What have Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay have in common other than being the largest web commerce engines?. They all use Linux and massive amounts of technology to make their platforms scalable and reliable.
EBay realized as early as 1999 that it would have to seek unorthodox solutions for dealing with its skyrocketing data load, which was on the verge of physically exceeding the limits of database software. Over the next three years, it virtualized its database, which now spans 600 production instances residing in more than 100 server clusters. Its auction platform is similarly distributed, an architecture which allowed eBay to downgrade its data center from large SMP systems to smaller, cheaper servers.
My head spins thinking about the size of the challenge….
