Linux vs Windows - Conquering a Windows Based World

Paypal can currently processes nearly $1,571 worth of transactions per second in 17 different countries on 4,000 Redhat Linux Servers.  Not surprisingly, the ability to perform incremental growth by adding additional Intel based servers rather than mainframe step increases tends to keep costs in the thousands and not millions.

“Thompson supervises a payment system that operates on about 4,000 servers running Red Hat Linux in the same manner that eBay and Google conduct their business on top of a grid of Linux servers. “I have been pleasantly surprised at how much we’ve been able to do with this approach. It operates like a mainframe,” he said. “

The mainframe will never be replaced, as new tasks and jobs always seem to find their way onto them.  Nonetheless, it is interesting to see Linux based grid servers providing a clear advantage in certain environments.