Debugging Microsoft.com 511
teslatug writes "Channel 9 has an interesting video interview with Chris St.Amand and Jeff Stucky who test and debug Microsoft.com. They reveal some of the big problems they used to face such as recycling processes every 5 minutes due to memory leaks and 32 bit limitations, and being unable to push more than 10 Mbits of data to their datacenters due to Windows' networking stack limitations."
Re:Missing info... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a alternative.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What the... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing info... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Video (Score:3, Insightful)
http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/msnse/0511/25766/micro
While I usually RTFA (unlike most slashbots) I think we can all agree that at 40 minutes maybe 1/2 a percent of
/me waits for the transcript
And yea, I saw the cans, but the bit-rate of that video is so low, I have no clue what they were. Maybe that red one on the left is a coke or dr. pepper?
Re:Easy. (Score:3, Insightful)
More memeory, need 64 bit (Score:3, Insightful)
They reveal some of the big problems they used to face such as recycling processes every 5 minutes due to memory leaks and 32 bit limitations, and being unable to push more than 10 Mbits of data to their datacenters due to Windows' networking stack limitations."
Micro$oft needs 64 bit so it can leak more memory faster and stay running. Or at least this is how I read this.
As for 10mbs, maybe they should put a Linux/BSD/UNIX cache in front of those servers like MSNBC did to get through the last olympics.
Re:Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Video transcribed below: (Score:0, Insightful)
Whoever modded this +1 Funny should be shot in the head for crimes against humour, the post was nearly as long and boring as the friggin video linked in the article, after the first line the joke was over, but did it end? Nuh-uh. It just kept on going and going like a 5 year old telling you a knock-knock joke for 15 minutes. Like watching corpses discussing lawn care at a Christmas party or making jokes about software that was outdated a decade ago. NOT FUNNY.
If you started reading the post and laughed; good, if you read it to the end (and you know you didn't) and were still laughing (impossible, since you didn't read to the end anyway, you liar) you should wipe the cheetos outta your hair plastered face and beat yourself bloody with a VHS copy of Jerry Lewis' "Slapstick" (i.e. the most non-humerous object known to man).
Oh and have a nice day. Additionaly: Microsoft, much like your humour, also sucks.
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OMG (Score:3, Insightful)
People like us aren't running web sites that process 10 to 15 Gigabits per second.
Re:Not just Windows stack limitations (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not TCP that's keeping windows down.
Re:10Mbits/s? really? (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, you can push 480Mb/s to 100 4.8Mb/s connections, but you're not going to push 480Mb/s to one. THAT is what they're talking about.
Re:10Mbits/s? really? (Score:3, Insightful)
You realize that that article talks about issues that had been long since solved by 1996, and list the solutions to them? In the case of the particular quote, the TCP Window Scale Option.
Alright, I'll ask the dumb question... (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, TCP is a protocol, not an algorithm.
So ... if Vista has some fabulous new algorithms for implementing TCP, then why can't other OSes be patched to benefit from those algorithms also? OR, if Vista is implementing something other than TCP, then how can it be (fully) backwards compatible?
Seems like the word "compatibility" might need to be scrutinized here.
Re:10Mbits/s? really? (Score:2, Insightful)
But you know that does not really solve the problem. Window Scale just allows you to "adjust" your window further than the 64Kb. Also a packet loss with a large window has some dramatic consequences, and to address that is not easy.
Second large windows degrade what we call "fair queuing" mechanisms: splitting bandwidth over multiple TCP/SWP connections. Large windows cause a lot of congestion.
I am not a Windows user myself:
[ 16.784315] TCP reno registered
[ 16.784454] TCP westwood registered
[ 16.784487] TCP highspeed registered
[ 16.784515] TCP hybla registered
[ 16.784542] TCP htcp registered
[ 16.784570] TCP vegas registered
[ 16.784597] TCP scalable registered
I've all those TCP "flavours" available. Some are good for high-speed links, some for high-latency, some for low-congestion and so on.
There are some other issues around that may arise if you have some other "active" node in between the endpoints (such as routers). But you know that.
This is why I love AAL5 (ATM)
Re:Not just Windows stack limitations (Score:3, Insightful)
TCP has evolved quite a bit over the last 30 years, and new RFCs and other standards are constantly enhancing and obsoleting older versions of the standard.
You seem to imply that an implementation built today "to-the-spec" would be built against on some 30-year-old draft and design. Today's TCP standards (which include a number of "experimental", "optional", "designed-for-high-latency" etc extensions), however, are quite capable of running on the "networks it runs on today".
Windows has never had the BEST stack, but it's at least been fairly comptetive (and even the original Win95 add-on wasn't based on "30-year old spec"). Win2k, for example, included a relatively good implementation of SACK and NewReno and recovery mechanisms (See RFCs 2581 and 2582 which were posted only in 1999).
I'm not sure what TCP changes Vista has over previous revs, but like every other OS vendor I'm sure Microsoft is trying (and may or not be succeeding =) to improve the performance/scalability of their stack, partly by keeping current "standards", RFCs (like 3782, the 2004 obsoleting of 2582), drafts, etc in mind.
Re:What the... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do yu mean, he delibertely handicapped himself. Like there's only "One True Format".
Hey, its not like they can't make the stuff available in multiple formats. Oh, right, this is Microsoft. They really can't handle multiple formats. Look at Word.
Re:Easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, now I get it! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Recycling processes is normal for windows (Score:1, Insightful)
This just proves one thing: theres no substituion for GOOD engineering.
Either your experience is more than 5 years old (in which case your observations are simply not relevant), or you have no idea how to create real web applications with MS tools.
7 years ago I wrote an online transaction system (think webservice before webservices existed) that hasn't been rebooted since the day it went live. Well, there were a couple of power failures in the data center, and we upgraded the O/S to 2000, but those we're not the fault of the application. At the time, ODBC was already being passed up by OLEDB, which was shortly passed by ADO. Everyone who had half a clue moved away from ODBC for anything but simple Access databases, and nobody with half a brain would connect a production web-application to a corruptable file-based DB.
Anyways, the point I'm getting around to making here is that competent engineers working in either environment can, and have, produced very solid applications. If you've got a good designer building on a proven architecture, THAT THEY UNDERSTAND INTIMATELY, you're likely to have a good product in the end. If you slap together some code to spit out pretty pages without really understanding how the whole thing works together, your gonna have issues.
Experience Rocks!
Re:What the... (Score:5, Insightful)
But since you mention it... you compare a content provider's decision to use HTML (an open standard which anyone may implement, and which even degrades gracefully to text, and so is usable on platforms without a web browser) with a decision to use Windows Media Video (a proprietry video codec that is only available on a single platform). Then you say,Content provider can just as easily make their content available in an open format, one which anyone can implement. Their content will then be viewable on any conceivable platform. So why are content providers so determined to turn away the fraction of their potential customers that don't run Windows?
Re:What the... (Score:3, Insightful)
And possibly the cost of an Intel based machine, and the Windows licencing costs....but of course, those are irrelevant aren't they?
Re:An example of the advantages of the new windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Administration, software issues, whatever. MSN isn't that amazing, especially compared to the other services.
Re:An example of the advantages of the new windows (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, but Google's servers aren't just passing bits around, they store a copy of the whole (freely accessible) web.
Re:What the... (Score:2, Insightful)
Kudos to microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I've missed the comments, but what no one seems to mention here is that these guys--clearly both geeks at heart (in a good way)--really are peeling back a lot of the layers of MS's site. The candor about their security problems, the 2gb memory issues, and a variety of other things was refreshing.
Heck, they even mention firefox.
Good work all. Good work.
Re:What the... (Score:4, Insightful)
If he was making this complaint from inside MS, fair enough, he's a dick. But he's making this complaint from the WWW, a wild and wooly place where platform shouldn't matter as much.
Re:What the... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you insist on describing everything in terms of people, that's fine: a corporation is a group of people avoiding taking responsibility for their decisions by hiding behind a legal fiction.
Laws can, and do, change. Whole legal systems get torn down a rebuilt from scratch, sometimes better than they were before, and if you think ours will last forever you are a fool, and should study your history. The best we can hope for is gradual change and not violent overthrow.
But, you're right: I'm not going to change it, but that doesn't mean I have to accept it either, nor does it mean things won't change. There are a lot of options between acceptance and "raging against it til the end of my strength". My choice is to add my voice to the others grumbling about the situation. Grumbling is infectious, you know, and the nice thing about living in a democracic system is that if enough people start grumbling, things get done. You could substitute "capitalist" for "democratic" if you like, either is capable of achieving the desired end, more or less by the same means.
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
You are confused. MPlayer works because it is built with many native codecs that aren't dependant on x86 binary DLLs. It's the newer formats such as WMV3/RealVid3/VP5/VP6/etc that you can't play on non-x86 machines yet.
Re:What the... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just like nothing, aside from your own principles, is stopping you from getting a fuel-effecient hybrid car.
I guess money must be a matter of principle now.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Recycling processes is normal for windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Apache, like IIS, has a finite number of threads it uses to handle incoming requests. If you use up all those threads, Apache, and IIS, can't respond. You either must increase the number of threads or users will be denied access to the site. Eventually, you run out of system resources. In either case, you've prevent one (or likely a lot more) request from being fulfilled by the web server. End of story.
Your example is a foolish one. You never caused Apache to run out of resources. If you had, it would have "crashed" as the originally posted meant it... it couldn't handle further requests. That wasn't because Apache is superior in some way to IIS, it's because your clicking didn't use up all the threads. Simple as that. That's what I was explaining... the same thing can happen to Apache as can happen to IIS. Just because Apache is open source doesn't make it invulnerable to resource exhaustion due to inept programmers.
No, its Windows that pretty much has no credibility. The one thing it DOES have that nobody else has is the widest selection of trojans, viruses, worms, and idiot users.
That and the majority of the fortune 500 companies running on it. Windows is a fully capable server platform, and there are countless examples to back that up... just as there are countless examples that show that Linux can be a capable server platform. My point was that IIS is not inherently flawed as the original poster suggested. In fact, IIS 6.0 is in my opinion the best web application server on the market if cost is not an issue. (Windows licenses can be too expensive for a small company.) It's had extremely few security holes (FAR fewer than Apache has in the same timeframe), it's very fast (thanks to advanced features like kernel mode listeners), it's extremely reliable thanks to application isolation, process recycling, and great management and monitoring tools, and it's host to many excellent development platforms from PHP to ASP.NET.
IIS 7.0 is shaping up to be even better with some great ways to customize the web server to make it as bare metal as possible if that's what you want.... taking a hint from Apache in this case.
But for you to sit there and question the intelligence of somebody who uses Windows as a server platform shows your ignorance. It shows you don't bother to really examine alternatives to what you're comfortable with. When choosing a platform for a project I make sure to consider as many things as possible... from portability requirements, to intellectual property issues, to performance, to cost, to ease of development. That's my job as a software architect. Sometimes I choose LAMP for its very low initial cost. (Basically free.) Sometimes I pick ASP.NET because of how robust the
Regardless, there are lots of options out there and until you're able to pick the best one for the job at hand you're just going to be limiting yourself for no good reason. Both career wise and intellectually.
Re:What the... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, let him edit however it pleases him, but why can't they export it in something anybody can use, such as mpeg? I mostly write in TeX, but I don't expect to distribute documents by sending out a TeX or dvi file. I generate a PDF so that anybody can read it.
Re:An example of the advantages of the new windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, now I get it! (Score:3, Insightful)
No, just the geeks of your time zone - some of us were already asleep...
Re:What the... (Score:3, Insightful)
I own an Amiga 2000 in addition to my x86 workstation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to browse the web with it if someone decides to make something that only plays on Workbench.
Oh, so you're advocating software piracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
What your assertion basically amounts to is: "He should run x86/32 and use an illegal copy of MS-Windows rather than run a Free (and probably free) OS and player on the hardware of his choice."
Let's put this in modern, everyday terms. Imagine Sony's media companies releasing only DVDs that work only on Sony players. I own a Panasonic player. You're telling me that I should buy a Sony player at whatever price Sony asks rather than whining about Sony's exclusivity?
It's kind of like signing a temperance pledge because practically everybody else in my community has VD, and subsequently being told that if I want to watch a movie I have to have sex in the back row of it. Am I a whiner because I refuse?
And how about you?
Re:Remember Hotmail? (Score:3, Insightful)
Haydn.
Re:Easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft S-s-s-security (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee -- Someone else to debug my code (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I worked for an ISP that was hosting a M$ site (Score:3, Insightful)