AnandTech: A Brief History of Time
by Jason Clark on July 26, 2004 6:52 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
AnandTech 1.0
As most of you know, AnandTech started out as a static HTML site, hosted on GeoCities. Static driven sites are simply HTML based with the content contained within; dynamic driven sites fetch their content from external sources (usually database servers). Back then, static sites were quite popular while dynamic driven web sites were really just starting to catch on. In 1998, at Comdex, we laid out the first dynamic version of AnandTech.com. We decided on Oracle 8i as the database server, and ColdFusion 4.0.1 as the application server. We ran Oracle 8i and ColdFusion on two separate Sun Enterprise servers. We had no issues with Solaris or Oracle, performance-wise, but ColdFusion talking to Oracle was another story.We developed a fairly simple content management solution that allowed us to post content through web forms. This approach to publishing saved a lot of time as content and the editorial staff grew. Articles could be posted from anywhere, and they could updated or removed at will by using our forms-based interface to the database. At that time, the content management engine was not feature-rich; it performed just the basic tasks necessary for the small editorial staff that we had.
The first version of the site was probably the most problematic version of the website (go figure), and the most difficult to maintain. Oracle is a powerful database server, without a doubt, but it lacks the finesse of Microsoft SQL Server and other database servers to some extent. The management UI leaves much to be desired (it doesn't hold a candle to SQL Server Enterprise Manager), and the language, although powerful, is not for everyone.
For ColdFusion to talk to Oracle, we had to use the Oracle Native drivers, which caused us a fair bit of grief and wasted time, as the SQL syntax had to be compatible with Oracle. When the development team consisted (and still consists) of one developer, time is critical. Speaking as the developer, I come from a SQL Server/Sybase world and while it isn't hard to pick up on Oracle's syntax, it is entirely too painful to use when time is so critical, especially when working with dates. Aside from the pain of the syntax, the native drivers also caused some anguish in ColdFusion. ColdFusion was crashing occasionally and caused some unnecessary administrative headaches that needed to be rectified each time it went down. By this time (about a year or less later), it was time to move on to something more stable.
Hardware used in version 1.0
Sun Enterprise 250 w/ 512MB Memory
View version 1.0 of the website
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STaSh - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Keep up the great work guys. The site is very fast, and I really enjoy these behind the scenes articles.JasonClark - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Thanks for the comments thus far, some answers:Jeff7181:
1) Very true regarding what you can buy for a reasonable sum of money these days. We have been running the same hardware for over 2 years now, and I don't see any changes any time soon. The Dual Athlon MP's are holding up just fine, especially with the headroom we have from the performance jump the .NET migration gave. I'd say hardware has gone ahead of load, you need less to do more for less money, if that makes sense :)
2) We are all IDE in the webservers, no need for scsi as everything is in memory after initial compilation. The DB server has only changed in space, as the databases are growing, especially the statistics database..
Jeff7181 - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Excellent article... I've always wondered what kind of server AnandTech was hosted on. Very interesting. I do have a couple questions though that were answered though.#1 Besides bandwidth of course, has the cost of the hardware stayed pretty much the same? I mean, $15,000 today buys A LOT more power than it did 2 years ago simply because more power is available now. With loads considered (more users now than when the site first started) is the cost pretty much the same to get hardware capable of handling the load? In other words, has the cost of the hardware grown more in line with load, or technology?
#2 How has your disk storage needs changed, what drives were used in your first server and what ones are used now?
Locutus4657 - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Cool, .Net is deffonetly a great platform to develope in... I've been trying to convince my boss that if we switched away from PHP/MySQL and went to .Net/Posgres (or MSSQL) all of our problems would be solved!Carlo
tfranzese - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Not a bad job. I can relate to .NET as I recently had to jump into it for a client at work for a web application they speced out. It definately is a different animal compared to ASP.GokieKS - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Been reading the site since the version 2.0 days, and this certainly brings back some memories and gives some interesting insights. Good job. =)~KS
darkswordsman17 - Monday, July 26, 2004 - link
Cool article. I'm a relatively new member and found this to be fairly interesting.Also, keep up the great work!