31 ms·

Asset management is definitely a thing. Tag your environments, tag your apps, and provide your apps criticality ratings based on how important they are to runni

by spydum 3y ago

Asset management is definitely a thing. Tag your environments, tag your apps, and provide your apps criticality ratings based on how important they are to running the business. Then it's a matter of a query to know which servers can be shut, and which absolutely must remain.

ethbr1 3y ago
> provide your apps criticality ratings based on how important they are to running the business In a decentralized, self-service model, you can add "deal with convincing a stakeholder their app is anything less than most-critical." Although it usually works itself out if higher-criticality imposes ongoing time commitments on them as well (aka stick).
- j33zusjuice 3y ago
  That seems like a poorly run company. Idk. Maybe we’ve worked in very different environments, but devs have almost always been aware of the criticality of the app, so convincing people wasn’t hard. In most places, the answer hinges on “is it customer facing?” and/or “does it break a core part of our business?” If the answer is no to both, it’s not critical, and everyone understands that. There’s always some weird outlier, “well, this runs process B to report on process A, and sends a custom report to the CEO …”, but hopefully those exceptions are rare.
  - spydum 3y ago
    agree. ethbr1 is 100% right about this being a problem; if politics is driving your criticality rating, it's probably being done wrong. it should be as simple as your statement, being mindful of some of those downstream systems that aren't always obviously critical (until they are unavailable for $time) edit: whoops, maybe I read the meaning backward, but both issues exist!
  - hinkley 3y ago
    I maintain a couple of apps that are pretty much free to break or to revert back to an older build without much consequence, except for one day a week, when half the team uses them instead of just me. Any other day I can use them to test new base images, new coding or deployment techniques, etc. I just have to put things back by the end of our cycle.
  - NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
    >devs have almost always been aware of the criticality of the app I'm sure that developers are aware of the how important their stuff is to their immediate customer, but they're almost never aware of the relative criticality vis-a-vis stuff they don't own or have any idea about.
  - letsdothisagain 3y ago
    Welcome to University IT, where organizational structures are basically feudal (by law!). Imagine an organization where your president can't order a VP to do something, and you have academia :)
- chronid 3y ago
  Some kind of cost shedding to the application owner (in many enterprises this is not the infra owner) is definitely needed otherwise everything becomes critical. "Everything is critical" should sound a million alarm bells in the minds of "enterprise architects" but most I've discussed this with are blissfully unaware.
Scubabear68 3y ago
Having an application, process and hardware inventory is a must if you are going to have any hope of disaster recovery. Along with regular failovers to make sure you haven’t missed anything.
outofpaper 3y ago
In moments of crisis, immediate measures like physical tagging can be crucial. Yet, a broader challenge looms: our dependency on air conditioning. In Toronto's winter, the missed opportunity to design buildings that work with the climate, rather than defaulting to a universal AC solution, underscores the need for thoughtful asset management tailored to specific environments.
- j33zusjuice 3y ago
  I upvoted, but I agree so much, I had to comment, too. I wonder how long it’d take to recoup the loss of retrofitting such a system. Despite this story today, this type of problem must be rare. I imagine most of the savings would be found in the electric bill, and it’d probably take a lot of years to recoup the cost.
  - spydum 3y ago
    It's pretty common for hyperscalers actually: https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-projects/iron-mountain-data-centers-geothermal-cooling-system https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-pr... https://greenmountain.no/data-centers/cooling/ https://greenmountain.no/data-centers/cooling/ I vaguely remember some other whole building DC designs that used a central vent which opened externally based on external climate for some additional free cooling. Can't find the reference now though. But geothermal is pretty common for sure.
    - thakoppno 3y ago
      You may be thinking about Yahoo’s approach from 2010? > The Yahoo! approach is to avoid the capital cost and power consumption of chillers entirely by allowing the cold aisle temperatures to rise to 85F to 90F when they are unable to hold the temperature lower. They calculate they will only do this 34 hours a year which is less than 0.4% of the year. https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/03/yahoo-compute-coop-design/ https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/03/yahoo-compute-coop...
      - 3y ago
datadrivenangel 3y ago
Good documentation and metadata like this is necessary for corporations to truly be organized.

by spydum 3y ago

ethbr1 3y ago

> provide your apps criticality ratings based on how important they are to running the business In a decentralized, self-service model, you can add "deal with convincing a stakeholder their app is anything less than most-critical." Although it usually works itself out if higher-criticality imposes ongoing time commitments on them as well (aka stick).

j33zusjuice 3y ago
That seems like a poorly run company. Idk. Maybe we’ve worked in very different environments, but devs have almost always been aware of the criticality of the app, so convincing people wasn’t hard. In most places, the answer hinges on “is it customer facing?” and/or “does it break a core part of our business?” If the answer is no to both, it’s not critical, and everyone understands that. There’s always some weird outlier, “well, this runs process B to report on process A, and sends a custom report to the CEO …”, but hopefully those exceptions are rare.
- spydum 3y ago
  agree. ethbr1 is 100% right about this being a problem; if politics is driving your criticality rating, it's probably being done wrong. it should be as simple as your statement, being mindful of some of those downstream systems that aren't always obviously critical (until they are unavailable for $time) edit: whoops, maybe I read the meaning backward, but both issues exist!
- hinkley 3y ago
  I maintain a couple of apps that are pretty much free to break or to revert back to an older build without much consequence, except for one day a week, when half the team uses them instead of just me. Any other day I can use them to test new base images, new coding or deployment techniques, etc. I just have to put things back by the end of our cycle.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  >devs have almost always been aware of the criticality of the app I'm sure that developers are aware of the how important their stuff is to their immediate customer, but they're almost never aware of the relative criticality vis-a-vis stuff they don't own or have any idea about.
- letsdothisagain 3y ago
  Welcome to University IT, where organizational structures are basically feudal (by law!). Imagine an organization where your president can't order a VP to do something, and you have academia :)
chronid 3y ago
Some kind of cost shedding to the application owner (in many enterprises this is not the infra owner) is definitely needed otherwise everything becomes critical. "Everything is critical" should sound a million alarm bells in the minds of "enterprise architects" but most I've discussed this with are blissfully unaware.

Scubabear68 3y ago

Having an application, process and hardware inventory is a must if you are going to have any hope of disaster recovery. Along with regular failovers to make sure you haven’t missed anything.

outofpaper 3y ago

In moments of crisis, immediate measures like physical tagging can be crucial. Yet, a broader challenge looms: our dependency on air conditioning. In Toronto's winter, the missed opportunity to design buildings that work with the climate, rather than defaulting to a universal AC solution, underscores the need for thoughtful asset management tailored to specific environments.

j33zusjuice 3y ago
I upvoted, but I agree so much, I had to comment, too. I wonder how long it’d take to recoup the loss of retrofitting such a system. Despite this story today, this type of problem must be rare. I imagine most of the savings would be found in the electric bill, and it’d probably take a lot of years to recoup the cost.
- spydum 3y ago
  It's pretty common for hyperscalers actually: https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-projects/iron-mountain-data-centers-geothermal-cooling-system https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/showcase-pr... https://greenmountain.no/data-centers/cooling/ https://greenmountain.no/data-centers/cooling/ I vaguely remember some other whole building DC designs that used a central vent which opened externally based on external climate for some additional free cooling. Can't find the reference now though. But geothermal is pretty common for sure.
  - thakoppno 3y ago
    You may be thinking about Yahoo’s approach from 2010? > The Yahoo! approach is to avoid the capital cost and power consumption of chillers entirely by allowing the cold aisle temperatures to rise to 85F to 90F when they are unable to hold the temperature lower. They calculate they will only do this 34 hours a year which is less than 0.4% of the year. https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/03/yahoo-compute-coop-design/ https://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/03/yahoo-compute-coop...
    - 3y ago

datadrivenangel 3y ago

Good documentation and metadata like this is necessary for corporations to truly be organized.