Royal Mail Servers

I'v just been reading an article about the Royal Mail - apparently they have 50,000 PC's which is not a great surprise - but they also have 80,000 servers - what on earth do they use all of these for ....

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Paul M

I'v just been reading an article about the Royal Mail - apparently they have 50,000 PC's which is not a great surprise - but they also have 80,000 servers - what on earth do they use all of these for ....

Well it's not for running their website I can tell you that. It's slower than a very slow thing.

[Graham M]

Originally Posted by Paul M

I'v just been reading an article about the Royal Mail - apparently they have 50,000 PC's which is not a great surprise - but they also have 80,000 servers - what on earth do they use all of these for ....

Commercial Porn Sites to generate revenue of course

[gkhewitt]

It's estimated that Google has less servers than that - midrange estimates put the number at about 65000.

And Google is storing several thousand terabytes worth of data.

[garybuk]

iirc Royal Mail provide plot and address data for a LOT of business especially in the utilities sector, they have many extranet's for companies so they could be for this, and they could be for keeping the databases for all those addresses, someone's gotta do it

[jrhnewark]

80,000 servers? Jesus Christ!

80,000 servers, and their website is still as slow as a slug.

[Matthew]

I wouldn't want to be the network admin for all of them and I wouldn't like to be there when they all have to be replaced.

[greencreeper]

Sounds like what happens an IT department doesn't control IT, so every new system, or every prototype of a new system, ends up on a seperate server. And the people making the buying decisions don't know one end of a server from the other.

[ntl customer]

Perhaps they have a massive LAN party at the weekends and in evenings in which all the posties attend and play into the wee hours. Probably explains why our post is always late most days.

[jonifen]

Originally Posted by greencreeper

And the people making the buying decisions don't know one end of a server from the other.

sounds like my old job!! that would explain the bankruptcy I suppose??

Originally Posted by ntl customer

Perhaps they have a massive LAN party at the weekends and in evenings in which all the posties attend and play into the wee hours. Probably explains why our post is always late most days.

Good point...


I bet most of the servers are backup machines because the size of company means they cant afford for a server to drop out for more than 5 minutes (if that!)
Time is money as we all know... and for a company who pi*sed a few million quid up the wall changing their name to "Consignia" only to change it back shortly afterwards, they need all the money they can get!!

[Roy MM]

They have a dedicated server deciding who gets the most mail sort this week. :spam:

[paul11974]

its for all the managers that sit there all day on there asses saying that postman can do more walks per day