Behind the Scenes at Hotmail 292
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."
KISS my hotmail body (Score:4, Funny)
Don't try to tell me that the guys at Hotmail only want to Rock & Roll all night and party every day?!?
I wonder.... (Score:2, Funny)
Better subject... (Score:5, Funny)
And how does the NSA process all that email? Now THAT would be an interesting technical challenge!
Does anyone know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Funny)
Ghostbusters?
Interacting without any sort of user interface (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought that the command line was a user interface. You know, interfacing between a user and a computer.
It's hard to picture using a computer without any sort of user interface. I'm pretty sure that, in order to call it "using" a computer, some sort of interface must exist, be it keyboard mouse and monitor, binary switch, light gun, real gun, neural link, telekinesis, or whatever. Otherwise, you're not using it, are you?
On the other hand, maybe the article is correct- a lot of operations group probably don't want to use "any sort of user interface" to communicate with their computers. They want to be sitting on a beach in tahiti drinking daiquiris, thousands of miles away from the computers they're supposed to maintain.
Re:stabilised... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I wonder.... (Score:2, Funny)
The French?
Re:UNIX? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They have a special way of dealing with spam (Score:3, Funny)
There once was a young man name Sam,
Who spent his whole day sending spam.
But at night he went drinking,
And this led him to thinking,
That maybe he would end up being damned!
Re:KISS my hotmail body (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still running *NIX? (Score:1, Funny)
Hotmail was next to my cage at (Score:5, Funny)
Re:F**Kin Speak English ! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Interacting without any sort of user interface (Score:3, Funny)
No, this is Hotmail. They do not need any user interface. They managed to configure the servers so that they send each other billions of SPAM emails each day. Totally automatically. Then they deleted all user interfaces. That is also why the spam levels have stabilized -- at 100 percent.
Re:F**Kin Speak English ! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:F**Kin Speak English ! (Score:5, Funny)
Because his team leverages best-of-breed systems to utilize the synergistic effects of the paradigm shift in relationships among stakeholders and the knowledge infrastructure, silly.
Re:F**Kin Speak English ! (Score:1, Funny)