By Wendy Sanacore
Facebook is resisting the trend that is moving toward server virtualization. Instead, they want to install microservers for inexpensive growth and quick failover, according to an article from Computerworld.
Gio Coglitore, director of Facebook Labs, said that Facebook has tested microservers in production and is interested in the architecture that it supplies.
Intel introduced the architecture of microservers in 2009. They are small, low-power, one-processor servers that can be densely packed into a data center.
Facebook gurus see this as an inexpensive way to scale more effectively and balance the computing load across many systems.
They believe this will give Facebook the capacity to deliver a consistent user experience even if it loses a server.
This is an interesting move with what seems like the rest of the world jumping on the virtualization band wagon. And many industry experts may question the move as it is widely perceived that use of the cloud is more reliable than traditional hardware servers.
Using the cloud allows you to make use of multiple pieces of hardware and bring them together. It also allows for the rapid installation of new software programs.
One of the pitfalls of server based business is the ability of the server to go down if a site sees a large increase in traffic. However, Facebook is built for extensive visitor traffic, and one would hope that the use of these microservers takes this into consideration and will not be a problem going forward.
About TxMQ
Since it’s inception, TxMQ has specialized in Mainframe software and mainframe systems support offerings. As mainframe software and mainframe applications and subsystems like DB2, z/OS, CICS, MQ, and DB2 continued to grow in popularity, so too did TxMQ’s offerings.
These expanded to include technologies like virtualization solutions including Linux Virtualization, network Virtualization (Cloud Computing), and desktop Virtualization, as well as mainframe modernization.
As the web became more prevalent and a part of the enterprise, we followed IBM’s offerings and added skilled resources and SME’s in areas like WebSphere, BPM and SOA, including both Lombardi, and Metastorm (now a part of open text), as well as DataPower.
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