6 ms·

Do they though? I've had plenty of virtual machines with over a year of uptime no problem (sometimes quite a bite more). I'd argue the only important thing in a

Do they though? I've had plenty of virtual machines with over a year of uptime no problem (sometimes quite a bite more). I'd argue the only important thing in an early stage startup is a robust backup plan, including monitoring your backups and test restores often.

vorpalhex 7y ago
Sure and my home server had an uptime for a year and a half until the local power company had a few brownouts one summer. Downtime doesn't happen until it does.
- luckylion 7y ago
  So then your website is down, the monitoring alerts you and you fix it. Or, worst case, your monitoring doesn't alert you and you fix it on monday when you notice. You've been down the whole weekend. For most startups: so what, your dog-walker-as-a-service marketplace didn't work for 48 hours, that doesn't really matter. You've had a working system very quickly and saved plenty of money that you were able to invest into more features or runway though.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Except as a startup potentially targeting enterprise customers or hospitals, that downtime may cost you significant contracts or future work. It's probably something that gets disclosed in investor decks - and depending on your offering may really hurt you.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      I totally agree with "you can't just replace availability with pagerduty" if you're dealing with stuff like pacemakers. But that's not what most startups do. I believe that too many engineers worry about "what if a million users sign up tomorrow" and plan a system that will handle that (which also happens to be fun and tickles all the right places), which takes a lot of time and money and manpower instead of building something that works reasonably well and worrying about building the "right" solution when they're beginning to actually grow rapidly. I'd much rather hear "our servers can't handle the load, there are too many users signing up" than "when we're done here in six months, our system will be able to handle any load you throw at it". I wouldn't say that it's a no-go (there absolutely are situations where it makes sense), but it often looks like premature optimization.
bluedino 7y ago
Don't forget DDoS
- cat199 7y ago
  commercial cdn solves that for most cases if needed

vorpalhex 7y ago

Sure and my home server had an uptime for a year and a half until the local power company had a few brownouts one summer. Downtime doesn't happen until it does.

luckylion 7y ago
So then your website is down, the monitoring alerts you and you fix it. Or, worst case, your monitoring doesn't alert you and you fix it on monday when you notice. You've been down the whole weekend. For most startups: so what, your dog-walker-as-a-service marketplace didn't work for 48 hours, that doesn't really matter. You've had a working system very quickly and saved plenty of money that you were able to invest into more features or runway though.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Except as a startup potentially targeting enterprise customers or hospitals, that downtime may cost you significant contracts or future work. It's probably something that gets disclosed in investor decks - and depending on your offering may really hurt you.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    I totally agree with "you can't just replace availability with pagerduty" if you're dealing with stuff like pacemakers. But that's not what most startups do. I believe that too many engineers worry about "what if a million users sign up tomorrow" and plan a system that will handle that (which also happens to be fun and tickles all the right places), which takes a lot of time and money and manpower instead of building something that works reasonably well and worrying about building the "right" solution when they're beginning to actually grow rapidly. I'd much rather hear "our servers can't handle the load, there are too many users signing up" than "when we're done here in six months, our system will be able to handle any load you throw at it". I wouldn't say that it's a no-go (there absolutely are situations where it makes sense), but it often looks like premature optimization.

bluedino 7y ago

Don't forget DDoS

cat199 7y ago
commercial cdn solves that for most cases if needed