Year: 2015

Inside Amazon’s Cloud Computing Infrastructure

aws regions

Here’s a little insight into the Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure:

Amazon operates at least 30 data centers in its global network, with another 10 to 15 on the drawing board.

How big is a data center?

A key decision in planning and deploying cloud capacity is how large a data center to build. Amazon’s huge scale offers advantages in both cost and operations. Hamilton said most Amazon data centers house between 50,000 and 80,000 servers, with a power capacity of between 25 and 30 megawatts.

So, how many servers does the Amazon AWS run?

So how many servers does Amazon Web Services run? The descriptions by Hamilton and Vogels suggest the number is at least 1.5 million. Figuring out the upper end of the range is more difficult, but could range as high as 5.6 million, according to calculations by Timothy Prickett Morgan at the Platform.

Flexible Feature Control at Instagram

Instagram

“Flexible Feature Control at Instagram” article describes how Instagram controls the release of new features to groups of users.

I’ve implemented a very simple feature control mechanism before, but nothing to the sounds of this one.  Rolling out to groups of users, conditional control, geo-tagging, and more.  On top of it, non-technical users seem to be able to use for tuning the groups.  This sounds quite impressive, especially when you think of the Instagram’s user base (400,000,000+ users).