3 ms·

At the risk of exposing my ignorance - look at all those "Peak 5%-20%" labels. Doesn't that mean they have a lot more than they need?

deleted 7y ago
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daxfohl 7y ago
Nick Craver went into that a bit here. 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-...
vitus 7y ago
They have a lot more CPU than they need, but the challenge is often getting servers shaped appropriately (RAM x CPU x disk x network), especially if you're not building your own. Ultimately, their service is (most likely) not compute-bound.
dahfizz 7y ago
Stack overflow hosts all (most?) Of their own baremetal servers in their own data center. Looking at the specs of the machines, they are actually pretty basic as far as servers go. A server isn't barely worth the cost of it's chassis and motherboard if you put less than 64 G ram and 24 CPUs in it. In other words, these are about the lowest specd proper servers you can get. So yeah, even their modest hardware is still overspecd for running their website.
- latch 7y ago
  "Their own data center" implies (to me at least) that they built their own data center. That doesn't sound right, so I looked it up, and it seems like they're colocating. That might be what you meant, but the data centers they use certainly weren't built or owned by SO.
  - dahfizz 7y ago
    As far as I can tell, you are correct. They manage their own metal servers/racks inside a colocated data center. Sorry if this caused confusion.
  - 0x445442 7y ago
    Yeah, I recall an article that said their physical hardware was in jeopardy during hurricane Sandy.
paulsutter 7y ago
As CPU utilization goes up, latency will go up. Also, one or two second snapshots of CPU use are averages over time. During any given moment you will invariably get little bursts of requests, and those will have slow responses if running closer to full utilization. Also, of course, the total cost per hour for 9 servers with 3 year depreciation is in cents.
manigandham 7y ago
Yes but the overall hardware is a one-time purchase and cheap considering all the other costs of the business. They're well provisioned to keep latency down and handle any unexpected outages.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

daxfohl 7y ago

Nick Craver went into that a bit here. 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-...

vitus 7y ago

They have a lot more CPU than they need, but the challenge is often getting servers shaped appropriately (RAM x CPU x disk x network), especially if you're not building your own. Ultimately, their service is (most likely) not compute-bound.

dahfizz 7y ago

Stack overflow hosts all (most?) Of their own baremetal servers in their own data center. Looking at the specs of the machines, they are actually pretty basic as far as servers go. A server isn't barely worth the cost of it's chassis and motherboard if you put less than 64 G ram and 24 CPUs in it. In other words, these are about the lowest specd proper servers you can get. So yeah, even their modest hardware is still overspecd for running their website.

latch 7y ago
"Their own data center" implies (to me at least) that they built their own data center. That doesn't sound right, so I looked it up, and it seems like they're colocating. That might be what you meant, but the data centers they use certainly weren't built or owned by SO.
- dahfizz 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, you are correct. They manage their own metal servers/racks inside a colocated data center. Sorry if this caused confusion.
- 0x445442 7y ago
  Yeah, I recall an article that said their physical hardware was in jeopardy during hurricane Sandy.

paulsutter 7y ago

As CPU utilization goes up, latency will go up. Also, one or two second snapshots of CPU use are averages over time. During any given moment you will invariably get little bursts of requests, and those will have slow responses if running closer to full utilization. Also, of course, the total cost per hour for 9 servers with 3 year depreciation is in cents.

manigandham 7y ago

Yes but the overall hardware is a one-time purchase and cheap considering all the other costs of the business. They're well provisioned to keep latency down and handle any unexpected outages.