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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

One must wonder, how much better this setup would of scaled had it been a more appropriate webserver stack such as Linux/BSD + Apache/Nginx or similar. Perhaps less boxes would be needed, or with the same number of boxes, more concurrent users.

> Microsoft infrastructure works and is cheap enough

not as cheap as just paying your team to maintain the boxes. I wonder how many times in the past few years SE has needed to call Microsoft for support? Would a RHEL license still be cheaper (probably)? If something like CentOS then there would be no support cost unless you need to bring in an outside contractor (for a particularly nasty issue).

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> One must wonder, how much better this setup would of scaled had it been a more appropriate webserver stack such as Linux/BSD + Apache/Nginx or similar

I guess you're gonna have to define "more appropriate" for me, I have a feeling we'll have a fundamental disagreement there. We could (and have) run the entirety of our peak load with 1 SQL server and 2 web servers (and not pegging them). Don't forget we run with a crazy amount of headroom at all times, by design. I'm not sure how much better you picture that scaling on a linux environment.

> not as cheap as just paying your team to maintain the boxes

That makes a lot of assumptions about the team, their expertise, and what support issues would arise.

> I wonder how many times in the past few years SE has needed to call Microsoft for support

In the past 4 years I've been here? Twice. Both to report bugs in CTP versions of SQL server. At no cost, and we improved SQL server as a result of being testers. We have a very good relationship with Microsoft and talk to the developers that make the tools and platform we use in order to make life better for both of us. We do the same thing for redis, Elasticsearch, etc. It's the same reason we open source almost all of the tools we make.

> If something like CentOS then there would be no support cost unless you need to bring in an outside contractor (for a particularly nasty issue)

We use CentOS for all our linux systems and are deploying new servers on CentOS 7 now. We'll me migrating the others in the coming months. That doesn't mean it's free. Developer or sysadmin time to control Puppet deployments and such still eat some factor of time.

Nick Craver - Stack Exchange Sysadmin & Developer

Where I come from, it is considered bad engineering to build a product that can only run on a single platform, can only run on one particular OS, and the product is at the mercy of future decisions by a 3rd party. We go out of our way to ensure we are not dependent on any single thing.

Even if it was the best choice at the time to go the Microsoft route, it may not be in the future... however -- SE has zero choice now otherwise they'd have to re-write their entire product... that sucks as a business because you have little choice over your own product now.

>Where I come from, it is considered bad engineering to build a product that can only run on a single platform, can only run on one particular OS, and the product is at the mercy of future decisions by a 3rd party.

This seems like a bit of a waste of resources to try and run an internal bespoke application on every platform imaginable. Now, if you are developing a product that you are then going to sell to other people to run on their own hardware this make more sense.

There are some very big benefits to writing to a specific platform, especially in the performance space.

In the end of the day it is a trade off between trying to eliminate every 3rd party dependency (next to impossible) or picking a solution or company you think will be around for a long time, and forging strong relationships with them.

We regularly talk to people at Microsoft (and all of the people who create and build to tools we use), give them feedback, and get bugs fixed. There is very little that comes down the pipe from them that we are not away of ahead of time and in some cases have helped shape through early access programs.

> SE has zero choice now otherwise they'd have to re-write their entire product...

This is not true at all, we have choices if MS decided to blow everything up. Not great choices, but we have them. Choosing between two or three crap options does not mean that options do not exist.

-George (SE Sysadmin)

> One must wonder, how much better this setup would of scaled had it been a more appropriate webserver stack such as Linux/BSD + Apache/Nginx or similar.

Why is the Microsoft stack not appropriate? I am not aware of any spectacular performance difference between Apache and IIS, or Windows Server 2012 and Linux, and clearly the SO team is not religiously Microsoft, so it's hard to see why they wouldn't have switched if it was a clear win. MSSQL is actually, in my experience coming from MySQL, amazing - I'm back on MySQL and Postgres now and I often wish I wasn't. I'd say it's the most underrated of MS's products, probably because of the expense of the Enterprise/Datacenter editions.

When you encounter people who don't respect your judgement as much as they "should", I'd suggest it may be because "how well it scales" doesn't guarantee "appropriateness". In most real world situations, the specifics of the chosen stack are rather inconsequential - both MS and *nix stacks perform more than adequately. In my opinion, it is unwise to take the advice of zealots who refuse to acknowledge this reality.

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