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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 01:43:32 -0800 (PST)
From: jeff sullivan <jeffs@mpk5mail.Corp.Sun.COM>
Reply-To: jeff sullivan <jeffs@mpk5mail.Corp.Sun.COM>
Subject: For scaleable, available Web services, check out Resonate Software...
To: jeff@techstocks.com
cc: mvoor@hydrosystems.com
In-Reply-To: "Your message with ID" <199702042336.RAA12449@klagar.Central.Sun.COM>
Message-ID: <Roam 0.9.2.846755012.1719.jeffs@mpk5mail.corp>
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Jeff,
Your email regarding your attempt to make NT work eventually wound its way to
me, and I couldn't help but contribute a point or two.
PC Magazines (not noted for their UNIX expertise) have rated Sun's Netra Web
servers "product of the year" for the past two years, due to their extreme
ease of use/maintenance and their fast setup (20-30 minutes was the time given
in one recent review). UNIX is essentially completely hidden from the user,
so the operating system should not be an issue. (I expect that you could find
these product reviews through Yahoo or Alta Vista.) With recent dramatic
price/perfomance improvements and with the advent of these inexpensive servers
suitable for mass-consumption by non-UNIX types, the surveys noting the costs
of a few, top ten, "bleeding edge" high volume or commerce sites are
completely obsolete. You could certainly get a demo without much trouble and
make your own determination about the ease of use and cost.
Performance of new Sun Web servers has risen 6X over the past 12-18 months
while price has dropped by half. Raw performance of a mid-range, 2 CPU model
has been measured at over 18 Million hits/day in Netscape's Web site (while ad
serving was being handled as well, so HTTP-only performance could easily pass
25M hits). This model is about $20-30K (about $1000 per 1M hits), but from
your description of your load you could probably get by just fine with a model
selling for much less.
For highly scaleable, highly available/redundant services, check out an
application called Resonate (at resonateinc.com I believe). It probably
already does most of what you're trying to do. Of course, like many serious
Web site applications, it does support Sun first, but maybe with that software and a couple of $5k servers (Netra or maybe NT will be supported some day),
you could save yourself a lot of development time and money. The money you
spend on the Resonate software should be more than recouped in maintenance
savings vs. any custom home-grown architecture. (On the down side, the user
interface on this application makes site maintenance look way too easy, so
you'll have to hide it from your boss if you ever want a raise.)
Best of luck to you in your quest to make NT support a mission-critical
application, but as one of my customers puts it, "no matter what you do, 100
rabbits don't make a tiger".
Regards,
Jeff Sullivan
Netscape Account Rep
Sun Microsystems
(415)614-6912
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<mvoor@hydrosystems.com> Sun, 2 Feb
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id <01BC110B.53C4F360@JILL> Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:16:40 -0800
From: Jeff Dryer <jeff@techstocks.com>
To: 'Mike Voorhees' <mvoor@hydrosystems.com>
Subject: RE: Silicon Investor
Date: Sun, 2 Feb 1997 13:16:39 -0800
Mike,
Your words certainly ring true. Microsoft NT is not a stable
platform for running a website on. However, because our resources
are limited, it is not possible for us to run the site on UNIX.
To run SI on Unix would cost several million dollars a year
versus several hundred =
thousand dollars a year. SI is the largest NT site on the Web
serving about 2 million page views per day. We are working very
hard right now to do the impossible...to create an NT system with
almost zero downtime and unlimited expansion potential ...
Jeff Dryer
Silicon Investor
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Voorhees [SMTP:mvoor@hydrosystems.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 02, 1997 10:18 AM
To: webmaster@techstocks.com
Subject: Silicon Investor
I notice that you are running a MicroSoft server. I think that
this
might be one of your major bottleneck problems. As a suggestion,
consider using a Unix server. I think you will find that your
bottleneck problems will subside immensely. MicroSoft CANNOT
support the kind of throughput your important service provides. I
realize that because of deals that have been made this may indeed
not be possible. Thank you for the oppurtunity to provide a
suggestion. I also believe you will find your service reliability
to improve immensely. MicroSoft isn't close to the reliability of
stable Unix systems.
Michael L. Voorhees, Ph.D.,P.E.
Send questions and feedback to webmaster@techstocks.com
----- End Included Message -----
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