On Mar 17, 2006, at 3:17 PM, Robin Haswell wrote:
> > >> "my time has a cost and optimisation often buys less performance >> than, >> say, a Dell SC1425" >> Unfortunatly my time is not worth a IBM 64way mainframe (or I >> would be >> one happy hacker). Bigger machines help but as my comment said before >> this will give you only linear optimization at some point you will >> need >> _exponential_ optmizaitions. This also depends on the complexity >> of the >> data relationships that your application needs. You need a machine >> that >> is 64 times faster buy > > Nah mate you miss my point! Not bigger machines, *more* machines. A > Dell > SC1425 is a pretty low-end piece of kit, the idea is you use multiple > machines. > > Let's say you have an application that is currently running at 100% > above acceptable capacity. You can solve this problem in basically > four > ways: > > 1. Buy hardware that is twice as powerful > 2. Perform optimisation, caching - etc. > 3. A combination of the 1) and 2) > 4. Buy another similar server and run them both > > In my experience, 4) is always the cheapest option, and requires less > hassle than 2) and 3) (and less hassle is the TG way!). The trick > is to > make option 4 possible by asking questions like "What will happen if I > use two app or database servers - or both" early on in the build > process. I do this for everything and it's served me right so far :-) > Part of my personal PHP standard library is some wrappers around > session > management and database handling that means: Scaling horizontally, what you list as 4, is the only real option. There's plenty of public record that shows that all the successful guys (Google and LiveJournal come to mind) are using lots of relatively cheap servers, rather than small numbers of giant servers. If you design for that, you'll never have a problem so long as you can afford to operate, and that's not so tough of a problem because the costs are at worst linear. With any other option, the price to upgrade grows exponentially and there's a ceiling on what kind of power you can even buy to run an app that is mostly serial. Good optimizations can do wonders in the short term, e.g. cut immediate hardware costs in half... but you get that anyway if you wait about a year. It's typically better to expand your service such that it maximizes profits, rather than optimize your service to minimize your overhead. There's only so low you can go with cutting your overhead.. but there's no well defined ceiling for maximum profits (look at Google!). -bob --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TurboGears" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/turbogears -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
