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Stack exchange has spent an obscene amount of time optimizing their infrastructure for efficiency on dedicated known hardware. Their DB instances also have 1.5T

by d4l3k 8y ago

Stack exchange has spent an obscene amount of time optimizing their infrastructure for efficiency on dedicated known hardware. Their DB instances also have 1.5TB of ram. You're not getting that for a few hundred dollars. https://stackexchange.com/performance https://stackexchange.com/performance Your average site wouldn't get anywhere near the same performance as them.

zbentley 8y ago
I think GP was pointing out the inefficiencies rife in "cloud scale" architecture these days, not saying that anyone can scale to StackExchange levels on a single instance.
chx 8y ago
Let's unpack my statement because it might have been too dense. 1. Almost all websites can run on a single dedicated server. 2. This is true for even something as big as Stackexchange which most sites are not. 3. If your site is indeed smaller than SE then that server is likely to be a few hundred dollars a month. Also: getting a 512GB RAM server for 5-700 USD or so is definitely possible these days. But, again, most sites won't need anywhere near that. Based not only on information and belief ;) but first hand experience I sincerely doubt most sites would need more than 64GB.
- ghshephard 8y ago
  The heavy uses of Docker in my (limited) experience are enterprise stacks with their 15+ components per application and many worker threads that they use to speed up ETL/Parsing/Analytics. Essentially Docker/VMs have replaced the thousands of servers that used to reside in corporate data centers, with the benefit now being that developers can launch those same complex Application stacks with little effort on their laptop. What used to be a 30+ day procurement process became <7 days with VMs, became < 15 minutes with docker/kubernetes. You can also do things that you would have never even considered doing prior to Docker - like run the application stack in the cloud, but launch one of the components (still in the same deployment) - on your laptop using tools like https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence.

by d4l3k 8y ago

zbentley 8y ago

I think GP was pointing out the inefficiencies rife in "cloud scale" architecture these days, not saying that anyone can scale to StackExchange levels on a single instance.

chx 8y ago

Let's unpack my statement because it might have been too dense. 1. Almost all websites can run on a single dedicated server. 2. This is true for even something as big as Stackexchange which most sites are not. 3. If your site is indeed smaller than SE then that server is likely to be a few hundred dollars a month. Also: getting a 512GB RAM server for 5-700 USD or so is definitely possible these days. But, again, most sites won't need anywhere near that. Based not only on information and belief ;) but first hand experience I sincerely doubt most sites would need more than 64GB.

ghshephard 8y ago
The heavy uses of Docker in my (limited) experience are enterprise stacks with their 15+ components per application and many worker threads that they use to speed up ETL/Parsing/Analytics. Essentially Docker/VMs have replaced the thousands of servers that used to reside in corporate data centers, with the benefit now being that developers can launch those same complex Application stacks with little effort on their laptop. What used to be a 30+ day procurement process became <7 days with VMs, became < 15 minutes with docker/kubernetes. You can also do things that you would have never even considered doing prior to Docker - like run the application stack in the cloud, but launch one of the components (still in the same deployment) - on your laptop using tools like https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence.