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Personally, I am not a huge fan of Windows, .NET and SQL Server, but this is a good example of a company using the right tool for the task at hand, rather than

Personally, I am not a huge fan of Windows, .NET and SQL Server, but this is a good example of a company using the right tool for the task at hand, rather than copy pasting popular stacks. It would be really interesting to see some stats, benchmarks, or any interesting metrics to help understand the benefits or drawbacks of using this tooling. There is way too much focus on Linux, to the point where I am worrying that Linux itself is becoming a monopoly, and it might end up not benefiting from good competition.

fabian2k 7y ago
There is a high-level overview of the Stack Exchange servers at https://stackexchange.com/performance https://stackexchange.com/performance More details are scattered across various places, e.g. Nick Craver's blog (https://nickcraver.com/blog/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/) and the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange meta sites.
- trilila 7y ago
  Nice one, thanks for this.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  I've got some clients on dedicated servers and some on cloud, the performance differences are staggering. Cloud seems so bad. For what you pay for in cloud it really feels like you get 10x the performance for the same price in dedicated hosting. This really underlines it. Running one of the most popular sites on the web with just 9 web servers, 2 SQL servers and a smattering of dedicated role servers. But that popularity ultimately boils down to 450 req/s, and they've got a nice, fast site. No faffing around with "scaling" up and down to handle the fact the cloud servers are slow. It always feels you get nowhere near the listed performance and are constantly getting throttled. I would guess a lot of startups would be better off paying a few grand a year for a couple of dedicated servers and just forgetting about AWS/Google Cloud/Azure.
  - BrentOzar 7y ago
    > But that popularity ultimately boils down to 450 req/s Way higher than that. Was 2X higher back in 2016, even: https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...
  - inapis 7y ago
    While true in a lot of cases, the answer is still not a binary yes or no. AWS/Azure/GCP still add a lot of quality of life improvements to workflows. Performance is not the only metric to compare on. There’s also productivity, time and opportunity costs. There are real benefits in outsourcing or buying off the shelf. Second, it also depends on wether you are write or read heavy. SO is primarily read heavy and they can get away with most requests never hitting their main servers but instead being handled by a CDN. But overall I do agree. Dedicated would give you a performance boost compared to virtual machines. And sometimes it might be worth it to bring stuff in house and do it yourself.
larzang 7y ago
Does the word monopoly even have meaning when the "product" is open source? It's not like a single company controls linux, it is contributed to and grows from input from many people and many companies worldwide, all of whom have an interest in seeing it flourish. Is HTML a monopoly? Is JS a monopoly?
- trilila 7y ago
  IMO it does have meaning, in the a technical sense, not necessarily commercially. JS does monopolize browser scripting. Now that you mentioned it, it's quite interesting that there are basically no competitors to JS, in the browser.
  - SenHeng 7y ago
    > it's quite interesting that there are basically no competitors to JS, in the browser Because the next best way to change a standard is add another one? For all the moaning about javascript over the past decades, it has evolved into a fairly formidable language since 2015. I’m not even sure introducing a new language would help anything at all. It would simply be quickly adopted by those the very same abusers. Maybe the solution instead is to have better browsers and implement better privacy policies.
    - trilila 7y ago
      I like JS, actually. It would be great to have some diversity tho. Also i agree on having better browsers.
- diroussel 7y ago
  You are right that monopoly only applies in a market. Sometimes the word ‘monoculture’ is useful to describe this kind of situation. However there is a large amount of diversity within Linux, so I would hesitate to call it a monoculture.

fabian2k 7y ago

There is a high-level overview of the Stack Exchange servers at https://stackexchange.com/performance https://stackexchange.com/performance More details are scattered across various places, e.g. Nick Craver's blog (https://nickcraver.com/blog/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/) and the Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange meta sites.

trilila 7y ago
Nice one, thanks for this.
mattmanser 7y ago
I've got some clients on dedicated servers and some on cloud, the performance differences are staggering. Cloud seems so bad. For what you pay for in cloud it really feels like you get 10x the performance for the same price in dedicated hosting. This really underlines it. Running one of the most popular sites on the web with just 9 web servers, 2 SQL servers and a smattering of dedicated role servers. But that popularity ultimately boils down to 450 req/s, and they've got a nice, fast site. No faffing around with "scaling" up and down to handle the fact the cloud servers are slow. It always feels you get nowhere near the listed performance and are constantly getting throttled. I would guess a lot of startups would be better off paying a few grand a year for a couple of dedicated servers and just forgetting about AWS/Google Cloud/Azure.
- BrentOzar 7y ago
  > But that popularity ultimately boils down to 450 req/s Way higher than that. Was 2X higher back in 2016, even: https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...
- inapis 7y ago
  While true in a lot of cases, the answer is still not a binary yes or no. AWS/Azure/GCP still add a lot of quality of life improvements to workflows. Performance is not the only metric to compare on. There’s also productivity, time and opportunity costs. There are real benefits in outsourcing or buying off the shelf. Second, it also depends on wether you are write or read heavy. SO is primarily read heavy and they can get away with most requests never hitting their main servers but instead being handled by a CDN. But overall I do agree. Dedicated would give you a performance boost compared to virtual machines. And sometimes it might be worth it to bring stuff in house and do it yourself.

larzang 7y ago

Does the word monopoly even have meaning when the "product" is open source? It's not like a single company controls linux, it is contributed to and grows from input from many people and many companies worldwide, all of whom have an interest in seeing it flourish. Is HTML a monopoly? Is JS a monopoly?

trilila 7y ago
IMO it does have meaning, in the a technical sense, not necessarily commercially. JS does monopolize browser scripting. Now that you mentioned it, it's quite interesting that there are basically no competitors to JS, in the browser.
- SenHeng 7y ago
  > it's quite interesting that there are basically no competitors to JS, in the browser Because the next best way to change a standard is add another one? For all the moaning about javascript over the past decades, it has evolved into a fairly formidable language since 2015. I’m not even sure introducing a new language would help anything at all. It would simply be quickly adopted by those the very same abusers. Maybe the solution instead is to have better browsers and implement better privacy policies.
  - trilila 7y ago
    I like JS, actually. It would be great to have some diversity tho. Also i agree on having better browsers.
diroussel 7y ago
You are right that monopoly only applies in a market. Sometimes the word ‘monoculture’ is useful to describe this kind of situation. However there is a large amount of diversity within Linux, so I would hesitate to call it a monoculture.