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Stack Overflow: The Hardware – 2016 Edition

nickcraver.com

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Re: Stack Overflow: The Hardware – 2016 Edition

#11

Post by evook »

Nick-Craver wrote: post #9
evook wrote: post #7

You know someone is a real hardware guy when he calls backup, monitoring and logging non essential. Also a bit confused about the 2960Ss and the choice of Cisco in general. I'd never thought Stack Overflow ran on Network Equipment, what I'd describe as consumer hardware in networking.

To clarify a bit: I meant they are non-essential to serving the sites . If they all went offline, visitors to Stack Overflow would not be aware.

I thought so, but I liked your phrasing.

What I sadly don't get is the hierarchy of your routers and switches by the pictures and the lack of QSFP+ utilization as well as the amount of copper. What's the reason behind the copper sfp transceivers in the ASR-1001[0]?

[0]https://nickcraver.com/blog/content/SO-Hardware-Network-NewY...

Re: Stack Overflow: The Hardware – 2016 Edition

#16

Post by Sanddancer »

evook wrote: post #11
Nick-Craver wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify a bit: I meant they are non-essential to serving the sites . If they all went offline, visitors to Stack Overflow would not be aware.

I thought so, but I liked your phrasing. What I sadly don't get is the hierarchy of your routers and switches by the pictures and the lack of QSFP+ utilization as well as the amount of copper. What's the reason behind the copper sfp transceivers in the ASR-1001[0]? [0] https://nickcraver.com/blog/content/SO-Hardware-Network-NewY...

The 2960s seem to be in the background for the management side of the network, doing ikvm and the like, therefore don't need 10 gigabits. Also, the copper in the core routers seems to be more a case of the routers still having enough bandwidth for the site, just needing more bandwidth, thus more ports aggregated. 10gig ethernet's a good amount cheaper than 10 gigs of fiber and works just as well for the short run they're doing..

Re: Stack Overflow: The Hardware – 2016 Edition

#18

Post by tkinom »

Nick-Craver wrote: post #17
tkinom wrote: post #12

How big is the Stack Overflow database size in disk? I assume you cache them all in RAM thus you need 700+GB of RAM?

It's at 1.5TB of data and 200GB of T-Logs these days.

It would be cool to see the graph of SQL server RAM size 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB size vs client access latency.

Re: Stack Overflow: The Hardware – 2016 Edition

#19

Post by dsr_ »

mrkmcknz wrote: post #14

This might be somewhat unrelated; Is there any reason Stack Overflow decided against deploying on something like the Open Compute Project.

Very likely because at just 6 racks of commodity (i.e. orderable without a salescritter) hardware, they don't need that density or scale.
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