How Reliable Is Your Server
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@DustinB3403 said
They don't fail that often is what you're missing.
The time to clone a USB in minutes a month (or every few months).
The time to restore a config in XS would be hours, at the point in time it crashes. If not longer. Plus you have no recent backup to work from.
Understood.
Do they really not fail that much? We've seen a few on ML just this month.
Coincidence, maybe.
I wonder if you let the logs write to the USB stick, would it really die quickly, anyway?
USB storage sticks are very hit and miss with their reliability.
The only brand I haven't had a problem with are the Micro Center branded USB drives. They're also the only ones I know of that give you a lifetime guarantee. Walk in with a bad USB drive and walk out with a new one.
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@DustinB3403 said
They don't fail that often is what you're missing.
The time to clone a USB in minutes a month (or every few months).
The time to restore a config in XS would be hours, at the point in time it crashes. If not longer. Plus you have no recent backup to work from.
Understood.
Do they really not fail that much? We've seen a few on ML just this month.
Coincidence, maybe.
I wonder if you let the logs write to the USB stick, would it really die quickly, anyway?
You can always just have one extra USB and keep a copy of the image somewhere. Once you need to use your backup USB then just order another one and write the image to it.
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@stacksofplates said
You can always just have one extra USB and keep a copy of the image somewhere. Once you need to use your backup USB then just order another one and write the image to it.
I guess my point is going along with the OP of reliability, that two small SATA drives would probably run for years without needing a reboot. My servers are 10+ years old, and have just recently started having drive failures. That 24x7x365x10 (or whatever haha) without needing spares and worrying constantly it was going to fail.
Why introduce that is so finicky into a server situation if we are concerned about reliability.
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@stacksofplates said
You can always just have one extra USB and keep a copy of the image somewhere. Once you need to use your backup USB then just order another one and write the image to it.
I guess my point is going along with the OP of reliability, that two small SATA drives would probably run for years without needing a reboot. My servers are 10+ years old, and have just recently started having drive failures. That 24x7x365x10 (or whatever haha) without needing spares and worrying constantly it was going to fail.
Why introduce that is so finicky into a server situation if we are concerned about reliability.
Oh I'm not arguing that they drives wouldn't last longer, just that it's cheap to replicate the USB drives. I think stopping log writing to the USB drive would drastically increase the life of it. You could also just load the whole hypervisor to a RAM disk ha.
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@stacksofplates said
I think stopping log writing to the USB drive would drastically increase the life of it.
Haha my server responded to me doing this by crashing and burning.
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@stacksofplates said
I think stopping log writing to the USB drive would drastically increase the life of it.
Haha my server responded to me doing this by crashing and burning.
Lol, you could always do software RAID 1 with two USB drives.
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@stacksofplates said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@stacksofplates said
You can always just have one extra USB and keep a copy of the image somewhere. Once you need to use your backup USB then just order another one and write the image to it.
I guess my point is going along with the OP of reliability, that two small SATA drives would probably run for years without needing a reboot. My servers are 10+ years old, and have just recently started having drive failures. That 24x7x365x10 (or whatever haha) without needing spares and worrying constantly it was going to fail.
Why introduce that is so finicky into a server situation if we are concerned about reliability.
Oh I'm not arguing that they drives wouldn't last longer, just that it's cheap to replicate the USB drives. I think stopping log writing to the USB drive would drastically increase the life of it. You could also just load the whole hypervisor to a RAM disk ha.
Outside of systems logging to the USBs dying, I really never run into them having problems.
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@scottalanmiller said
Outside of systems logging to the USBs dying, I really never run into them having problems.
Just for giggles, how much data do you think can be written to a USB drive before it kicks the bucket?
Like say you left logging on for some crazy reason.
How long would you feel "safe" using the USB?
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@scottalanmiller said
Outside of systems logging to the USBs dying, I really never run into them having problems.
Just for giggles, how much data do you think can be written to a USB drive before it kicks the bucket?
Like say you left logging on for some crazy reason.
How long would you feel "safe" using the USB?
Not very long. Totally not how they are meant to be used. Their utility is in being a write once, read many device. In fact, I'd recommend hitting that little lock option on the side if it is available.
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@scottalanmiller said
Not very long. Totally not how they are meant to be used. Their utility is in being a write once, read many device. In fact, I'd recommend hitting that little lock option on the side if it is available.
Ooooh, the server really wouldn't like that!
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This point just came up, again, on SW. SAN promoted not because SANs are reliable, but because servers must not be. This assumption drives so many recommendations, it's crazy.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
This point just came up, again, on SW. SAN promoted not because SANs are reliable, but because servers must not be. This assumption drives so many recommendations, it's crazy.
As you had a hard time convincing me, originally... It's all about perception.
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What's humorous in this one particular example, is that the server and SAN would come from the same vendor. Which is common. And someone asked the vendor to speak up. But the vendor is trapped. Because the question has to be framed as a relative safety concern and for an IPOD to be sensible the SAN must be orders of magnitude safer than the servers. Which means that the storage team would be forced to throw the server team (who makes their SANs for them) under the bus in order to sell the SAN, which in doing so would make their SANs look bad by being built by the very team that they just said could not make reliable gear.
I guarantee the vendor is going to stay out of it. Even if the servers were not reliable, they would not be in a position to say anything. But the servers are extremely reliable.
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@BRRABill said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
I am more afraid of the software ON the server than the server itself.
Oh, and recently, USB boot devices.
Yeah, main causes of downtime:
- Humans
- Software
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. - Hardware
I had a RAID controller fail on me on a fairly new Proliant recently. That wasn't nice. But HP said it was a firmware issue and upgraded the firmware. So even what I thought was a hardware failure was actually software - not that it makes any difference as the server is still down.
Basically, it seems that if it doesn't move, it doesn't fail.
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@Carnival-Boy Software is written by humans, so couldn't we condense that down to?
- Humans
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. - Hardware
- Humans
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@travisdh1 said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@Carnival-Boy Software is written by humans, so couldn't we condense that down to?
- Humans
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. - Hardware
But hardware is made by humans. So...
- Humans.
- Humans
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@scottalanmiller said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@travisdh1 said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@Carnival-Boy Software is written by humans, so couldn't we condense that down to?
- Humans
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. - Hardware
But hardware is made by humans. So...
- Humans.
We have a winner!
- Humans
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@travisdh1 said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@scottalanmiller said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@travisdh1 said in How Reliable Is Your Server:
@Carnival-Boy Software is written by humans, so couldn't we condense that down to?
- Humans
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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. - Hardware
But hardware is made by humans. So...
- Humans.
We have a winner!
Even humans are made by other humans. Meta human failure!
- Humans
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Adding in @HPEStorageGuy as we were discussing this exact topic a few minute ago on SW in another thread.
