Phil Smoot on Megaservices

A really, really good read about services comprised of many thousands of boxes. If you're building your first, this advice is worth a lot in terms of saved aggravation and wasted time/resources. I'd also add that you (a) shouldn't underestimate how much hardware (especially disks) that comes from the factory is just plain broken, (b) should spend more time rather than less designing your network, and (c) what he said about automation -- and make sure it embraces/anticipates failure: hardware, software, and human (help the hamfisted help themselves).

Technorati Tags: Software Architecture