Behind the Scenes at Hotmail

Posted by Zonk on Friday January 13, 2006 @04:12AM from the that's-a-big-datacenter-you-have-grandma dept.

mallumax writes "ACM Queue interviews Hotmail engineer Phil Smoot on how they manage more than 10,000 servers spread around the globe. Between them, they process billions of emails per day and are overseen by hundreds of administrators. To do that they have returned to the command line. From the article: 'Our operations group never wants to rely on any sort of user interface. Everything has to be scriptable and run from some sort of command line'. The overriding philosophy seems to be KISS. Also: tape backups are out and spam levels have stabilized."

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KISS, for the uninitiated... by nganju · 2006-01-13 04:18 · Score: 0, Redundant

... stands for "Keep it simple, silly", or "Keep it simple, stupid". There are other variations on the acronym but the general idea is the same.

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There are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that can keep their train of thought,
stabilised... by ladyKae · 2006-01-13 04:27 · Score: 0, Redundant

spam levels have stabilized
... *erm* stabilised how, is that on a slope? reckon those hotmail guys wanna check their spirit levels, cos I don't think the bubble is in the right place....!

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Smile, it confuses people