3 ms·

> 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. Su

by 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.

close04 8y ago
That's how I interpreted "uptime really matters". Those systems are definitely built to last. But even going some orders of magnitude lower about, 85% of x86 servers achieve at least 99.95% availability according to statistics [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/515441/worldwide-survey-server-unplanned-downtime-hours-four-or-more/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/515441/worldwide-survey-...
- mmt 8y ago
  I'm just wondering if "those systems" include any present-day x86 servers. If not, then it's safe to say they're a red herring, since this whole discussion is based on an article about, specifically, Intel CPUs.
  - close04 8y ago
    I now see that the content is behind a paywall but the title is still visible. It's a statistic for 2017/2018: > Share of servers with four or more hours of unplanned downtime due to hardware flaws worldwide in 2017/2018, by hardware platform Systems like IBM's System Z had 0 servers with more than 4 hours unplanned downtime over this period. At the other end Cisco and Fujitsu x86 servers had ~16% of servers experiencing 4 or more hours of unplanned downtime over the period. We can infer that the vast majority of the x86 machines will be Intel considering AMD's market share in the server space. P.S. The article is about Intel's ME flaws and patches so probably our whole discussion branched off in the wrong direction :).
    - mmt 8y ago
      > P.S. The article is about Intel's ME flaws and patches so probably our whole discussion branched off in the wrong direction :). Maybe that's why I was confused? I thought we were talking about commodity, x86 servers all along, particularly the GGP about "where uptime really matters" and other comments by the same person about warranty lengths (which seemed irrelevant, other than being indicative of commodity hardware). Of course, that commenter's very terse remarks, combining "safety", "uptime", and "insurance" (and, later, billions in damages) into an environment where commodity (or not?) x86 servers are proactively replaced started me off in a state of confusion, like there was some very major assumption about the system design that I (and everyone else here, too, it seems) was missing.

by mmt 8y ago

close04 8y ago

That's how I interpreted "uptime really matters". Those systems are definitely built to last. But even going some orders of magnitude lower about, 85% of x86 servers achieve at least 99.95% availability according to statistics [1]. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/515441/worldwide-survey-server-unplanned-downtime-hours-four-or-more/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/515441/worldwide-survey-...

mmt 8y ago
I'm just wondering if "those systems" include any present-day x86 servers. If not, then it's safe to say they're a red herring, since this whole discussion is based on an article about, specifically, Intel CPUs.
- close04 8y ago
  I now see that the content is behind a paywall but the title is still visible. It's a statistic for 2017/2018: > Share of servers with four or more hours of unplanned downtime due to hardware flaws worldwide in 2017/2018, by hardware platform Systems like IBM's System Z had 0 servers with more than 4 hours unplanned downtime over this period. At the other end Cisco and Fujitsu x86 servers had ~16% of servers experiencing 4 or more hours of unplanned downtime over the period. We can infer that the vast majority of the x86 machines will be Intel considering AMD's market share in the server space. P.S. The article is about Intel's ME flaws and patches so probably our whole discussion branched off in the wrong direction :).
  - mmt 8y ago
    > P.S. The article is about Intel's ME flaws and patches so probably our whole discussion branched off in the wrong direction :). Maybe that's why I was confused? I thought we were talking about commodity, x86 servers all along, particularly the GGP about "where uptime really matters" and other comments by the same person about warranty lengths (which seemed irrelevant, other than being indicative of commodity hardware). Of course, that commenter's very terse remarks, combining "safety", "uptime", and "insurance" (and, later, billions in damages) into an environment where commodity (or not?) x86 servers are proactively replaced started me off in a state of confusion, like there was some very major assumption about the system design that I (and everyone else here, too, it seems) was missing.