Huge Traffic On Wikipedia's Non-Profit Budget

miller60 writes "'As a non-profit running one of the world's busiest web destinations, Wikipedia provides an unusual case study of a high-performance site. In an era when Google and Microsoft can spend $500 million on one of their global data center projects, Wikipedia's infrastructure runs on fewer than 300 servers housed in a single data center in Tampa, Fla.' Domas Mituzas of MySQL/Sun gave a presentation Monday at the Velocity conference that provided an inside look at the technology behind Wikipedia, which he calls an 'operations underdog.'"

Re:Impressive

[VeNoM0619]

Yes, and seeing how slashdot decided to try and slashdot them also helps...

I was just thinking that

[imstanny]

Every time I Google something, Wikipedia comes near the top most of the time. Maybe that's why Google doesn't want to disclose its processing power, it may very will be a lot smaller than people assume.

Easy to Increase the budget or add servers

[Subm]

How hard can it be to increase the budget or add more servers?

Just go to the Wikipedia page with those numbers and change them. You don't even need to have an account.

Maybe...

[nakajoe]

Datacenterknowledge.com might want to take lessons from Wikipedia as well. Slashdotted...

Note to self

[Anita Coney]

If you ever find yourself in a flamewar on Wikipedia you cannot win, bomb Tampa, Florida out of existence.

Re:Note to self

[canajin56]

That's your solution to everything.

Re:Some thoughts

[morgan_greywolf]

Do you want to pay for software, or do you want to pay for people?

Only one can create the other.

Oh, gods, let's hope so!

Re:Tampa?

[nickull]

Not to mention hurricanes and faulty electronic voting machines.... ;-)

Link to wikipedia?

[Luyseyal]

The summary was wrong to include a link to the Wikipedia homepage without a Wikipedia link about Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] in case you don't know what Wikipedia is. I myself had to Google Wikipedia to find out what Wikipedia was so I am providing the Wikipedia link about Wikipedia in case others were likewise in the dark regarding Wikipedia.

-l

P.s., Wikipedia.

Re:I've always wondered...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It would be neat to have a deeper look at their budget to see how I can save money and boost performance at work."

Since they are using LAMP, obviously they could save money by following Microsoft's "Get The Facts" advice!

Re:Note to self

[TubeSteak]

That's your solution to everything.

I did ask if you wouldn't prefer a nice game of Chess.
-WOPR

Re:Easy to Increase the budget or add servers

[elrous0]

In their defense, if you're going to run your entire site off a single server farm,a coastal city in Florida is the logical place to put it.

Re:Link to wikipedia?

[hansamurai]

Wait, what's this Google thing you're talking about?

Re:Link to wikipedia?

[hansamurai]

Nevermind, found it:

http://www.google.com/search?q=google [google.com]

Re:Link to wikipedia?

[felipekk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google [wikipedia.org]

Re:Link to wikipedia?

[srollyson]

[citation needed]

Re:Wikipedia = much more traffic than slashdot

[hostyle]

OTOH, if Wikipedia linked slashdot on every page slashdot would go down, if do to nothing else but bandwidth exhaustion.

Sounds like a dare to me. Gentlemen, start your packets!

Re:The power of low standards

[AK Marc]

Screw that, I want a bank with six twos of performance. 22.2222%. Of course, any number of nines is easy to achieve. Want six nines? 9.99999% is easy.

That's easier than it sounds

[Cajun Hell]

I don't care how few servers they have, whats more interesting to me is that they run an ultra-high traffic site, which they aren't having trouble paying for, and do it without adds.

I can do that too; I just emulate the adds. x+y is the same as x-(0-y). You have to be careful to use signed numbers for everything (or else have a lot of casting), but that's not really all that hard.

Re:The power of low standards

[Kingrames]

Screw that, it needs to be a prime number.
or at least irrational.

Re:The power of low standards

[mpeskett]

I can promise you 6 i's of uptime.

But i^6 being -1, that's not a lot of uptime... if I ever provided you with anything it would be in excess of what I promised.

Re:Note to self

[Rick Genter]

an invading country which the one superpower of the world already hates?

China hates North Korea?

Re:Wikipedia = much more traffic than slashdot

[beav007]

bandwidth exhaustion

Welcome to ************ broadband tech support. How can I help?

"My internet is running very slowly tonight. Why is that?"

Well sir, it looks like you've been downloading from the other side of the continent. I'd say that your packets are just very tired by the time they reach you...

Re:Wikipedia = much more traffic than slashdot

[BooRolla]

If only there were some way to put links on to Wikipedia!