Four years ago, PolkaSpots was powered by a single server. Over the years we've added lots of machines to cope with the demand and make sure you don't suffer any downtime.
We've now replaced all of our machines with something that doesn't technically exist by embracing Virtualisation. This move has increased our redundancy (so your hotspots are always on) and we're saving electricity (and therefore the world's resources).
A system virtual machine provides a complete platform which supports the execution of an operating system (OS). In our case, Redhat Linux. The virtual machine runs on another machine and is completely independent from it's parent, i.e. it cannot break out of its virtual world.
We've upgraded to such a system for a number of reasons:
- Redundancy - our single machine sits in a cluster of 8 servers and the data is spread over multiple data centres.
- Energy saving - our virtual machine sits on a host with other (secure) virtual machines. Just like a bus, it's more economical to have lots of people on one bus a person per car!
- Space saving - data centres are getting full and the same analogy above applies.
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