4 ms·

> a single server suffices A genuine question that I wonder about: How does a single server protect you against someone in your DC pulling a plug by mistake or

by embik 5y ago

> a single server suffices A genuine question that I wonder about: How does a single server protect you against someone in your DC pulling a plug by mistake or your cloud provider being unreliable? If it’s a database it seems like a huge potential for going out of business. I guess if you are running single-server databases you better have a good backup strategy anyway, but is that a risk people and businesses just accept?

VBprogrammer 5y ago
I think what you are missing is that simple databases in a well run data-centre are surprisingly reliable. The tradeoffs involved in avoiding some of the simple "the cleaner unplugged the DB server" introduce complexities which may themselves cause outages which are much harder to solve.
citrin_ru 5y ago
If you have a single server pulling of a plug (or even any HW failure which cannot be fixed quickly) is a very rare even (unless you use cheap desktop hardware instead of a decent server with ECC RAM, hot-swap HDD, redundant PSU e. t. c.). If instead of using this single server (with manual fail-over in case it would fail) you'll start to create complex HA cluster from multiple servers not having enough people to properly design, test and maintain it you can end up having a less reliable system.
trasz 5y ago
> How does a single server protect you against someone in your DC pulling a plug That’s why you have redundant power supplies with separate power cables.
lrem 5y ago
In short: yes. The recent fire in a French DC saw serious disruption across all kinds of industries in many European countries. I know a sales engineer in a hardware manufacturing place, who was back to pen and paper until the IT provider figured out restores. But it wasn't that bad, as both the clients and competitors were decimated too.

4 ms·

> a single server suffices A genuine question that I wonder about: How does a single server protect you against someone in your DC pulling a plug by mistake or

by embik 5y ago

VBprogrammer 5y ago
I think what you are missing is that simple databases in a well run data-centre are surprisingly reliable. The tradeoffs involved in avoiding some of the simple "the cleaner unplugged the DB server" introduce complexities which may themselves cause outages which are much harder to solve.
citrin_ru 5y ago
If you have a single server pulling of a plug (or even any HW failure which cannot be fixed quickly) is a very rare even (unless you use cheap desktop hardware instead of a decent server with ECC RAM, hot-swap HDD, redundant PSU e. t. c.). If instead of using this single server (with manual fail-over in case it would fail) you'll start to create complex HA cluster from multiple servers not having enough people to properly design, test and maintain it you can end up having a less reliable system.
trasz 5y ago
> How does a single server protect you against someone in your DC pulling a plug That’s why you have redundant power supplies with separate power cables.
lrem 5y ago
In short: yes. The recent fire in a French DC saw serious disruption across all kinds of industries in many European countries. I know a sales engineer in a hardware manufacturing place, who was back to pen and paper until the IT provider figured out restores. But it wasn't that bad, as both the clients and competitors were decimated too.