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Does hacker news really run on one server? What if server goes down? I've always though high availability was the more important reason for multiple servers,

Does hacker news really run on one server? What if server goes down? I've always though high availability was the more important reason for multiple servers, rather than performance. Even if you have only two paying customers, they are probably paying for the right to hit your website / service 24/7.

lostapathy 8y ago
What if hacker news goes down, more work gets done for the day? It’s really common to over estimate the cost of being down, while underestimating the costs of resiliency. And in the end if you can’t fully afford the resiliency, you end up with a system that’s more complicated and thus less stable than it could have been had you just accepted a tiny bit of risk.
- _drFaust 8y ago
  extremely valid point. The initial setup isn't the challenge, it's the endless tweaks to make it fault tolerant. For anyone looking into k8s, take time to research best practices for monitoring and readiness probes.
wpietri 8y ago
> What if server goes down? Productivity of Y Combinator startups goes up. So YC benefits either way.
matuszeg 8y ago
Has hacker news ever gone down? I cant remember it ever going dkwnt but I assume it has to have at some point.
- iBelieve 8y ago
  I've seen it happen at least once in the few years that I've been on Hacker News, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228704
- freehunter 8y ago
  Here's the official status twitter: https://twitter.com/hnstatus https://twitter.com/hnstatus
- collyw 8y ago
  I got a server can't respond to your request type message this morning. OK, the server wasn't down, but it was loaded enough that it couldn't serve me. A page refresh and it was working.
jimnotgym 8y ago
An interesting case study of an app at scale is Stack Overflow. Rather more than one server, but rather less than you might expect. Edit: fixed url https://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-stack-overflow/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-...
- branko_d 8y ago
  Key point: "The primary reason the utilization is so low is efficient code."
paulddraper 8y ago
One application server, yes. HN is fronted by Cloudflare for CDN + DDoS protection, which of course is a lot more than one server. That's why if you get a particularly long thread (1k+ comments), admins will beg people to log out so that the responses can be served from the CDN cache. Example: American 2016 presidential election https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752 (1,700 comments)
- tambre 8y ago
  HN hasn't been fronted by Cloudflare since July.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    Hm, interesting. I noticed HN started responding to HEAD requests with 405s recently; perhaps that is the cause.
  - ksec 8y ago
    Why did they stop using Cloudflare?
    - tambre 8y ago
      It was part of their networking rework. Presumably to improve stability of the website. I've also been told that it was a big step towards enabling IPv6 for HN. There are other parts of Y Combinator that still use Cloudflare though.
- detaro 8y ago
  Not Cloudflare anymore. Traffic goes to somewhere in San Diego from Europe, which it wouldn't if it was Cloudflare (different IP range too)
vesak 8y ago
Well, there's another important question: What percentage of all services need high availability? Stetson-Harrison method shows that it's less than 5%.
- kodablah 8y ago
  Need is determined by the customer. You might be able to explain to them that they don't need it on their way to a competitor. May not be fair or rational, but redundancy and its peace-of-mind has real benefits in most systems compared to cost.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

lostapathy 8y ago

What if hacker news goes down, more work gets done for the day? It’s really common to over estimate the cost of being down, while underestimating the costs of resiliency. And in the end if you can’t fully afford the resiliency, you end up with a system that’s more complicated and thus less stable than it could have been had you just accepted a tiny bit of risk.

_drFaust 8y ago
extremely valid point. The initial setup isn't the challenge, it's the endless tweaks to make it fault tolerant. For anyone looking into k8s, take time to research best practices for monitoring and readiness probes.

wpietri 8y ago

> What if server goes down? Productivity of Y Combinator startups goes up. So YC benefits either way.

matuszeg 8y ago

Has hacker news ever gone down? I cant remember it ever going dkwnt but I assume it has to have at some point.

iBelieve 8y ago
I've seen it happen at least once in the few years that I've been on Hacker News, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228704 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228704
freehunter 8y ago
Here's the official status twitter: https://twitter.com/hnstatus https://twitter.com/hnstatus
collyw 8y ago
I got a server can't respond to your request type message this morning. OK, the server wasn't down, but it was loaded enough that it couldn't serve me. A page refresh and it was working.

jimnotgym 8y ago

An interesting case study of an app at scale is Stack Overflow. Rather more than one server, but rather less than you might expect. Edit: fixed url https://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-stack-overflow/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2013/11/22/what-it-takes-to-run-...

branko_d 8y ago
Key point: "The primary reason the utilization is so low is efficient code."

paulddraper 8y ago

One application server, yes. HN is fronted by Cloudflare for CDN + DDoS protection, which of course is a lot more than one server. That's why if you get a particularly long thread (1k+ comments), admins will beg people to log out so that the responses can be served from the CDN cache. Example: American 2016 presidential election https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12909752 (1,700 comments)

tambre 8y ago
HN hasn't been fronted by Cloudflare since July.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Hm, interesting. I noticed HN started responding to HEAD requests with 405s recently; perhaps that is the cause.
- ksec 8y ago
  Why did they stop using Cloudflare?
  - tambre 8y ago
    It was part of their networking rework. Presumably to improve stability of the website. I've also been told that it was a big step towards enabling IPv6 for HN. There are other parts of Y Combinator that still use Cloudflare though.
detaro 8y ago
Not Cloudflare anymore. Traffic goes to somewhere in San Diego from Europe, which it wouldn't if it was Cloudflare (different IP range too)

vesak 8y ago

Well, there's another important question: What percentage of all services need high availability? Stetson-Harrison method shows that it's less than 5%.

kodablah 8y ago
Need is determined by the customer. You might be able to explain to them that they don't need it on their way to a competitor. May not be fair or rational, but redundancy and its peace-of-mind has real benefits in most systems compared to cost.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]