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  • everman - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link

    Do you have any specific measures built in to handle something such as a slashdotting? Such as a page with lower bandwith requirements (static page with no database queries). Maybe actually be able to dynamically create such a page if it goes over a certain number of requests in a time period.
  • Phiro - Tuesday, November 30, 2004 - link

    You cluster for several reasons; peak load (aka slashdot effect), high availability for hardware failure reasons and for maintenance reasons, i.e. a MS security patch. Or power cabling changes in their server room. They can take 1/2 the cluster down (for instance) and do whatever needs to be done, then swap, rinse, and repeat as neccessary.

  • mldeveloper - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    Jason, can you comment on the effect of a slashdotting? Is this one of the reasons you are running a cluster if normal traffic can easily be handled by one server?
  • Jason Clark - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    #21, there are tests that state that PHP5 is faster, then others state ASP.NET is faster. I have yet to see a well written and fair test. We prefer ASP.NET, it suits our needs.

    #22 We use Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise.
  • hifisoftware - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    Nice article. Can you tell us which Db are you using?
  • ncage - Monday, November 29, 2004 - link

    Awesome it looks like asp.net has awesome performance. Looks like microsoft did a good job. What i would be interesting in finding out is how it compares in perfomance to PHP. Maybe im wrong but i don't think a "huge" amount of sites use cold fusion a lot of them use PHP or classic asp pages.
  • Jason Clark - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    #15 I agree, we'll work on putting more on a page, it is annoying.

    #16 I took alook at the tracing namespace, I guess not close enough. From what I see it does some of what we need but not the sql syntax passed to ado, which is probably the most valuable part of our debugging class.

    #18, we're working on the flash ad issues, i hear ya.

    #19 the quad 848 is our db server, all our webservers are still dual athon MP's :)
  • Jeff7181 - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    Pay no attention to #3&4, Jason. He's probably a THG regular over here trolling, lol.

    Seriously though... I love these articles... it's interesting to know what kind of hardware and internet connection and software is needed to run a site like this.

    Is this the same Quad Opteron 848 setup w/8 GB of RAM mentioned in a previous article?
  • elecrzy - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    I was wondering if its possible for you to make the website more compatible with firefox since the ad flickering is really annoying.
  • Reflex - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    11 - No, I mean compare it to a Apache/Linux based platform, as well as other options.

    Jason - You'd want to disclaimer such an article very heavily, and simply put it as your experience. I just know that right now it is virtually impossible to know what platform is going to give you more performance on the same hardware, all you can do is look at various marketing docs and hope your reading half the truth. There was a day where MS was not a serious player in this space, I am curious about how far they have really come. Real world info on that is more or less non existant.
  • rayon - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    have you guys considered using the Tracing mechanisms of ASP.NET instead of writing your own debugging class?
  • Hudo - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    What's up with the 2 paragraphs per page anymore? I mean before you know it, they're be one sentence per page?!

    I just found it irritating.

  • kamper - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    "It was music to our ears that [FuseTalk] decided to port their product to ASP.NET."

    Heh, that sounds a little funny coming from you, Jason. Was it entirely a coincidence?

    Thanks for an interesting and informative article. I think that anyone bashing you for it is probably just jealous of your job ;)
  • Jason Clark - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    #7 Yep, it wasn't the first time we've had high throughput. We've done 40+ quite a few times, sometimes they last a good portion of the day.

    #10 A comparo between languages is a very very touchy subject. You can easily run into legality issues, especially if the test isn't 100% fair on both sides. The trickier part comes in writing code that identically architected on both sides of the fence. The minute you use an optimized method in one language and not another, the test isn't fair. Here we're just showing from a performance metrics point what we've gained and how scalable we are.

    #4 I'm sorry you took the article that way. We don't write these for any other reason than to let people see what we do, and hopefully learn from it. We are by no means perfect and have made our own fair share of mistakes. Bad code, poor choices in platform, we've been there and done that. We're learning just as much as anyone else in this industry does.
  • petrusbroder - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    As a regular reader I really enjoy the articles, tests and comments. Sometimes I am just amazed over the fact that the comments tell so much more about the writers themselves.
    It is as if I were in a waiting room where all those who have problems suddenly woke up and - against their normally well developed ability and well defended right to protect their integrity - started "tell and show".
    Every day sombody makes my day. In Sweden we have a saying: "Ett gott skratt förlänger livet" - "a good laugh prolongs the life" - probably I'll get to be at least a 100!

    To the writers of the reviews and articles: thanks, I like your work; not only the contenst but the mix as well.
    To those who comment: I just love it: sometimes because the comments elucidate technical issues, sometimes because the comments prolong my life!
  • overclockingoodness - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    By competition, you mean get other sites to benchmark their servers (like Toms or Slashdot). I don't think those sites would be interested in this as they have nothing to gain from it. Besides, they would not give access to Jason to their back-end servers to make changes and alter. :)

    I think we are thinking too far ahead. :-)
  • Reflex - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    I am curious as to what they were using beforehand. I would love to see a 'real world' site such as this compare .NET to some of the competition, although it may be more work than they would be willing to undertake.
  • overclockingoodness - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    #7: Sorry about that. It just annoyed me that people can't appreciate the work AnandTech puts into their articles and all their hard work gets labeled as "kissing your own ass". :)

    #8: Are you saying that you were intentionally trying to be a troll? I don't think it would be boring. People could discuss some things in the comments section without having to read through your and my posts bickering back and forth.
  • msva124 - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    Without at least one good troll, the comments section for this article would be very boring.
  • Ardan - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    Whoa, easy there tiger (#6). He's stupid, we know, and probably a troll too. No need to get so feisty about it. I'm sure Jason knows we appreciate the articles, since we are always curious just what keeps this site running consistently well :).

    I was surprised that you have used 64Mbit/second of throughput for a few hours once...wow!
  • overclockingoodness - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    msva124 (#3 and #4): Are you stupid or something? What's wrong with telling us about the back-end of AnandTech? I guess you would call it "kissing your own ass" when AnandTech gets exclusive products, months before they are released in the market. You read the whole article, didn't you? You knew what the article was going to be about? Why in the hell did you read it you moron?


    By the way, Jason didn't call himself an architect. He meant that he will have new functionality to build into the website (which also means architect). It seems like you dropped out of school a little bit early. Why don't you go ahead and get your diploma and once you are educated, you can come discuss things with us.


    I can't believe where these trolls come from. Are you just jealous that you can't even dream about some of the stuff AnandTech has? It's okay, go cry to your mommy.






    Seriously, awesome work Jason. And please do another article soon as we call as see msva124 die of jealousy.
  • michaelpatrick33 - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    Gee msva124 I didn't realize that website creator(s) weren't allowed to talk about their own process. I guess you don't believe in people having their own personal websites and sharing anything about their own websites either. Great info and great job Jason and please keep informing us of your "architect" process for we know you are using the English language in a symbolic manner to rightly show your pride in your accomplishments
  • msva124 - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    And I love the way you call yourself an "architect".
  • msva124 - Sunday, November 28, 2004 - link

    Thankfully, not many other websites dedicate so much time to kissing their own asses.
  • Marlin1975 - Saturday, November 27, 2004 - link

    I think its Opterons, Quad maybe?
  • JustAnAverageGuy - Saturday, November 27, 2004 - link

    Nice summary :)

    Might be worth mentioning what kind of hardware you had for the scalability test.

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