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Why does digg need so many servers?

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Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#11

Post by tibbon »

noodle wrote: post #9
tibbon wrote: post #3

Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees ( http://about.digg.com/team ). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked Reddit is coming up on them traffic-wise ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/ ), and only has 7 employees? And I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't have 500 servers either, although I could be wrong. Both sites offer very similar functionality. While past its peak, Slashdot…

reddit uses something like 250-300 EC2 nodes.

Unless they are using the really big instances though, I find that EC2 nodes are generally lower in power compared to what most people are using for their servers.

I remember not too long ago before they moved to EC2 everything fit in just a few racks. Of course, their traffic has expanded significantly recently.

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#12

Post by [deleted] »

tibbon wrote: post #3

Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees ( http://about.digg.com/team ). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked Reddit is coming up on them traffic-wise ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/ ), and only has 7 employees? And I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't have 500 servers either, although I could be wrong. Both sites offer very similar functionality. While past its peak, Slashdot…

[deleted]

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#16

Post by alecco »

jswinghammer wrote: post #4

My last job served around 30-40 million pages a month on 4 servers that used ASP.Net and SQL Server 2000. The only server whose CPU utilization was over 20% was the database server. I'm not sure the CPU utilization on the web servers ever went above 10%. A friend of mine's company has a tough time keeping up with 500,000 page views a month using more equipment. They're using PHP and MySQL.

And Michael Schumacher with a compact can beat you on a sports car.

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#17

Post by rythie »

jswinghammer wrote: post #4

My last job served around 30-40 million pages a month on 4 servers that used ASP.Net and SQL Server 2000. The only server whose CPU utilization was over 20% was the database server. I'm not sure the CPU utilization on the web servers ever went above 10%. A friend of mine's company has a tough time keeping up with 500,000 page views a month using more equipment. They're using PHP and MySQL.

Apple and Oranges comparison really.

- What do the sites do?

- How optimised are they?

- How much static/cachable content is there?

Really there is too little data for this comparison.

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#18

Post by Lewisham »

tibbon wrote: post #3

Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees ( http://about.digg.com/team ). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked Reddit is coming up on them traffic-wise ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/ ), and only has 7 employees? And I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't have 500 servers either, although I could be wrong. Both sites offer very similar functionality. While past its peak, Slashdot…

My understanding (which is, to say, belief built up over watching the companies from outside) is that Reddit is currently running what could best be described as a skeleton crew: Conde Nast won't fund them, so they're just trying to keep the ship afloat and don't have time for anything else.

Digg has scaled to the size of a company that, for a couple of years now, has considered itself just on the tipping point of "something big happening." As in there being a sea change in the way everyone consumes their news, and Digg is at the center. You'll need lots of employees when that happens, right? I think Digg has partly grown fat due to non-existent leadership; the struggle between Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose was been well-documented, and having your two lead guys check out for at least a year is not a good way to run a business. A lot of the people there are "sales", which I guess helps Digg stay profitable, but I don't really think you need as many as they have. Five community managers on a community that is supposed to manage itself is also excessive.

I expect the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the middle of Reddit and Digg. More than Reddit so you're not stagnant, less than Digg so you're not fat.

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#19

Post by dasil003 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #14
nkassis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even then, 500 servers? That's an incredible amount. EDIT: Then again Facebook is using 60000 servers at the moment.

Facebook has a lot more than 100 times digg's registered users, though.

Not to mention a basically non-existent cachability profile, and an order of magnitude more functionality.

Re: Why does digg need so many servers?

#20

Post by thecoffman »

tibbon wrote: post #3

Just as perplexing, why do they need ~68 employees ( http://about.digg.com/team ). My counting may be off by 1-2, but last I checked Reddit is coming up on them traffic-wise ( http://siteanalytics.compete.com/reddit.com+digg.com/ ), and only has 7 employees? And I'm pretty sure Reddit doesn't have 500 servers either, although I could be wrong. Both sites offer very similar functionality. While past its peak, Slashdot…

Yes, it blows my mind that digg needs so many employees. Reddit actually is larger than digg (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reddit_to_mainstream_me...), and until recently had even less than 7 employees. If I'm not mistaken they have 3 programmers and a systems admin. Kind of makes you wonder what all the digg employees do all day.
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