Hotmail about to collapse under load

An AC submitted this interesting tidbit from those folks over at NetCraft. To quote from the page: "HotMail has commenced its much awaited migration to a Microsoft operating system. Some Windows 2000 machines have recently been moved into the load balancing pool, with currently between 90-95% of requests being served by the established FreeBSD/Apache platform, and 5-10% from Windows 2000." This is not the first time MS are believed to have attempted this (but I'd appreciate hard evidence confirming that, instead of the more normal rumours and whispers).

Comments

The Register have it

[HeUnique]

Here is the Link

Some Real Data: 79.8% Win2K

[waldoj]

I ran the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
i=1
while [ "$i" -lt 253 ]
do
lynx -head -dump http://lw7fd.law7.hotmail.msn.com/ |grep Server >> /var/tmp/hotmail
let i="$i"+1
done

I got the following results:

• 202 "Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b"
  
• 798 "Microsoft-IIS/5.0"
  

Disclaimer: I know nothing about Microsoft's load-balancing setup, or if I skewed the results in any way as a result of my choice of server. So I reproduce all data here.

-Waldo
-------------------

Slashdot ain't all that hot either.

[DHartung]

I wouldn't be so smug: Slashdot just spent 92 seconds opening this edit page. Before that I waited almost three minutes for the article page with comments to load. And before that, I was surfing in directly to a specific single comment from an external link -- that never opened at all. I finally gave up on that window.

I'm sure Linux/Apache (or whatever you guys are running on over here, I don't follow that gossip) does have an overall stability edge over Redmond product, but NT was never the joke it's made out to be around here and 2000 is even more competitive.
----

Re:uhm

[Ralph Wiggam]

It's a risky PR move. As it stands, geeks laugh at them because a site that should be the flagship of the MSN empire doesn't run MS software. But then geeks laugh at them anyway.

If/when they move to Win2K (I would assume Datacenter, does anyone know for sure?), and it works, then the marketing folks can point at it and say, "HotMail runs Win2K and it will surely work for your smaller site". The danger is there because the whole site could just crumble if Win2K isn't up to the task. If that happens, mainstream press like the Wall Street Journal will run front page articles saying that Win2K choked in the face of major hits. That damage could be irreperable. I know the the adoption of 2000 has been modest (to put it nicely). This could be a very important move for MS.

-B

This might not be a bad thing...

[AdamHaun]

If it proves that Win2k and BSD can cooperate in the same environment, even temporarily. Think about it. All along we've been trying to convince businesses to introduce Linux/BSD into their computing environments. What better ammunition to use on them than this?

"But boss, Microsoft is doing it..."

"Collapse under load"

[Hard_Code]

Am I reading the right page, because I don't see anything about Hotmail about to collapse under load. Can we please try to stay away from catchy but misleading news titles?

Gimme a break.

[CoolAss]

Let's get some facts straight.

1.) The reason Hotmail crapped out the first time in 1997 on NT was not because it couldn't handle the 10mil + users, but because the software was written in a way that was not happy on NT. In fact, the software was designed by the same people who designed the original back end code for the Solaris version of Hotmail. Basically, they just ported their code, that hardly ever works right.

2.) NT (not to mention 2k) can handle just as many hits as Solaris, or any other Unix platform. This has been shown time and time again, but people seem to like to ignore facts and concentrate on a three year old story about poorly written back end code.

3.) The reason they are doing it step by step (as in not just going, BOOM... all 20mil users on Win2k now,) is for debugging reasons. If a few thousand accounts get screwed, that's much easier to fix than a few million.

There are MANY sites on the net that get far more traffic than hotmail (the MSN homepage for instance) and they handle the load just fine. Doesn't that make you think?

It's not the number of *accounts* that matters, it's the number of simultaneous users.

Slashdot FUD

[Kook9]

There is nothing related here to justify the headline. Pure FUD. I can understand the move on Microsoft's part though -- it's got to stick in their craw that their most successful net service has been running on Unix since day one. I wonder if they expect any benefits (besides marketing) from the "upgrade"?

While I'm on the topic of misleading Win2000 figures, allow me to quote Microsoft's latest full-page newspaper ad:

"When all the numbers are in, we expect Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional to help increase sales-force productivity by about 5%, while reducing IT costs by over 12%."

That means nothing, of course, since the numbers aren't in. Wouldn't expect them to wait, though.

Kook9 out.

Once all the results are in, I expect to be heralded the greatest lover on the planet.

not that it's the best, but....

[Kailden]

From what I have seen, Win2000 is not your father's NT. I've had lots of trouble keeping windows NT running my web apps, but windows 2000 seems more stable. I still have my doubts about it being better than any unix derivative, and so I moving all my code to platform independence, and it will probably end up on AIX (I am trying to get some linux/FreeBSD boxen up and running, but I have to clear off the servers running NT right now. (there are too many other employees who readily jump into the easy but proprietary trap where I work))

Come on, people, this is a Good Thing.

[Chiasmus_]

What better way could there possibly be to test how a product holds up under high stress than to attach it to a giant e-mail network, first attempting to take 5% of the load, and then slowly incrementing it to see if and when it will choke?

And if you don't particularly want to be a beta tester, maybe you shouldn't use a giant, unruly, insecure, slow, free e-mail account as your primary mail provider. Sheesh.

As much as most of us hate Microsoft, this experiment can only do harm to hotmail. It can't really do harm to the software being tested, and it might actually end up improving it.

Re:uhm

[egore]

Has anyone stopped to think that it's a really good thing that Microsoft uses a Microsoft server platform for all of their servers whether or not it's the right tool for the job? If you think about it, what better way is there to improve your OS than to start using it on a large scale. Microsoft is smart enough to realize that, if they want people to use Win2k for e-mail servers, they should use it for an e-mail server as well. That way, in making it a great e-mail server for themselves, everyone else benefits because MS will be making their product that much better for that task. MS has the right approach here, IMHO.

Just for the record, I would not mind seeing MS use more of Linux because they can definately learn some things from Unix-derived OSes (like Linux and *BSD and Unix itself).

- Alex

Why would it go down?

[wadetemp]

The story, as posted, said that Microsoft has moved machines into its load-balancing pool. It made no mention of removing the BSD machines. Adding nodes can only make the system faster, regardless of whether the new nodes are Windows or BSD.

Perhaps they could have made a better choice of OS, for *name your favorite reason here*. But hey, it's Microsoft, and they're in love with thier own stuff! Aren't we all? :)