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Yeah, when I started getting involved in web operations tools, and realizing all the levels of redundancy that the big players like Google and Netflix have, it
by patcon 12y ago
Yeah, when I started getting involved in web operations tools, and realizing all the levels of redundancy that the big players like Google and Netflix have, it really got me thinking about our hydro and communications infrasture.
For instance, Netflix has it's chaos monkey, than randomly kills servers and availability zones and generally wreaks havoc. They set it loose, and learn to keep things operating. I really thinkg it would be a responsible societal effort to introduce chaos monkeys into our archaic infrastructure outside digital.
And as for that underfunded satellite, it's sitting in the sweet spot between the gravitation tug of the earth and sun called the L1 langrangian point, where it takes no effort to keep it exactly in place. But we really need more drills to learned whether the hydro/comm infrastructure on one hemisphere of the earth can actually shut everything down in 20 minutes, day or night.
- dandelany 12y agoThe 100-year old underground electric wires running under the street where I work have caught on fire three times in the past year. Something tells me our archaic infrastructure has quite a backlog of existing chaos monkeys to deal with already.
- tedsanders 12y agoThe spirit of the idea is good, but it would not work well for hardware. With software, if something breaks, you restart the servers. With hardware, if something breaks, you have to buy a new one. Throwing chaos monkeys to see which transformers blow up would end up quite expensive. :)
- chucknelson 12y agoHaha, was thinking the same thing. This would make a great xkcd.
- omegant 12y agoThen at least simulations on how it affects electric grids coyld help quite a bit. Are this simulations taking place?
- eneveu 12y agoI interned at Areva T&D in 2006 (now Alstom Grid). While I was not working on that specific project, I remember they had a very powerful EMS (Energy Management System), which let them simulate incidents (e.g. "what happens if these power lines are destroyed"). Doing a quick search, this seems to be called a "dispatcher training simulator": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatcher_training_simulator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispatcher_training_simulator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_management_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_management_system http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automation/NMS/e-terraplatform%203.0%20trans_gene.pdf http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automa... http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automation/NMS/NMS%20HiRES%20Brochure/e-terrasimulator%20Brochure%20GB.pdf http://www.alstom.com/Global/Grid/Resources/Documents/Automa...