Before all of my work time transitioned to deep learning projects about 7 years ago, I spent about 15 years (mostly as a remote consultant) creating and deployi

Before all of my work time transitioned to deep learning projects about 7 years ago, I spent about 15 years (mostly as a remote consultant) creating and deploying systems for customers. A few random thoughts, admitting that my opinions may be out of date: Question number one: what is the business cost for a system being offline? If the cost is moderate, I find it difficult to argue against running two copies on a single server or VPN in different availability zones behind a robust (managed as a service) load balancer. Scale the servers or VPNs for anticipated work load. Managed container services or platforms like AppEngine or Heroku have always made sense to me to to reduce labor costs. Containerized infrastructure makes sense when the benefits out weigh the labor costs.