4 ms·

Back when I was a sysadmin at Microsoft, we installed F-Secure's SSH server on every server we built (Messenger/Hotmail). The Windows team thought we were nuts.

by scurvy 8y ago

Back when I was a sysadmin at Microsoft, we installed F-Secure's SSH server on every server we built (Messenger/Hotmail). The Windows team thought we were nuts. Well, what do you expect if you ask a bunch of Solaris admins to run Windows? There were no real alternatives. I remember when they got all excited about showing off remote Powershell to us circa 2004, and we collectively rolled our eyes.

znpy 8y ago
Could you write more stories about that job you had? I always wondered what messenger/hotmail was ran on, and such stories would be really really interesting imho.
- scurvy 8y ago
  Hotmail was FreeBSD on the front end until it switched to Windows IIS in an ISAPI filter. The back end was Sun E4500 with T3 purple storage. Then they switched to HP with some terrible RAID crap. Messenger was borne from the Net Meeting team in an informal weekend hackathon (before that was a thing). Backend stored the buddy lists and was 3 Hotmail ustores (Sun E4500 with EMC clariion storage). Front ends started out as Sun 420R then switched to Windows bit by bit (DP, SB, and then CS and PS). The Messenger HTTP gateway always ran in IIS.
  - scurvy 8y ago
    Hotmail and Messenger used a lot of rdist in the early days. Until one of the managers rdisted /dev/null to /etc/passwd. Just one of many lolz in the day.
    - znpy 8y ago
      Glorious stories. You should write your memories about that somewhere in a blog or something. Thank you for sharing that!