Comments on: The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers

By: Software Industry Insights » Blog Archive » Microsoft Projects Big Things for Azure

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:09:34 +0000

[...] the day they’re going to have a deliver a platform that performs very well (as a comparison, Salesforce.com runs its’ entire business on about 1,000 servers — that’s extremely efficient) and provides a reasonably clear and easy upgrade path to [...]

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:18:33 +0000

“what you are critics…”? Yes, you are an idiot.

By: La nuvola efficiente « Alessandro Roiter

La nuvola efficiente « Alessandro Roiter — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:56:12 +0000

[...] Fonte: The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers di Erick Schonfeld [...]

By: BitStream

BitStream — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:47:32 +0000

You don’t ‘mirror’ servers in the same way you do drives or data.

The data most likely sits on a NAS or 50 which probably doesn’t count into that 1000.

You won’t have 500 servers sitting idle waiting for one of the other 500 active servers to go away.

You’ll have 1000 servers all active, and when one goes away it just doesn’t get requests anymore. The user never notices because they aren’t connected to any one server, they connect to a load balancer, which then connects them to a specific, operational server.

Since the servers themselves don’t actually store any data (thats what the NAS is for), when one goes down it doesn’t matter other than now more requests go to other servers.

So you take 150,000/spread across 1000 servers and you get 150. For the service that saleforce provides, 150 users per server is rather sad. Take into account that its going to be more like 50/server since we’re talking about 1.5m gobal customers across several time zone, only about a third of them are going to be active during any 8 hour period. Keep going further with the fact that in most SaaS offering like this, you end up with a pretty high number of shelfware seats, so there, you’re probably already down another 25%

So yes they have a lot of data, and also yes, they have what would at first glance appear to be a shitty setup. Google does far FAR more per 1000 servers than Saleforce is likely to ever see total, and they have the entire Internet to search through for text based results.

Sorry, but this just shows how unimpressive something can be technically, but still amazingly successful. Twitter is the same way. Welcome to Web 2.0. Its like MS OS bloat, except it sounds impressive and it comes with free upgrades!

By: Kevin Clark

Kevin Clark — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:47:01 +0000

Can we please leave the poor guy alone.

By: SaaS Blogs - » What if Salesforce.com weren’t multi-tenant?

SaaS Blogs - » What if Salesforce.com weren’t multi-tenant? — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:03:38 +0000

[...] up post on the blogosphere-wide multi-tenancy discussion, so here it is! Recently, Salesforce.com quantified some of its architecture, giving us visibility into what it takes to support a SaaS business of its magnitude: 1,000 servers [...]

By: Nextre Engineering Blog » Blog Archive » Scalabilità… tutto Salesforce su 1.000 server, anzi 500!

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:43:11 +0000

[...] The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers [...]

By: Jonathan Buhacoff

Jonathan Buhacoff — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:43:14 +0000

I second that. I’ve written Apex in Salesforce and Java outside of Salesforce to access the API, and ran into these limits, and they suck. The worst thing is that the people I write for pay a lot of money for their Salesforce accounts, and then they have to pay me extra to work around the stupidity. Why doesn’t Salesforce just add CPU time to the bill and make life easier for everyone?

Amazon is much more efficient than Salesforce in the “developer time required to make something work” department.

By: Does the Cloud make Single-Tenancy OK for SaaS? « SmoothSpan Blog

Does the Cloud make Single-Tenancy OK for SaaS? « SmoothSpan Blog — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:55:56 +0000

[...] Top Clicks blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=7…helpstream.comtechcrunch.com/2009/03/23…paragon-cs.com/wordpress/…feeds.feedburner.com/word…smugmug.comblogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=5…blog.digitalbackcountry.c…mint.comsearch.twitter.com/search… [...]

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:06:55 +0000

Looks like an interesting product

By: Can Corporate IT Operate as Efficiently as Salesforce.com? « SmoothSpan Blog

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:07:34 +0000

[...] Now the next thing to look into is what the cost components might be. The point of multitenancy (and virtualization for that matter), is to share infrastructure as needed, amortizing it across a lot of customers, so that costs are saved through a reduction in waste. All of Salesforce runs on only 1,000 machines. [...]

By: People Over Process » IT Management and Cloud Podcast #40 - Cloud Hoopla, The ITSM Quandry, Model-driven IT

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 01:32:21 +0000

[...] What the hell is the goal of all this cloud, SaaS stuff in context of IT Management? A simplified IT environment, driving towards SaaS stuff. Compare everyone having a server to SalesForce’s mythical 1,000 servers. [...]

By: Open source test tools, Twendz, top blogs, and more tidbits - Emerging Tech Testing Blog -

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:22:21 +0000

[...] TechCrunch reports on some amazing stats showing that Salesforce.com supports 55,00 enterprise customers with over 1.5 [...]

By: Billions? No. Millions? No. - 1K servers for SF.com « Datacenter 2.0

Billions? No. Millions? No. - 1K servers for SF.com « Datacenter 2.0 — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:03:16 +0000

[...] Posted by Ted Julian under Uncategorized At Salesforce.com’s recent analyst event, TechCrunch picked up a fascinating tidbit about SF.com’s infrastructure. It all runs on 1,000 servers – actually 500 that are mirrored. From this infrastructure they [...]

By: SQL Server and Cloud Links for the Week | Brent Ozar - SQL Server DBA

SQL Server and Cloud Links for the Week | Brent Ozar - SQL Server DBA — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:06:30 +0000

[...] Salesforce.com Runs on 1,000 Servers – TechCrunch says, “55,000 enterprise customers, 1.5 million individual subscribers, 30 million lines of third-party code.” Makes me wonder about the size of Facebook’s server pools. [...]

By: Shane S

Shane S — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:38:49 +0000

Sounds good… except you probably never used Salesforce. It is the SLOWEST website going. I always hated using it when I was in sales, unless I had much time to kill. They need to add more servers!

By: name_this_idiot

name_this_idiot — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:53:30 +0000

your comment would be better if added to mine (above)…

erik has huge problems relating or comparing things to form an opinion that others might find useful…

By: name_this_idiot

name_this_idiot — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:51:21 +0000

What? shut it sol

By: name_this_idiot

name_this_idiot — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:49:12 +0000

eric, i’ll try to summarize what you’re critics are tying to say in as few words as possible:
YOU ARE AN IDIOT

By: Russell

Russell — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:53:33 +0000

Chris I am interested in your network building skills but the picasa link you gave doesnt work. How can I see some of your work?

By: botchagalupe

botchagalupe — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:56:36 +0000

Silly comparison. What kind of servers and how many cores per server equals apples and oranges comparison.

John
johnmwillis.com

By: Sean Price

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:58:13 +0000

THere are some really interesting facts surrounding sales force however the AWS comparison was so much apples-apples but still was an interesting fact to know on the side.

By: [TechBlogWatch] Best of Blogs für den 25.3.2009 | TechFieber | Hot Gadgets. Smart TechNews.

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:57:02 +0000

[...] The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers [...]

By: Ronny

Ronny — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:15:16 +0000

Aaam kha.
Seb or Santra chor de Gadhe.

By: Ronny

Ronny — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 05:14:12 +0000

Tu Gadha hai.