6 ms·

> it's hard to remember a box going down unless I commanded it to This could be a form of the law-of-large-numbers at work. If each customer only has a single

by mmt 8y ago

> it's hard to remember a box going down unless I commanded it to This could be a form of the law-of-large-numbers at work. If each customer only has a single box, and the failure rate is .1%, then 999 customers will never have a failure to remember, compared to the 1 who will. What does it look like if each customer has 1000 boxes?

forapurpose 8y ago
I've managed far more than one box, and far more desktops/laptops than servers. The servers have been far more reliable.
- mmt 8y ago
  That doesn't really address my point. I'm talking about the mainframe (or other high-end server) situation. Granted, you were specifically referring to "mid-range Compaq/HP servers", so perhaps I didn't understand what mid-range meant. If they're just a branded/enterprise version of commodity servers, I'm missing how those are representative of hardware HA of the kind that the OC finds almost always terrible. If they're non-commodity, then I'm curious what their price tags are and if "far more than one box" equates to at least several hundred (else there's still a decent enough chance of not getting bitten by even a 1% failure rate).
KaiserPro 8y ago
Remember that a "box" is a unit for commodity. Your mid sized mainframe will be at least a full rack, plus ancillaries. This can be analogous to a rack full of blades.
- mmt 8y ago
  It can be analagous, but usually isn't, not in the vast majority of technical [1], administrative, or purchasing senses. I'd argue that blades are already bordering on being outside of "commodity", at least in this context reliability, since a single chassis replaces some number of actually-commodity standalone boxes with both shared PoFs and highly-customized designs (especially high density that results in thermal unreliability if not outright failure). [1] Although some blade systems did offer things like integrated shared switches, they failed to make them cheap enough, so, in practice, it didn't happen. Personally, I suspect there was never enough advantage to putting ethernet or even InfiniBand on a backplane instead of cables, not at blade chassis scale of a dozen nodes.

by mmt 8y ago

forapurpose 8y ago

I've managed far more than one box, and far more desktops/laptops than servers. The servers have been far more reliable.

mmt 8y ago
That doesn't really address my point. I'm talking about the mainframe (or other high-end server) situation. Granted, you were specifically referring to "mid-range Compaq/HP servers", so perhaps I didn't understand what mid-range meant. If they're just a branded/enterprise version of commodity servers, I'm missing how those are representative of hardware HA of the kind that the OC finds almost always terrible. If they're non-commodity, then I'm curious what their price tags are and if "far more than one box" equates to at least several hundred (else there's still a decent enough chance of not getting bitten by even a 1% failure rate).

KaiserPro 8y ago

Remember that a "box" is a unit for commodity. Your mid sized mainframe will be at least a full rack, plus ancillaries. This can be analogous to a rack full of blades.

mmt 8y ago
It can be analagous, but usually isn't, not in the vast majority of technical [1], administrative, or purchasing senses. I'd argue that blades are already bordering on being outside of "commodity", at least in this context reliability, since a single chassis replaces some number of actually-commodity standalone boxes with both shared PoFs and highly-customized designs (especially high density that results in thermal unreliability if not outright failure). [1] Although some blade systems did offer things like integrated shared switches, they failed to make them cheap enough, so, in practice, it didn't happen. Personally, I suspect there was never enough advantage to putting ethernet or even InfiniBand on a backplane instead of cables, not at blade chassis scale of a dozen nodes.