On Monday 17 February 2003 23:56, George Michaelson wrote:

> Buying from the so-called Tier-1s is not without downsides, but making the
> spares wearhousing and replacement their problem in exchange for cash is a
> legitemate technique.

The technique we are using where I work is:

1) To use cheap hardware, but at least designed for reliability rather than 
homebuilding or using stuff meant for desktop machines - www.fairchild.co.uk 
is our supplier, no problems as yet.

2) Spreading the services more thinly across machines than we need to. This 
means the machines are underloaded.

3) If a huge spike of load comes along, we are over capacity so can handle it 
better.

4) If a machine breaks, we bring up its services on another machine

So it's not quite stockpiling spare hardware - that spare hardware is in use, 
and so conveniently has an installed OS that has been kept patched, rather 
than being a blank disk as well as being online as a hot spare.

Also, we have architected our systems, where possible, to just run slower 
with less servers rather than dying. This requires no small amount of 
ingenuity, but is good fun and very rewarding!

> -George

ABS

-- 
Alaric B. Snell, Head of Technology, Frontwire Ltd.