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My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

jitbit.com

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Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#51

Post by throwa »

danso wrote: post #32

The reference to Amy Hoy's Charm is interesting, just because that was such an interesting (and somewhat distressing scenario, if you're into RoR and Ubuntu). But to say that the Windows architecture is significantly better bang for the buck requires more of an apples to apples comparison. The best I can find is that Hoy describes Charm as having 3,800 interested users in Oct. 2012...The OP describes having hundreds…

Two of the biggest help desk app on the web are running on rails. Salesforce helpdesk app with this as its url http://www.desk.com/ and ofcourse the helpdesk startup http://www.zendesk.com/.

Based on the facts above, I submit to you that there is nothing interesting about the reference to Amy Hoy's charm (and there is nothing in there to depress a rails developer using ubuntu).

As far as I am concerned, Amy Hoy's app did not get the kind of traction they envisaged simple. Hence they shut it down.

I am sure that both jitbit's app and Amy Hoy's were not as big customer wise as that form Zendesk and Salesforce. I am sure their traffic numbers wasn't anything near what zendesk and desk.com does.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#52

Post by hkarthik »

dkhenry wrote: post #10

While Microsoft might be a good solution for many people (Use what get the job done), this specific article has absolutely no real reasons why you _should_ use Microsoft. The truth is if One 8-gig windows server is what he needed for his start up he could get by with one 8-gig Linux server and save a couple of bucks a month. While that might not be a big deal now, if he ever wants to get big, those little costs start…

I agree, he could easily be using a JVM-based stack to get the same or better efficiency out of his 1-server configuration.

Also there's some clearly naivety when bragging about his "low cost" $200/month setup. His SQL Server licenses alone will probably triple or quadruple his costs when his Bizspark status runs out.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#53

Post by mpu »

Toshio wrote: post #45
jasonkester wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, they reinvent the program every few years. So in reality you can be in EmpowerISV for 3 years, then BizSpark for 3 years, then [thing that replaces bizspark in 2/2014] for 3 years, etc. I've personally been in Microsoft's "let's give developers everything for basically free" programs since 2006, and am not worried that I'll suddenly face a crippling bill down the line. Shafting little startups for a lous…

That sounds like relying on the kindness of strangers to me.

Isn't it what you do when you use a free software stack?

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#54

Post by viraptor »

jasonkester wrote: post #19

I'll pluralize this anecdote. Every bit of my little software empire runs on a single Windows box. That includes my 3 main money-making products, a couple dozen smaller sites being hosted for consulting clients and my partner's businesses, and the Expat blog. Lots of steady-state traffic to lots of sites, several Techcrunch, Reddit and HN poundings, nothing to write home about as far as downtime or drama in the 6 yea…

Just out of interest - what's your plan for when that host dies? (complete disk corruption) How quickly can you recover to the exact same state?

(I don't mean getting the data back, I mean actually having your software empire back online, serving live traffic again with minimal data loss)

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#55

Post by _pmf_ »

jtolj wrote: post #30
mbesto wrote: post #11

All our stuff runs on one (1) server This has nothing to do with MS, but why would you set up such an architecture? If one of the apps hits a memory leak (their HeatTest project did), than all of your other critical services/apps are interrupted. That costs us about $200 a month. By the way, that's Amazon What Amazon configuration gets you 8GB or RAM for $200/month?? Am I missing something? Database servers for all o…

>> All our stuff runs on one (1) server > This has nothing to do with MS, but why would you set up such an architecture? If one of the apps hits a memory leak > (their HeatTest project did), than all of your other critical services/apps are interrupted. It's hard to believe a company would "admit" to running all of these services on a single server. There's no way I would pay for a CRM or Ticketing App (relatively mi…

> It's hard to believe a company would "admit" to running all of these services on a single server. There's no way I would pay for a CRM or Ticketing App (relatively mission critical for many companies) that wasn't highly-available.

One also has to take into account how many systems that are distributed over n servers have actually n points of failure. My estimate would be "quite a lot".

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#56

Post by bstar77 »

mbesto wrote: post #11

All our stuff runs on one (1) server This has nothing to do with MS, but why would you set up such an architecture? If one of the apps hits a memory leak (their HeatTest project did), than all of your other critical services/apps are interrupted. That costs us about $200 a month. By the way, that's Amazon What Amazon configuration gets you 8GB or RAM for $200/month?? Am I missing something? Database servers for all o…

I'm not sure why anyone, with the technology options available today, would choose a single monolithic server approach and scale that vertically.

I think this is just poor design and probably not an MS stack issue. But could this be an MS community thing, where they generally prefer proven technical solutions from 2001?

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#57

Post by jzwinck »

tbrock wrote: post #14

Wouldn't you be doing something horribly wrong if you couldn't serve 70k requests a day? It's actually less than 1 a second: 70000 / (60 * 60 * 24) = .81 I think this article is more about distributed systems being costly (yes) and perhaps overly complicated for the types of applications most people build. I agree. However, you could easily do the same with Linux.

Requests to a typical smallish site will not be uniformly distributed--not by a long shot. Given that the peak is what matters, if we might get a day's worth of traffic in a single hour, that's 19 requests per second instead of 0.8. Those 19 transactions per second will still sound tiny to many people, but a couple months ago we heard that Mt. Gox could only do 37 TPS. So 70k requests per day is not nothing, especially assuming non-uniform distribution, minimal effort to optimize performance, and cheap hardware (or virtual hardware).

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#59

Post by philwelch »

mpu wrote: post #53
Toshio wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like relying on the kindness of strangers to me.

Isn't it what you do when you use a free software stack?

The difference is that in free software, anyone can step up and maintain. Relying on the kindness of Microsoft is a much scarier proposition.

Re: My startup is Microsoft-based, here's why

#60

Post by TillE »

victorlin wrote: post #37

You're rich man, dude :/

Yeah I really don't understand how anyone can justify paying for a constantly-running EC2 instance. Amazon's prices are absurd; even Linode is better value. For $200/month I could rent three dedicated servers with vastly better hardware specs.
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