Editing Wikipedia (section)

=== Hardware operations and support ===
{{see also|Wikimedia Foundation#Hardware}}
Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000-page requests per second, depending on the time of the day.<ref name="WP tools requests per day">[https://web.archive.org/web/20081028185204/https://toolserver.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png "Monthly request statistics"], Wikimedia. Retrieved October 31, 2008.</ref>{{update inline|date=July 2019}} {{As of|2021|post=,}} page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of [[Varnish (software)|Varnish]] caching servers and back-end layer caching is done by [[Apache Traffic Server]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Varnish|title=Varnish – Wikitech|website=wikitech.wikimedia.org|access-date=May 12, 2019}}</ref> Further statistics, based on a publicly available 3-month Wikipedia access trace, are available.<ref name="globule access trace">{{cite web |url = https://www.globule.org/publi/WWADH_comnet2009.html |title = Wikipedia Workload Analysis for Decentralized Hosting |author = Guido Urdaneta, Guillaume Pierre and Maarten van Steen |publisher = Elsevier Computer Networks 53 (11), pp. 1830–1845, June 2009 |access-date = June 5, 2016 |archive-date = May 6, 2016 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160506075037/http://www.globule.org/publi/WWADH_comnet2009.html |url-status = dead }}</ref> Requests that cannot be served from the Varnish cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the [[Linux Virtual Server]] software, which in turn pass them to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. To increase speed further, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-01-12 |title=Front-End Performance Checklist 2021 (PDF, Apple Pages, MS Word) |url=https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2021/01/front-end-performance-2021-free-pdf-checklist/ |access-date=2022-04-26 |website=Smashing Magazine |language=en}}</ref>

[[File:Wikipedia webrequest flow 2020.png|alt=Diagram showing flow of data between Wikipedia's servers.|thumb|Overview of system architecture {{as of|2020|04|lc=on}}]]
Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated [[Computer cluster|clusters]] of [[Linux]] servers with [[Debian]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=Debian – Wikitech|url=https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Debian|access-date=2021-04-09|website=wikitech.wikimedia.org|language=en}}</ref> {{As of|2009|12|post=,}} there were 300 in Florida and 44 in [[Amsterdam]].<ref name="servers" /> By January 22, 2013, Wikipedia had migrated its primary data center to an [[Equinix]] facility in [[Ashburn, Virginia]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://diff.wikimedia.org/2013/01/19/wikimedia-sites-move-to-primary-data-center-in-ashburn-virginia/ |title = Wikimedia sites to move to primary data center in Ashburn, Virginia |first = Guillaume |last = Palmier |date = January 19, 2013 |publisher = WMF |access-date = June 5, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/01/14/its-official-equinix-ashburn-is-wikimedias-home/ |title = It's Official: Ashburn is Wikipedia's New Home |first = Jason |last = Verge |publisher = Data Center Knowledge |access-date = June 5, 2016 |date = January 14, 2013}}</ref> In 2017, Wikipedia installed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in [[Singapore]], the first of its kind in Asia.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T156028|title=⚓ T156028 Name Asia Cache DC site|website=Wikimedia Phabricator|access-date=May 12, 2019}}</ref>