen data, support fees, security, etc. What happens if we want to change our technology? Will the service support our new technology? What if it doesn't, can it be adapted? At what cost? What about the license agreement and AUP? The list goes on. Of the many systems I've either worked on, used, or somehow been involved with, I've found that in every case it would have been better if the company had kept it all in-house. That doesn't mean there are cases where it's better to farm it out. > > I don't own a telephone company but I use a telephone. > You're not storing data on your phone at your phone company either are you? We also now know that our conversations are no longer secure and are being monitored. How would you feel about having your sensitive data stored on such a system? (I don't know what your application is, your requirements, etc., so for all I know you whatever service you need will not be handling sensitive data.) Time to go home now. PGA -- Paul G. Allen BSIT/SE Owner/Sr. Engineer Random Logic Consulting www.randomlogic.com -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
