4 ms·

I'm not asking about the specifics, and I don't really care about them. But the fact of the matter is quite simply is that any single physical server solution

I'm not asking about the specifics, and I don't really care about them. But the fact of the matter is quite simply is that any single physical server solution will never be satisfactory for backups or HA purposes. You can't store your backups in the same place as your data and call it good - what do you do when you have multiple disks fail and your RAID can't be rebuilt? This happens. What do you do when operator error accidentally destroys the array? This happens. What do you do when there's a datacenter fire and the server burns up? This happens. None of these things should be a business ending event, but if you only have a single server handling quintuple duty, that's what it has a real chance of being. If you need HA, a single server isn't good enough even if you've got multiple VMs running the service. What do you do when the utility power is out and the generator fails to kick on properly or they run out of fuel? Both of those happen pretty frequently. What do you do when there's a network outage at the DC? This happens. When someone fucks up BGP somewhere and now the prefix you used is being routed to god knows where? This happens. When you have any sort of physical server failure that brings your single box down? This happens. Any of those situations will take you offline and render your HA meaningless. I'm not saying that any of these things are impossible to do when colocating your hardware - but they're not free, and they're not mentioned even at a high level in this story. And since we're not talking about running benchmarks on price/performance and instead talking about a service that a business needs to keep available to their customers to make money, these are important aspects to talk about. Everywhere I've worked, keeping our services available and being able to recover from hardware failure are far more important priorities than being able to optimize performance. And doing those things properly takes more than one physical server.

bsenftner 7y ago
I can't speak for FpUser, but you misunderstand the idea of creating a single server: one does not just run one of them, they know about and expect multiple copies of themselves to be running at different IP addresses, and they synchronize with one another, as well as maintain individual backups that additional background processes validate between different instances. Each and every one of your disaster scenarios is handled by the architecture. Each an every one of your disaster scenarios has happened and we've lived through them, as well as after the fact reviewed and optimized how we handled the events. As you are, we're professionals.

bsenftner 7y ago

I can't speak for FpUser, but you misunderstand the idea of creating a single server: one does not just run one of them, they know about and expect multiple copies of themselves to be running at different IP addresses, and they synchronize with one another, as well as maintain individual backups that additional background processes validate between different instances. Each and every one of your disaster scenarios is handled by the architecture. Each an every one of your disaster scenarios has happened and we've lived through them, as well as after the fact reviewed and optimized how we handled the events. As you are, we're professionals.