
Nuts & Bolts: New Datacenter - jbyers
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2471-nuts-bolts-new-datacenter
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staunch
Yikes. I see Isilon and I think someone just spent 500k where they could have
spent 75k and used MogileFS or similar. I suppose 37 signal's profit margins
are good enough that it doesn't matter, but I'm glad it's not my money.

Moving to their own servers makes sense though. No doubt that's going to save
them over paying a huge premiuim for Rackspace. With three full-time people
it's a good move.

~~~
tptacek
If you had tens of thousands of customers, would you bet your company on a
homebrew MogileFS setup? And are you sure you'd save enough money to justify a
port?

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staunch
Yes. I'm confident in my abilities to overcome absolutely any problem that
might occur. For the same reasons I choose Linux and open source solutions
over Windows or other proprietary solutions: there's always a way out. Isilon,
Cisco, or Oracle only provide the illusion of certainty.

~~~
amock
Your confidence in your abilities provide only an illusion of certainty. Maybe
if you had enough time you could fix any problems that occur with open source
software, but when you have a deadline it's nice to have experts to help you.
You can find open source experts, but with a commercially supported product
there is a much clearer chain of responsibility.

~~~
staunch
Experts? You mean the $10/hr guys 5k miles away that support Microsoft,
Oracle, or NetApp products?

Responsibility is meaningless. Competence is what matters.

~~~
arethuza
While I support your argument, you have to be careful it doesn't turn into
arrogance.

I remember one time being promised by the tech lead on a project that an
inexpensive networking solution would be just as good as the expensive kit we
had used for development. Turns out he couldn't make it work - the cheap kit
just wasn't as good as the expensive stuff we had developed against.

However, I was the one standing in the customer's office being shouted at by
three of their unhappy managers as their time critical project was delayed
until we got the proper kit ordered and the tech lead sulked back at our
office.

Sometimes expensive kit is worth it.

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there
tldr: they moved from rackspace to their own colocated servers at someone
else's datacenter, they didn't build a new datacenter. not sure why anyone
would really care about this...

~~~
wsongk
It do interested me tought, especially how they designed their hardware
architecture to match their need. Their apps is quite different from other web
startup, I think each user got his/her own DB instance. We all heard stories
how facebook or twitter which data is stored in one huge DB scale. I'd like to
know how 37signals did it and looking forward to their next article.

