Friday, April 20th, 2007...12:23 am
bandwidth blowout
In the middle of total craziness something has hit me like a TON of bricks. Our bandwidth usage is flying through the roof! Sidebar…how do you know you have a totally cool boss? When they smile and say good job when you have to add servers or extra bandwidth!
This month we are on track to blow past 15TB of monthly bandwidth usage! Yes, 15TB of monthly transfer. Why do we get stoked about our bandwidth usage going up, and up? Because the more bandwidth we use on a monthly basis, the more LIFE changing content is getting in the hands of people who need it!
Typically I don’t talk much about vendors or tech companies, but I do need to give big props to a company that we love working with. Softlayer.com, they are one of our hosting companies that house a lot of our servers. Before last weekend we have had nearly 0 downtime. However, last weekend there Datacenter did go down for a few hours… Even with that outage, I can give them a raving enforcement.
For all you geeks out there, here are the details I know you are wanting. 9 Linux servers (5 streaming, 2 VOD/Podcasting, 2 web) and 4 Windows servers (2 streaming, 1 db, 1 web). 
Heres a look at one of the VOD servers today.
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6 Comments
April 20th, 2007 at 5:36 am
I guess your bandwidth is better these days too since the launch of the site.
April 20th, 2007 at 6:25 am
Yeah, i’m just thinking, it’s a very good thing Softlayer offers unlimited bandwidth, right?
I am interested why you have both linux and windows web servers. Do you have applications which require one or the other, or is there another reason why both is of benefit?
April 20th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Michael, web traffic really does not have much impact on the bandwidth, it is really all driven streaming, VOD and downloads.
Nathan, I wish they offered unlimited bandwidth, that would rock!
Great questions, why Linux and Windows? Well our current website is built on .NET so it requires Windows IIS. As well as our current internet campus is using Windows Media streaming, so we have 2 streaming server for Windows media. However, everything else is on Linux. All our VOD, Download, Streaming content (non-live) and all new development is on Linux.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:00 am
Terry I was actually speaking metaphorically about your “personal” bandwidth…the ability you have to get to everything on the whiteboard…perhaps a poor analogy.
My bad.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:11 am
I think it was more poor reading on my part that a poor analogy!!!! Maybe my “bandwidth” is tired…
April 20th, 2007 at 10:35 am
Michael’s blogging privileges should be suspended for the lame analogy. That was not Axhead-worthy.
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