Re: Linux vs BSD was "RE: [afnog] VLAN setup with linux"

[S Woodside <sbwoodside at yahoo.com>]

Bill Woodcock wrote:
>> You probably shouldn't be trying to run production services on linux,
>> anyway.

"production services" ... you mean services .. services like, say 
google?

Well I know that they're not very reliable or sophisticated though.

simon



http://rakaposhi.eas.asu.edu/f02-cse494-mailarchive/msg00138.html

Urs Hoelzle (Google)
The Google Linux Cluster

Abstract
Google's Linux cluster currently processes over 150 million queries per 
day, searching a multi-terabyte web index for every query with an 
average response time of less than a quarter of a second with near-100% 
uptime. In this talk I'll describe the software and hardware 
infrastructure that makes this performance possible.
I will start with an overview of the main problems facing a web search 
engine, and discuss Google's PageRank algorithm, which helps it to 
frequently return the right results on the first results page. PageRank 
is computed with a large-scale off-line computation over the web's link 
graph which models the behavior of a random web surfer.
Google's software architecture harnesses the power of thousands of 
cheap Linux PCs and organizes them into a scalable, reliable, 
high-performance computing system. At the same time, we aim to keep the 
architecture as simple as possible. Our solution structures the system 
as a collection of TCP-and UDP-based servers and guarantees reliability 
via replication of servers combined with software load balancing and 
failover.
On the hardware side, the main goals are performance and cost; 
reliability explictly isn't a goal, since that requirement is provided 
by software. We use custom-built rackmount systems assembled from 
standard PC components, ensuring volume availability and competitive 
pricing. A compact rack design minimizes colocation space costs but 
pushes the envelope of commercially supportable power density.

--
simonwoodside.com -- openict.net -- 99% Devil, 1% Angel

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