We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
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Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#2Or you might want to have redundant cooling.
Cooling system prices seem to scale fairly linearly with the cooling power above a few kW, so instead of one 100 kW system you could buy four 25 kW systems so a single failure won't be a disaster.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#3Or you might want to have redundant cooling. Cooling system prices seem to scale fairly linearly with the cooling power above a few kW, so instead of one 100 kW system you could buy four 25 kW systems so a single failure won't be a disaster.
Won't 4 x 25 kW systems mean also 4x the installation cost?
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#4Or you might want to have redundant cooling. Cooling system prices seem to scale fairly linearly with the cooling power above a few kW, so instead of one 100 kW system you could buy four 25 kW systems so a single failure won't be a disaster.
Won't 4 x 25 kW systems mean also 4x the installation cost?
What the % of install cost over the projected lifetime of the system?
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#5It is interesting to contrast with where the wider industry has gone.
Industry: don’t treat your systems like pets.
Author: proudly declares himself Unix herder, wants to keep track of which systems are important.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#6It's generally a good idea to have some documentation that states what a machine is used for, the "service", and how important said service is relative to others.
At my company we kind of enforce this by not operating machines that are not explicitly assigned to any service.
However you have to anticipate that the quality of documentation still varies immensely which might result in you shutting down a service that is actually more important than stated.
Fortunately documentation improves after every outage because service owners reiterate on their part of the documentation when their service was shut down as "it appeared unimportant".
It's a process.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#7It is interesting to contrast with where the wider industry has gone. Industry: don’t treat your systems like pets. Author: proudly declares himself Unix herder, wants to keep track of which systems are important.
> Author: proudly declares himself Unix herder, wants to keep track of which systems are important.
Because not all environments are webapps which dozens or hundreds of systems configured in a cookie cutter matter. Plenty of IT environments have pets because plenty of IT environments are not Web Scale™. And plenty of IT environments have staff churn and legacy systems where knowledge can become murky (see reference about "archaeology").
An IMAP server is different than a web server is different than an NFS server, and there may also be inter-dependencies between them.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#8It is interesting to contrast with where the wider industry has gone. Industry: don’t treat your systems like pets. Author: proudly declares himself Unix herder, wants to keep track of which systems are important.
I would argue even the "wider industry" still administrates systems that must be treated as pets because they were not designed to be treated as cattle.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#9Or you might want to have redundant cooling. Cooling system prices seem to scale fairly linearly with the cooling power above a few kW, so instead of one 100 kW system you could buy four 25 kW systems so a single failure won't be a disaster.
Won't 4 x 25 kW systems mean also 4x the installation cost?
Probably less if you install them all at the same time.
Re: We might want to regularly keep track of how important each server is
#10Or you might want to have redundant cooling. Cooling system prices seem to scale fairly linearly with the cooling power above a few kW, so instead of one 100 kW system you could buy four 25 kW systems so a single failure won't be a disaster.
> Or you might want to have redundant cooling.
Can you provide a cost centre or credit card for which they can bill this to? In case you didn't notice the domain, it is UToronto: academic departments aren't generally flush with cash.
Further, you have to have physical space to fit the extra cooling equipment and pipes: not always easy or possible to do in old university buildings.