Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

blog.sqlizer.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 164 posts

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#131

Post by jaypaulynice »

"We estimate that Facebook has 830,000 servers in 2017."

No way this can be true. Facebook scaled primarily using CDNs like Akamai. Akamai is the largest CDN in the world and has no more than 300k-350k servers all over the world. It's one of the largest distributed system in the world. I worked there, so I know this for sure.

Facebook has recently been moving their data in house, but they do not have 830,000 servers. That's almost 3 times Akamai. At this point, Facebook would be more profitable letting people use their server infrastructure instead of using it for themselves.

Running Facebook over AWS is a CDN problem that was solved by Akamai!

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#133

Post by bedros »

chc wrote: post #126
bedros wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for those who downvoted me, can you explain why I'm wrong, Would you believe that Apple today would use react in their products? What would Steve Jobs say to someone who suggests using react in apple software/saas? downvoting on HN is being abused here, just because someone is a big fan of reactjs and disagrees with me, they automatically downvote a valid opinion based on facts. see for yourself, from react patent cl…

I explained how you're wrong here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14659675 The TL;DR is: "That is just a patent license, and most OSS doesn't even include a patent license at all, so it seems weird to be super-concerned in this case in particular."

Thanks for the reference ,but I read your earlier comment

here's the issue when picking reactjs vs others (like vuejs)

Choice A. by picking reactjs I'm in a clear violation of FB patents, but I'm covered as long I don't sue FB.

Choice B. by picking others (like vuejs), I may or may not be violating FB patents, (virtualDOM has some prior art, as some people claim)

why it's so hard for people to understand that "May or Maynot" is a better choice of "definitely" violating FB patents in case I need to sue FB if they are killing my business by copying my patents.

I know that suing for patents is not best business model. But, having that weapon (even defensively) is better than not having one.

still people downvote for gray areas?

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#134

Post by tanilama »

jaypaulynice wrote: post #131

"We estimate that Facebook has 830,000 servers in 2017." No way this can be true. Facebook scaled primarily using CDNs like Akamai. Akamai is the largest CDN in the world and has no more than 300k-350k servers all over the world. It's one of the largest distributed system in the world. I worked there, so I know this for sure. Facebook has recently been moving their data in house, but they do not have 830,000 servers.…

Servers might not be just for serving. Facebook likely have huge clusters for offline computation/analytics/machine learning stuff. In order to process the logs at their scale, I won't be surprised if they have hadoop cluster that scales over several thousand even 10k nodes, or multiple clusters.

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#135

Post by pvg »

discodave wrote: post #44

I don't understand why people think that companies can get special pricing from AWS but not drive feature development. Large customers like Netflix, GE & friends get to drive feature development. Heck, if you're the CIA and give AWS $600 MM they will build a private region for you! This post has two contradictory quotes in my opinion: "It’s worth noting that this AWS price wouldn’t be what Facebook paid in this hypot…

Therese aren't so much contradictions as indicators the reasonable answer to the question posed is really a simple 'No'. The only sane way it becomes yes is 'Yes it's possible if Facebook rewrote a bunch of Facebook AND Amazon rewrote a bunch of AWS'. That kind of possible isn't very interesting, though. It's surely possible to host Facebook on AWS if Amazon built an exact replica of each FB data center, trucked FB's servers over and then called the result part of AWS.

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#136

Post by jacquesm »

bedros wrote: post #118
jacquesm wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a fan of FB here. That comment is nonsense. It is completely unthinkable that Facebook would do this.

if you're a threat to FB, the unthinkable will happen.

If you're a threat to FB you:

(1) can afford to roll your own framework

(2) can afford the lawyers required to point out that this doesn't hold water

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#138

Post by crispytx »

jaypaulynice wrote: post #131

"We estimate that Facebook has 830,000 servers in 2017." No way this can be true. Facebook scaled primarily using CDNs like Akamai. Akamai is the largest CDN in the world and has no more than 300k-350k servers all over the world. It's one of the largest distributed system in the world. I worked there, so I know this for sure. Facebook has recently been moving their data in house, but they do not have 830,000 servers.…

Yeah I thought that math sounded a little fuzzy myself.

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#139

Post by danielsamuels »

19eightyfour wrote: post #76
BurningFrog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sidenote: It's remarkable that Amazon happily provides server services to Netflix, who is a huge competitor!

It's not remarkable its Bezos' business strategy. The way he thinks about things is it's not a threat to his business to have competitors in his space not just because he is prepared to undercut them on cost but because he knows that his true focus is on customer satisfaction. And competition, whether through providing customers with a choice or encouraging his own systems to provide better services is good for his b…

Keep your friends close, and your competitors hosted

Re: Is it possible to host Facebook on AWS?

#140

Post by crispytx »

sk1pper wrote: post #34
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reddit and Netflix are hosted on AWS so yes you could. Those are read-heavy properties (yes, even Reddit, a miracle of aggressive caching). Don't underestimate Facebook's write load, which is the bloody difficult thing to scale.

Not sure if I buy that Reddit is read-heavy compared to Facebook, got any data on that?

Reddit doesn't let people upload videos and pictures to their site. You have to post pictures and videos on other people sites and then link to them. Sort of the same thing with Netflix. Netflix doesn't have a bunch of people uploading stuff to their servers all the time.
Post reply on HN