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Wikipedia
and the other
Wikimedia projects
are run from server racks located in several data centres.
System architecture
edit
Simplified overview of the MediaWiki software as deployed by Wikimedia Foundation (as of August 2022). Essentially a complex version of a
LAMP "stack"
Network topology
edit
The Wikimedia Foundation's
network topology
is described on the
"Network design" page on Wikitech
Software
edit
Our DNS servers run
gdnsd
. We use geographical DNS to distribute requests between our seven data centers (3x US, 2x Europe, 1x Asia, 1x South America) depending on the location of the client.
We use
Linux Virtual Server
(LVS) on commodity servers to load balance incoming requests. LVS is also used as an internal load balancer to distribute MediaWiki requests. For back end monitoring and failover, we have our own system called
PyBal
For regular MediaWiki web requests (articles/API) we use
Varnish
and
Apache Traffic Server
caching proxy servers in front of
Apache HTTP Server
All our servers run
Debian GNU/Linux
For distributed object storage we use
Swift
Our main web application is
MediaWiki
, which is written in
PHP
(~70 %) and
JavaScript
(~30 %).
Our structured data is stored in
MariaDB
since 2013.
We group wikis into clusters, and each cluster is served by several MariaDB servers, replicated in a single-master configuration.
We use
Memcached
for caching of database query and computation results.
For full-text search we use
OpenSearch
Extension:CirrusSearch
).
– Wikimedia configuration files.
Wikimedia server racks at CyrusOne
Hosting
edit
See also:
w:Wikimedia Foundation#Technology
and
wikitech:Data centers
As of April 2024, we have the following colocation facilities (each name except for Magru is derived from an acronym of the facility’s company and an acronym of a nearby airport):
eqiad
Application services (primary) at
Equinix
in
Ashburn, Virginia
(Washington, DC area).
codfw
Application services (secondary) at
CyrusOne
in
Carrollton, Texas
(Dallas–Fort Worth area).
esams
Caching at
EvoSwitch
in
Amsterdam
, the
Netherlands
ulsfo
Caching at
United Layer
in
San Francisco
eqsin
Caching at Equinix in
Singapore
drmrs
Caching at
Digital Realty
in
Marseille
, France.
magru
Caching in
São Paulo, Brazil
History
edit
The backend web and database servers are in Ashburn, with Carrollton to handle emergency fallback in the future. Carrollton was chosen for this as a result of the
2013 Datacenter RfC
. At EvoSwitch, we have a Varnish cache cluster and several miscellaneous servers. The Kennisnet location is now used only for network access and routing.
Ashburn (
eqiad
became the primary data center
in January 2013, taking over from Tampa (
pmtpa
and
sdtpa
) which had been the main data centre since 2004. Around April 2014, sdtpa (Equinix – formerly Switch and Data – in
Tampa, Florida
, provided networking for pmtpa) was shut down, followed by pmtpa (Hostway – formerly PowerMedium – in Tampa, Florida) in October 2014.
In the past we've had other caching locations like Seoul (
yaseo
, Yahoo!) and Paris (
lopar
, Lost Oasis); the
WMF 2010–2015 strategic plan reach target
states: "additional caching centers in key locations to manage increased traffic from Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, as well as to ensure reasonable and consistent load times no matter where a reader is located."
EvoSwitch and Kennisnet are recognised as benefactors for their
in-kind donations
. See the
current list of benefactors
A list of servers and their functions used to be available at the
server roles
page; no such list is currently maintained publicly (perhaps the private
racktables tool
has one). It used to be possible to see a
compact table of all servers grouped by type
on icinga, but this is
no longer publicly available
. However, the
puppet configuration
provides a pretty good reference for the software that each server runs.
B-roll of servers in Texas in 2015
Status and monitoring
edit
You can check one of the following sites if you want to know if the Wikimedia servers are overloaded, or if you just want to see how they are doing.
Grafana
Data center overview
with total bandwidth, non-idle CPU and load per group of servers; versions also exist with a
per-subcluster dropdown
and
total numbers without graphs
(down in July 2019)
should get you started
Networking latency
Icinga
private
If you are seeing errors in real time, visit
#wikimedia-tech
connect
on
irc.libera.chat
. Check the topic to see if someone is already looking into the problem you are having. If not, please report your problem to the channel. It would be helpful if you could report specific symptoms, including the exact text of any error messages, what you were doing right before the error, and what server(s) are generating the error, if you can tell.
Energy use
edit
In 2017, the WMF board of trustees adopted a
resolution
containing a commitment to minimize the Foundation's overall environmental impact, especially around data centres through using green energy. The community-led
Sustainability Initiative
, created in 2015, aims at reducing the environmental impact of the servers by calling for renewable energy to power them.
The Wikimedia Foundation's servers are spread out in five colocation data centers in Virginia, Texas and San Francisco in the United States, Amsterdam and Marseille in Europe, and Singapore in Asia.
In 2021, the servers used
358.8 kW
(kilowatts), summing up to about
3.143 GW h
(gigawatt hours) of electrical energy
per year
. The total carbon footprint of the servers was
1,073 metric tons CO2-eq
in 2021.
Only the few servers in Amsterdam and in Marseille run on renewable energy, the other use different conventional energy mixes. In 2016, just
9%
of Wikimedia Foundation data centers' energy came from renewable sources, with the rest split evenly between coal, gas and nuclear power (34%, 28%, and 28%, respectively). The bulk of the Wikimedia Foundation's electricity demand is in Virginia and Texas, which both have fossil fuel heavy grids.
Server name
Data center location
Provider
Date opened
Average energy consumption (kW)
Energy sources
Carbon footprint (CO
/year)
Renewable option and cost
eqiad
Ashburn, VA
20146-20149
USA
Equinix (
Website
February 2011
May 2016: 130
May 2015: 152
2016:
32% coal
20% natural gas
25% nuclear
17% renewable
1,040,000 lb = 520 short tons = 470 metric tons
= 0.32 * 130 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 2.1 lb CO
/kWh for coal
+ 0.20 * 130 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 1.22lb CO
/kWh for nat gas
+ 0.25 * 130 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for nuclear
+ 0.17 * 130 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for renewable
In 2015, Equinix
made
"a long-term commitment to use 100 percent clean and renewable energy". In 2017, Equinix
renewed
this pledge.
codfw
Carrollton, TX
75007
USA
CyrusOne (
Website
May 2014
May 2016: 77
May 2015: 70
2016:
23% coal
56% natural gas
6% nuclear
1% hydro/biomass/solar/other
14% wind (Oncor/Ercot)
790,000 lb = 400 short tons = 360 metric tons
= 0.23 * 77 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 2.1 lb CO
/kWh for coal
+ 0.56 * 77 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 1.22lb CO
/kWh for nat gas
+ 0.06 * 77 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for nuclear
+ 0.15 * 77 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for renewables
esams
Haarlem
2031 BE
Netherlands
EvoSwitch (
Website
December 2008
May 2016: < 10
May 2015: 10
"a combination of wind power, hydro and biomass"
n.a.
ulsfo
San Francisco, CA
94124
USA
UnitedLayer (
Website
June 2012
May 2016: < 5
May 2015: < 5
2016:
25% natural gas
23% nuclear
30% renewable
6% hydro
17% unspecified (PG&E)
13,000 lb = 6.7 short tons = 6.1 metric tons (+ unspecified)
= 0.00 * 5 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 2.1 lb CO
/kWh for coal
+ 0.25 * 5 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 1.22lb CO
/kWh for nat gas
+ 0.23 * 5 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for nuclear
+ 0.36 * 5 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * 0 lb CO
/kWh for hydro/renewable
+ 0.17 * 5 kW * 8765.76 hr/yr * ? lb CO
/kWh for unspecified
eqsin
Singapore
Equinix (
Website
drmrs
Marseille
Digital Realty (
Website
See also
edit
More hardware info
edit
wikitech:Clusters
– technical and usually more up-to-date information on the Wikimedia clusters
Admin logs
edit
Server admin log
– Documents server changes (especially software changes)
Offsite traffic pages
edit
Semrush: Wikipedia.org Traffic Ranking and Analysis
Historical information
edit
Cache strategy
(draft from 2006)
PHP caching and optimization
(draft from 2007)
Hardware orders up to 2007
References
edit
See
MediaWiki analysis
MediaWiki WMF-supported extensions analysis
"Wikipedia Adopts MariaDB"
(text/html)
blog.wikimedia.org
. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2013-04-22
. Retrieved
2014-07-20
Suffered a major DoS attack on September 6/7, 2019. See
dedicated article on WMF website
Wikimedia Foundation Environmental Sustainability (Carbon Footprint) Report for 2021
Retrieved from "
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