Re: [tlug] server installation best practices/ worksheet

["Erin D. Hughes" <erin-hughes@example.com>]

Sigurd Urdahl wrote:
> > [1]Funny thing about hard drive mirroring it never seems to work if 
> > you can't convince your boss to buy the second hard disc.
> Educate your customer (or boss) that the extra cost in hardware needed 
> to give systems some redundancy is nothing compared to the monetary or 
> human resource cost of fixing things when they fail because of stupid 
> things like a failing disk. Remember to make sure they understand that 
> they usually answer for downtime to someone above them in the system. 
> Another thing they should want to pay for is a remote management card 
> so that you can power cycle the crashed server via VPN instead of 
> commuting to the co-loc.
Ohh there is no better educator than pain. My past boss found out the 
hard way....... and still refused to buy a second hard drive... even 
after I pointed out everything you just stated. I really do not think it 
takes a degree in rocket science to understand the value of mirrored 
hard disks, especially after all the time on the phone and in person 
with the customers he spent apologizing.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink...... I on 
the other hand had no problem learning from his mistake however. :)

Now I am in charge of a rather old group of Ultra-5s and E450s. A 
terminal emulator is quite possibly the sweetest savior at 3 am that a 
man can buy. It has saved me probably 10 trips to the data center since 
June of last year.

E./

--
Erin D. Hughes 
GMO Internet,