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A Twitter-like service that fits on a single server could probably get by with the reduced revenue that comes with not offering obsessively fine-grained analyti

A Twitter-like service that fits on a single server could probably get by with the reduced revenue that comes with not offering obsessively fine-grained analytics and ad targeting.

poslathian 4y ago
Best comment. And one you don’t hear nearly enough from typical product and eng managers.
- tinyspacewizard 4y ago
  Ehhh a large company would much prefer: $$$$$$ income on $$$ costs to $$$ income on $ costs
  - gonzo 4y ago
    Perhaps. But VCs prefer the first.
    - yuhong 4y ago
      [dead]
serverholic 4y ago
I think about this often. Specifically, how much bloat exists in the world because individuals in our society are forced to justify their existence on a daily basis. Everyone has to be employed so it's better to keep adding more crap to products and make those products disposable in order to give people a job.
- serial_dev 4y ago
  If your team is full of engineers whose specialty is running clusters with 1K+ machines, you'll get solutions that need clusters with 1K+ machines.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
This is true from the POV of capitalism but not institutions. This would be a hyper profitable but politically unsustainable business.
icedchai 4y ago
True. You'd also save a ton of less operations and engineering staff. Running anything on a single server, however, is really a non starter for anything remotely serious. What do you do if you need to do an OS update? I suppose you could just never do those, like a former employer (1000+ day uptimes...)
- kijin 4y ago
  Compare the cost of operating multiple servers, on one hand, with the lost revenue from having weekly or monthly maintenance windows during which you just put up a Fail Whale page. Most people overestimate the latter by a huge margin.
  - IshKebab 4y ago
    That's fine if your service is really local - you can do it at night. Not really an option for a global site. Imagine if Twitter went down for a few hours every month. People are addicted to Twitter. It might be at a critical time for an entire country (e.g. the Queen dies). Even worse you can't guarantee how long the upgrade will take. You'd definitely need at least two servers. But I think you could surely just have simple master/slave replication and switch between them.
    - kijin 4y ago
      Yeah, I was just responding to the "how about OS updates" part of the parent comment, for which scheduled downtime is a reasonable option. To protect your service from unscheduled downtime though, like a failing RAID array, you would need at least two servers. Personally I wouldn't run a critical service on only one server, but two servers? Definitely doable. I actually have a service running on two servers in different DCs 700 miles apart. Zero downtime in 9 years. :)
- glass3 4y ago
  Twitter is not serious enough that there cannot be a timeout. With a second OS partition, the server can alternate between the working copy and a copy that is updated in a VM. For a free service, customers cannot complain even if there is a reboot every day and the service is down for a couple of minutes. Realistically, there would be a mirroring server to be prepared for hardware failures. One server can be restarted while the other is the main server.
anticristi 4y ago
Not to mention that your business would end up being more profitable by avoiding GDPR fines. Most users in the EU would click "Reject all" anyway, so basically that code is not needed.

A Twitter-like service that fits on a single server could probably get by with the reduced revenue that comes with not offering obsessively fine-grained analytics and ad targeting.

poslathian 4y ago

Best comment. And one you don’t hear nearly enough from typical product and eng managers.

tinyspacewizard 4y ago
Ehhh a large company would much prefer: $$$$$$ income on $$$ costs to $$$ income on $ costs
- gonzo 4y ago
  Perhaps. But VCs prefer the first.
  - yuhong 4y ago
    [dead]

serverholic 4y ago

I think about this often. Specifically, how much bloat exists in the world because individuals in our society are forced to justify their existence on a daily basis. Everyone has to be employed so it's better to keep adding more crap to products and make those products disposable in order to give people a job.

serial_dev 4y ago
If your team is full of engineers whose specialty is running clusters with 1K+ machines, you'll get solutions that need clusters with 1K+ machines.

throwayyy479087 4y ago

This is true from the POV of capitalism but not institutions. This would be a hyper profitable but politically unsustainable business.

icedchai 4y ago

True. You'd also save a ton of less operations and engineering staff. Running anything on a single server, however, is really a non starter for anything remotely serious. What do you do if you need to do an OS update? I suppose you could just never do those, like a former employer (1000+ day uptimes...)

kijin 4y ago
Compare the cost of operating multiple servers, on one hand, with the lost revenue from having weekly or monthly maintenance windows during which you just put up a Fail Whale page. Most people overestimate the latter by a huge margin.
- IshKebab 4y ago
  That's fine if your service is really local - you can do it at night. Not really an option for a global site. Imagine if Twitter went down for a few hours every month. People are addicted to Twitter. It might be at a critical time for an entire country (e.g. the Queen dies). Even worse you can't guarantee how long the upgrade will take. You'd definitely need at least two servers. But I think you could surely just have simple master/slave replication and switch between them.
  - kijin 4y ago
    Yeah, I was just responding to the "how about OS updates" part of the parent comment, for which scheduled downtime is a reasonable option. To protect your service from unscheduled downtime though, like a failing RAID array, you would need at least two servers. Personally I wouldn't run a critical service on only one server, but two servers? Definitely doable. I actually have a service running on two servers in different DCs 700 miles apart. Zero downtime in 9 years. :)
glass3 4y ago
Twitter is not serious enough that there cannot be a timeout. With a second OS partition, the server can alternate between the working copy and a copy that is updated in a VM. For a free service, customers cannot complain even if there is a reboot every day and the service is down for a couple of minutes. Realistically, there would be a mirroring server to be prepared for hardware failures. One server can be restarted while the other is the main server.

anticristi 4y ago

Not to mention that your business would end up being more profitable by avoiding GDPR fines. Most users in the EU would click "Reject all" anyway, so basically that code is not needed.