5 ms·

This is not in accordance with my experience. The life of an Intel platform in a datacenter is more like 7-10 years.

by ebikelaw 8y ago

TomMarius 8y ago
What insurance comapny insures that? What company offers SLAs like that? I want in on that deal!
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  I have no idea since I'm not in the finance department. Start up an AWS m1.small instance and see what kind of CPU you're using. You may be surprised. Even AWS's current mainstream "M4" offering is using a CPU from 4 years ago.
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Yeah I guess that AWS gets these deals, maybe even supports it themselves. We others don't/can't (no, AWS is not an option). :-(
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Why is this an insurance issue? Do you expect the servers to catch on fire?
  - TomMarius 8y ago
    Well the distributors stamp the top of the server with a sticker that says it's safely operable for 2 years, so no one is going to insure it for more, of course. Might be European thing, though; good think for enthusiasts is that it's common to contact a company and join their next 2 years buyout and acquire cheap hardware.
    - close04 8y ago
      I've never seen this 2 year thing in Europe. There are plenty of companies that stick to their servers for over 5 years. Some servers stay there even for more than a decade because they deliver a service using software that is no longer developed or supported, and there's no replacement for it in the company. So they keep them there, chugging along. But with x86 being basically commodity and virtualization being used everywhere this is less of an issue in most cases. It means your VMs can mostly run on whatever metal you throw under them and that x86 metal can just be propped up to keep working for many, many years.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        I consult in verticals where uptime really matters. It's not unusual though, but yes, I know that companies do this. They usually don't care about insurance/hardware SLA though. Old hardware needs to be emulated.
        close04 8y ago
        Oh I'm sure some companies do it. Whatever it is you can be certain someone is doing it :). But it's nowhere near being a rule in Europe. And TBH replacing servers after 2 years because you're worried about uptime feels like a horrible overreaction and self harming at the same time. Servers that are meant to provide 99.999% uptime (so 5 nines or above, or maximum 6min downtime per year) are built to run for far longer than 2 years. And they must be supported by the manufacturer of the system and the manufacturer of every sub-component for longer than that. So unless I'm missing something I really can't see the benefit of such upgrade cycles.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        The general warranty is always 2 years in the Czech Republic.
        mmt 8y ago
        > And TBH replacing servers after 2 years because you're worried about uptime feels like a horrible overreaction and self harming at the same time. I agree. Such a tactic, in the face of modern high-availability systems design (including the notion of servers being "cattle not pets"), seems actively harmful, other than, perhaps, introducing a something akin to Netflix's "chaos monkey" into the system. I could understand pre-emptive replacement of non-hot-swappable components, but only if they're known to degrade over time [1] and only if the server is already otherwise out of service. Even then, I'd consider 3 years the minimum. > Servers that are meant to provide 99.999% uptime (so 5 nines or above, or maximum 6min downtime per year) are built to run for far longer than 2 years. This kind of design sounds like it's from a different "world" (mainframes) or era (proprietary, even if x86-based, Unix hardware of the 90s), not commodity x86 servers. [1] so, maybe RAM, which has increasing CEs with age/usage, though UEs appear to be skewed toward early RAM life and therefore the bad apples are eliminated early. non-pluggable PSUs. fans. very old internal-only HDDs.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      Servers are "safely" operable until they die. The failure mode is that the machine stops operating. If your system has redundancy built in it keeps working possibly at reduced capacity. If not it stops. If its essential that service not be interrupted you build in redundancy and ensure that it fails in a safe way if it does. I'm not sure where safety or insurance comes into this discussion at all. People upgrade sooner because they stand to gain more than the upgrade costs not because its not safe to operate.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        No, we literally upgrade because it's cheaper than the billions in damages.
        CamperBob2 8y ago
        Just curious, are you familiar with a concept in the quality/reliability field known as the "bathtub curve?"
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Yes. I guess that you're trying to point at us increasing the early failure rate, right? We're insured against that. We can't insure ourselves against the right part of the curve.
        michaelmrose 8y ago
        How would you incur billions in damages? Your cpu is probably fit for 10-20 years of service. Every other part of your computer will fall down around it first.

This is not in accordance with my experience. The life of an Intel platform in a datacenter is more like 7-10 years.

TomMarius 8y ago

What insurance comapny insures that? What company offers SLAs like that? I want in on that deal!

ebikelaw 8y ago
I have no idea since I'm not in the finance department. Start up an AWS m1.small instance and see what kind of CPU you're using. You may be surprised. Even AWS's current mainstream "M4" offering is using a CPU from 4 years ago.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Yeah I guess that AWS gets these deals, maybe even supports it themselves. We others don't/can't (no, AWS is not an option). :-(
CamperBob2 8y ago
Why is this an insurance issue? Do you expect the servers to catch on fire?
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Well the distributors stamp the top of the server with a sticker that says it's safely operable for 2 years, so no one is going to insure it for more, of course. Might be European thing, though; good think for enthusiasts is that it's common to contact a company and join their next 2 years buyout and acquire cheap hardware.
  - close04 8y ago
    I've never seen this 2 year thing in Europe. There are plenty of companies that stick to their servers for over 5 years. Some servers stay there even for more than a decade because they deliver a service using software that is no longer developed or supported, and there's no replacement for it in the company. So they keep them there, chugging along. But with x86 being basically commodity and virtualization being used everywhere this is less of an issue in most cases. It means your VMs can mostly run on whatever metal you throw under them and that x86 metal can just be propped up to keep working for many, many years.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      I consult in verticals where uptime really matters. It's not unusual though, but yes, I know that companies do this. They usually don't care about insurance/hardware SLA though. Old hardware needs to be emulated.
      - close04 8y ago
        Oh I'm sure some companies do it. Whatever it is you can be certain someone is doing it :). But it's nowhere near being a rule in Europe. And TBH replacing servers after 2 years because you're worried about uptime feels like a horrible overreaction and self harming at the same time. Servers that are meant to provide 99.999% uptime (so 5 nines or above, or maximum 6min downtime per year) are built to run for far longer than 2 years. And they must be supported by the manufacturer of the system and the manufacturer of every sub-component for longer than that. So unless I'm missing something I really can't see the benefit of such upgrade cycles.
        TomMarius 8y ago
        The general warranty is always 2 years in the Czech Republic.
        mmt 8y ago
        > And TBH replacing servers after 2 years because you're worried about uptime feels like a horrible overreaction and self harming at the same time. I agree. Such a tactic, in the face of modern high-availability systems design (including the notion of servers being "cattle not pets"), seems actively harmful, other than, perhaps, introducing a something akin to Netflix's "chaos monkey" into the system. I could understand pre-emptive replacement of non-hot-swappable components, but only if they're known to degrade over time [1] and only if the server is already otherwise out of service. Even then, I'd consider 3 years the minimum. > Servers that are meant to provide 99.999% uptime (so 5 nines or above, or maximum 6min downtime per year) are built to run for far longer than 2 years. This kind of design sounds like it's from a different "world" (mainframes) or era (proprietary, even if x86-based, Unix hardware of the 90s), not commodity x86 servers. [1] so, maybe RAM, which has increasing CEs with age/usage, though UEs appear to be skewed toward early RAM life and therefore the bad apples are eliminated early. non-pluggable PSUs. fans. very old internal-only HDDs.
  - michaelmrose 8y ago
    Servers are "safely" operable until they die. The failure mode is that the machine stops operating. If your system has redundancy built in it keeps working possibly at reduced capacity. If not it stops. If its essential that service not be interrupted you build in redundancy and ensure that it fails in a safe way if it does. I'm not sure where safety or insurance comes into this discussion at all. People upgrade sooner because they stand to gain more than the upgrade costs not because its not safe to operate.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      No, we literally upgrade because it's cheaper than the billions in damages.
      - CamperBob2 8y ago
        Just curious, are you familiar with a concept in the quality/reliability field known as the "bathtub curve?"
        TomMarius 8y ago
        Yes. I guess that you're trying to point at us increasing the early failure rate, right? We're insured against that. We can't insure ourselves against the right part of the curve.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        How would you incur billions in damages? Your cpu is probably fit for 10-20 years of service. Every other part of your computer will fall down around it first.